Once Upon A Time in Compton

by Brennan, Tim; Ladd, Robert; Files, Lolita

  In Kading’s book, he stated that the reputation of the Compton Police Department was the most tarnished in the nation. He also said the Compton P.D. was disbanded because of corruption. Tim and Bob knew this wasn’t true. Like any agency, Compton P.D. had its good and its bad apples. Both men have worked for other agencies since and have friends in law enforcement across the country. The good and the bad existed throughout them all.

  Tim and Bob felt Kading’s statement disrespected every good, hardworking Compton cop who’d served the city since 1888. The majority had been people of honor and integrity. The L.A.P.D. was nationally known for the corruption within its ranks. It was an outstanding agency, but bad cops had managed to operate inside the organization throughout the years, as exposed in cases like the Hollywood burglary scandal,[46] the Rampart scandal, the O.J. Simpson trial, and the Rodney King beating. Those incidents and others have resulted in a major loss of public trust, not just in Los Angeles, but across the country.

  No institution was impervious to corruption, particularly law enforcement. There will always be those who would abuse power and public trust. The Compton Police Department wasn’t exempt from it. Neither was the L.A.P.D.

  Tim personally knew and had arrested most of the people involved in both Tupac and Biggie’s murders. The plan he presented to the task force to reinvestigate many of the forty-five murder cases that were, in some way, connected to Tupac and Biggie’s cases, might have solved them and resulted in taking the people involved in Tupac and Biggie’s murders into custody.

  During the task force, Kading honed in on South Side Crip Keefe D and did a great job of getting him arrested on drug charges. Keefe D was over a proverbial barrel, right where they wanted him. He was ready to tell what happened in two of the most famous murder cases in modern history. This, based on Tim and Bob’s experience, was the sweet spot, the perfect moment to get someone who’d been caught “dirty” to talk. You let them sweat knowing their backs were against the wall, and that’s when they would spill it all.

  Keefe D, caught on a drug charge, was ready to talk, but instead of getting him to talk, they gave him time and allowed him to think about what he would say. This happened not once, but three times.

  Keefe D was shrewd, experienced in the streets, was once a powerful with a tremendous amount of money passing through his hands. He had been through the system many times. He knew how it worked.

  Tim and Bob still aren’t sure how Kading and the task force were able to grant Keefe D immunity on a case that belonged to Las Vegas. The Tupac murder case fell under the Las Vegas Police Department’s jurisdiction and as soon as L.A.P.D. had information pertaining to the case, they should have notified Las Vegas P.D. as a professional courtesy. It would be up to Las Vegas P.D. to decide whether they wanted to get involved or not. Also, as a part of that professional courtesy, Las Vegas P.D. should have been asked if it was okay to go forward with the investigation with a promise to keep them updated.

  While investigating the Tupac murder, Tim and Bob had been frustrated with Las Vegas P.D. many times, but they never did anything without letting Vegas know.

  In 2009, the Biggie Smalls task force effectively ended. Detective Kading had been removed from the task force when allegations were made by a federal judge during the George Torres murder solicitation and R.I.C.O. trial where the verdict had been overturned.[47] The allegations were that Kading had intentionally made inaccurate statements. A task force member reported that, due to this, cases Kading worked with the task force were not prosecuted.

  Duane Keith “Keefe D” Davis had been looking at twenty-five-years-to-life for drug sales in the case where Kading did a proffer deal with him in exchange for information about murders of Tupac and Biggie. As of this writing, Keefe D is still walking around free.

  ***

  In both the Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. murders, many of the suspects involved have since died. Co-conspirators and witnesses, however, are still alive. Tim and Bob hope that someday justice and closure for the Shakur and Wallace families can be achieved.

  22

  EPILOGUE

  Tim went to Century Station working gang patrol. Over a quick period of time, he went through a couple of partners. Then, in the summer of 2007, he was paired up with Andy Dahring. Andy was a nice guy who had friends throughout the department, but not many where it mattered, which was in high places. Having worked most of his career in Palmdale, he knew the way for him to be recognized and respected in the Sheriff’s Department was by working in South Central. Tim and Andy fit well together. The two had a lot of adventures chasing guys with guns.

  Beneath it all, though, Tim’s anger was bubbling. It bothered him tremendously that he wasn’t allowed to solve cases he knew he could solve.

  Tim did a few more gang-related interviews with the press. One of them was about the murders surrounding Suge Knight, and about Biggie and Tupac.

  His remarks were a variation of the same thing he’d been saying for years.

  “These cases could have been solved. They still could be.”

  He and Bob had become go-to sources and experts on gangs, policing in Compton, and the Tupac and Biggie cases in various documentaries and television series. Tim appeared in the “One Blood” episode of The History Channel’s Gangland series discussing the origins of the Pirus in Compton. Bob appeared in VH1’s Famous Crime Scenes in the series debut episode about the murder of Tupac Shakur. They did gang consulting, appeared in civil cases, provided source materials for books, and edited Police Exam, a book about investigative techniques. They also taught national seminars on Black gangs and gangsta-rap-related murders.

  Tim’s anger devolved into unhappiness. The unhappiness and feeling disgruntled had now become a regular thing. He was seriously contemplating submitting a request to be transferred to a job on Catalina Island. For the first time in his career in law enforcement, he felt like he wanted to get away from gangs.

  It was on one these disgruntled days in Compton that he ran into his old friend, Sergeant Greg Thompson. Tim had known him from when Greg and Brian Steinwand were working the L.A.S.D.’s O.S.S. gang unit in Lynwood in the eighties and nineties. Tim and Bob had worked with them often over the years, most notably in 1991 when a deputy sheriff had been shot on Cherry Street in Fruit Town Piru territory.

  Tim shared with Greg how he was feeling. In turn, Greg offered Tim a position on the team he was putting together. A gang homicide task force. Greg’s task force, which included Brian Steinwand and others, would be charged with preventing and solving gang and race-related shootings in the cities of Monrovia and Duarte.

  Tim was game. The idea of doing meaningful work where his experience could be fully utilized sparked excitement in him again. He met with members of the Monrovia P.D. and the L.A.S.D. In recent days, an elderly man and a fourteen-year-old girl, along with many others, had been murdered in escalating gang and race-related shootings. Over the prior year and a half, there had been six murders and more than ninety shooting incidents. These were alarming numbers for an area not known for this kind of violence. Something had to be done.

  After the meetings, Tim and Greg discussed what it would take to stop this kind of violence and solve outstanding cases.

  “I need copies of all the reports,” Tim said. “And I need my partner, Andy Dahring.”

  He and Andy, Tim explained, would begin investigating the open cases while the rest of the task force employed other tactics.

  Greg agreed, and Tