The gangs were making millions from the drug. Police departments across America formed gang units and narcotic units as a means of counterattack. It was common for narcotics units doing drug busts to come across stacks of money, often in the tens and hundreds of thousands or more. These large scores of cash sometimes proved too tempting for unethical units. Who would know it was missing if no one told, they rationalized. And if someone did tell, who would believe a gangbanger over a cop?
***
Compton was averaging over a thousand shootings incidents and seventy to eighty homicides a year. Those were astounding figures for a city that was only ten square miles.
Rock cocaine ruled the streets and the people addicted to it. It was an unstoppable force, generating millions for gangs with no signs of slowing down. When rock houses were busted, large amounts of cash would almost always be recovered. Fifteen to twenty-five thousand. Sometimes even more.
In 1987, when Sergeant Hourie Taylor disbanded the gang unit because of a manpower shortage and the personnel went back to working patrol, Sergeant R.E. Allen’s narcotics unit was disbanded for improprieties. Taylor and Allen had a long-running rivalry that had only intensified when each was appointed to run his own unit. Officers in both units - including Tim and Bob, who were in the gang unit - would find themselves loyal to one man or the other. It was no secret to anyone in the department that Allen didn’t like Tim, Bob, or Bobby Baker because the three men often brought in more drugs than his narcotics unit.
Taylor was a staunch ally to Tim and Bob, which further widened the chasm between him and Allen. The rivalry between Taylor and Allen would deepen and escalate over the course of Tim and Bob’s careers and be one of the things that led to the demise of the Compton P.D.
8
GANGSTA BOOGIE
Around the time Tim and Bob joined the force, hip-hop - both as a style of music and as a culture - was beginning to dig its heels into the American landscape as something much more than a fad. Having spread across the country from its origins in New York, driven by the success of The Sugarhill Gang’s catchy, fun-to-sing-along-to 1979 hit, Rapper’s Delight, it was branching out, growing tentacles of expression that weren’t just relegated to lighthearted rhymes over familiar beats. Songs were emerging that took on a more naturalistic tone, like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s The Message, whose narrative stood in bleak, powerful contrast to the playful spirit of Rapper’s Delight. The repeated staccato warning - “Don't push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge” - spoke to the struggles and frustrations of entire segments of society that felt marginalized or ignored by the system and were, like the angry anchorman Howard Beale in the movie Network, “mad as hell and not going to take this anymore.” The marginalized and the ignored connected strongly with the song and others like it. The Message moved hip-hop into the realm of social commentary, with the potential to inspire energized action, even as people sang along, danced, or bobbed their heads to the words and the beat. Hip-hop was something much richer than it had seemed on the surface. Within it lie more than just the ability to entertain. It had the power to stimulate dialogue and deep reflection. To influence, for better or worse. To unify. To spur revolution.
It was called “rap” or “rap music,” but as the eighties progressed, evidence of hip-hop and its culture burgeoned all over Compton, South Central, and the greater Los Angeles area. Deejays were moving into a more elevated sphere; one where they were celebrated based on their mixing and scratching skills and their ability to move a crowd. Emcees (aka “rappers”) were having battles in parks, parking lots, schoolyards, clubs, and on street corners to see who could “freestyle” the best, the cleverest, the smoothest, the fastest, and with the most spontaneity. The east coast was into breakdancing, but on this side of the country, people gathered around to watch dancers show off their pop-locking, robot, moonwalking, and boogaloo skills as a boombox blasted a popular rap song. Intricate and impressive colorful graffiti cropped up everywhere, mixing in with that of gangs marking their territory, tagging crews, and unaffiliated lone taggers. Hip-hop had given people who’d never had a voice the means to express themselves. It was a delivery system through which they could convey life as they knew it via music, dance, and now a visual art form. Still, no matter how stunning that visual art form, when created in places that were unsanctioned it was still considered vandalism just like gang graffiti and the work of the taggers.
Los Angeles also had the historic distinction of being the home of the first radio station in America with an all hip-hop format at a time when other stations and program directors around the country were skittish about the genre. This advantage often put the west coast market up on trends ahead of some New York City boroughs. KDAY - 1580 on the AM dial - would play a major role in highlighting local emcees and deejays (like Dr. Dre and DJ Yella), giving them exposure and momentum as the west coast was preparing to take hip-hop to a whole ‘nother level.
***
With the music being so pervasive, it wasn’t long before rappers began to emerge from the Compton scene. Songs began to crop up about what it was like to grow up in such a violent city. Some celebrated gang life and the money that could be made from being a part of the drug game. They talked of “moving weight,” “packin’ Uzis,” and “runnin’ hoes.” These were tales from a ‘hood most of the world knew nothing about, being delivered with a gritty, rhythmic flair. People were drawn to this brash incarnation.
Some of it was born in the open-air drug markets on the corners in gang neighborhoods. As gangsters and their girls waited for customers and sales opportunities, they passed the time rapping about life in the streets. Sometimes there’d be twenty or more gangsters, enough for them to have mini rap battles and show off their skills. Soon, every gang in Compton had their own rappers.
These rappers were gangbangers first, selling drugs, doing drive-bys, witnessing shootings and killings on the regular. What they rapped about on street corners, on the mic, and on wax wasn’t fictional. If their songs boasted about them shooting someone, odds were they’d actually done so. Tim and Bob knew these rappers well, having chased and arrested them on several occasions. There had even been instances when they were chasing gangsters as their homies and girlfriends watched and made up rap songs about it. By the time Tim and Bob caught and cuffed the person and walked him to their police car, someone on the sidelines - guy or girl - would be rapping about the arrest.
Because so much money was being made from all the rock cocaine, some of the rappers began making demos, cassettes, and pressing vinyl of the rhymes they spouted set to music. They called their style of hip-hop “gangsta rap.” They rapped about murder, drugs, gangs, women, and confrontations with the police.
One of the members of the Kelly Park Crips Tim and Bob had chased and arrested was Eric Wright, aka Eazy-E. During the mid-eighties, Eazy-E got together with some of his friends - Andre Young, O’Shea Jackson, Lorenzo Patterson, Antoine Carraby, and Kim Nazel (Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince, respectively) - and formed what became the seminal gangsta rap group, N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes). They started making cassette tapes. Aside from Eazy-E and, briefly, MC Ren, none of the members of the group were involved with gangs and drug dealing, but they chronicled life in Compton - what they observed and what they experienced firsthand - with an explicit rawness spit over driving beats that was shocking, powerful, yet still able to move a crowd in the club.
Tim and Bob often patrolled the Compton Swap Meet on North Long Beach Boulevard. The old Sears building had been converted into a sprawling indoor market. The members of N.W.A would often hang in the parking lot, hustling their demo tapes. Tim and Bob didn’t realize that gangsta rap was starting to take off locally. They didn’t know the music had developed an underground buzz that was starting to swell into something big. It was only after vendors inside the swap meet started complaining about “the guys selling tapes in the parking lot” did the cops pay attention.
; One day, Tim and Bob cruised the lot to see what was up. They were shocked to see at least fifty people gathered around a van with its back door open, all trying to buy one of these underground rap tapes. There was N.W.A, giving the people what they wanted. Tim and Bob only knew Eazy-E as a dope dealer. They assumed this whole demo tape operation was some kind of front for his drug game.
At first they jacked up the members of the group right there in the parking lot, filled out identification cards, and check them all for warrants. Dr. Dre and Ice Cube stressed that they were legit. They “just wanted to make some money” with their music. Tim and Bob told them they couldn’t hawk their tapes in the parking lot. Too many complaints were coming from the vendors inside.
The members of N.W.A packed up and rolled out, but they were right back the next day, selling demo tapes until they were told to leave again.
***
Gangsta rap was starting to spread all over Compton and South Central. Most of Tim and Bob’s conversations with N.W.A took place at the swap meet. The rappers were cordial to them, even though they were constantly being hassled by numerous Compton police. Sometimes they offered Tim and Bob tapes of their music. So did some of the other rappers who made their way to the swap meet parking lot to push their music.
DJ Quik (real name David Blake), Compton’s Most Wanted, Tweedy Bird Loc (real name Richard Johnson). The police shooing these guys away from the parking lot could have never imagined that gangsta rap would one day be a multimillion-dollar industry that would beget some of the greatest acts in music history, including artists who would one day be inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
All these guys, at the time, just seemed like ambitious hustlers, dope dealers, or gangbangers with a side grift. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Eazy-E had started his label, Ruthless Records, with money he’d made from selling drugs on the streets of Compton. He later talked about it in interviews and it was depicted in the 2015 summer blockbuster film, Straight Outta Compton, about the story of N.W.A.
Dealing with rappers with gang ties in the swap meet parking lot, in the streets, and anywhere else was just business as usual. Tim, Bob, and other cops who interacted with them - or worse, harassed them - had no idea they were giving the rappers fuel for songs that would become hits locally, nationally, and internationally.
Most of the cops on the P.M. shift were Black and Latino. When gangsters were arrested, they might have known some of the names of the officers, but they didn’t know the name of the blond green-eyed one who, along with his partner, seemed to be everywhere at once and always carting them off to jail. Tim had arrested quite a few Tree Top Pirus and their friends. Young DJ Quik, a member of the Tree Top Pirus and an aspiring rapper, put his feelings about Tim in an underground track called “Blondie.” The lyrics left no room for misinterpretation:
Blondie, cut no slack. Fuck with me, I’ll put a bullet in his back.
Tim and Bob noticed one day, as they cruised through gang areas throughout the city, that people started singing “Blondie, cut no slack” when they showed up. After it happened enough times, they jammed a few people up.
“What is that you’re singing?” Tim asked.
No one wanted to say, but Tim was relentless until someone finally cracked.
“Man, you famous,” one gang member said. “Quik did a song about you that’s all over the city.”
Tim immediately went looking for Quik, but couldn’t find the young rapper. Meanwhile, the “Blondie” song was being blasted throughout Compton and South Central. People in the streets started calling Tim “Blondie” to his face, and while he didn’t like the song’s lyrics, the nickname turned out to be tremendously beneficial. Gang members now had a name attached to that blond green-eyed ever-present cop.
Tim, though relentless when it came to curbing criminal activity, had always been cool with them. He was fair, even though there was the occasional moment where he had to physically tangle with them when they initiated fights to prevent being captured. People began to ask for him when they were arrested and wanted to share intel about shootings and murders in exchange for leniency. They knew that cop “Blondie.” That’s who they wanted when they had info to give.
Tim and Bob were solving crime after crime because of this. “I need to talk to Blondie,” became a popular refrain from informants who showed up at the station or called in.
This reputation for being trusted enough by gangs to be given information that resulted in so many solved cases played a big role in Tim and Bob being assigned to the gang unit in 1988. They would spend the rest of their careers in the Compton P.D. working with gangs. As of 2016, Tim was still known by residents of Compton and gang members alike as “Blondie.”
DJ Quik had done Tim and Bob a solid, even if that wasn’t his intention when he made the song.
***
In 1988, the same year Tim and Bob were appointed to the gang unit, N.W.A officially put both gangsta rap and Compton on the map with their album Straight Outta Compton. The explosive, controversial song “Fuck Tha Police,” which addressed police brutality and racial profiling, helped catapult them to national and international fame. When the song first dropped and was being played all over Compton, cops were caught off-guard by it.
One night, Tim and Bob were driving down Compton Boulevard. A ’64 Chevy with Dayton rims cruised ahead of them with four gangsters inside, the words “Fuck tha police, coming straight from the underground!” blasting from the stereo. The cops pulled around and drove up next to the car. The startled gangsters quickly turned down the music.
The song was everywhere, but whenever Tim and Bob got close enough to hear what it was saying, someone would turn it down. It felt like a collective conspiracy to keep it from them. The next time they heard the song blasting from a car, they signaled for the driver to pull over.
“Let us hear that.”
The driver turned up the music. He showed them N.W.A’s tape as his friends in the car looked on, nervous. Tim and Bob knew about rap music, but they didn’t listen to it, even though the rappers in the swap meet parking lot had tried to give them demos. They preferred rock and roll. Both men listened now though, dumbstruck, as the song blared from the speakers.
“‘Fuck Tha Police’?” Bob, still astonished, managed to say. “No shit?”
“Yep,” the driver said. “Can we go now?”
“Get outta here,” said Tim.
The driver and his friends pulled off, the song playing full tilt.
***
Straight Outta Compton opened the floodgates of gangsta rap. Other songs from local rappers followed that talked about shootings, murders, drugs, crack whores. Some, like MC Eiht and Compton’s Most Wanted’s track “One Time Gaffled ‘Em Up” addressed being hounded by the local cops. A few rappers even admitted that their music was specifically about being chased by Tim and Bob.
All of America and the world now knew about Compton. The perception was ugly and not entirely accurate. The city was viewed as a hellscape; a savage terrain where gangs, murder, and violence never slept; where the dopeman was king and crack addicts and strawberries (crack-addicted women eager to perform sex acts in exchange for a quick hit) roamed the city like the walking dead; and where cops were a ubiquitous, racially-profiling, brutal, harassing menace.
There was no gradience in any of it. No backstory of how the city had reached this perceived state. No talk of the good working-class families who were still striving for the American Dream in the midst of it all, uphill battle though it was. There was no mention of the cops who had positive relationships with people in the community who knew and trusted them and had good rapport with those they arrested. To the world, Compton was a scary, if not the scariest, place in America. Straight Outta Compton had given outsiders a peek into a Mad Maxish world whose denizens ran a twenty-four-seven bullet-and-death-dodging drug-laced gauntlet, a hopeless place where, no matter what side of the law you landed on, if you were Black, a cop was poised and read
y to toss you behind bars and throw away the key.
There were some bomb-ass parties popping off in this dystopian hell, though. If you could make it past all the obstacles and get to one.
“Fuck Tha Police” was a battle cry that had struck a national nerve. Other artists were inspired to unleash anthems, songs about resistance to law enforcement, and street tales that further chronicled life from the viewpoint of Citizen Underdog. Three years later, in 1991, Los Angeles-based rapper Ice-T and his rap metal group Body Count would release the even more controversially-titled “Cop Killer,” a song that was met with immediate negative reactions from the President of the United States, George H.W. Bush, as well as political, family, and law enforcement agencies. Ice-T emphasized that it was a protest statement, not an actual call to action for people to go out and kill police, but the title alone provoked such a powerful response, the song ended up being pulled from the group’s album and distributed for free.
***
The rise of gangsta rap would introduce another player into the game whose impact would be massive and imposing, just like his physical presence. MOB Piru-affiliated Marion Hugh Knight, Jr. was born in Compton in 1965. Nicknamed “Sugar Bear” as a child, he attended Lynwood High School, played football at El Camino College and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and pro ball briefly, for two games, as a replacement player for the Los Angeles Rams during the 1987 NFL strike. An injury brought his pro interests to an end and Sugar Bear, now just called “Suge,” began to pursue interests in the music world, a realm which would prove extremely lucrative for him.
He worked as a bodyguard for several artists, most notably R&B singer, Bobby Brown. He did some concert promotion.
Suge’s Death Row Records was purportedly started with $1.5 million in drug money, the majority of which was said to be from cocaine kingpin, Michael “Harry-O” Harris and his wife Lydia, with a lesser contribution from a PCP drug dealer named Patrick Johnson.[18] Both men were represented by the same attorney, David Kenner.
Once Upon A Time in Compton Page 9
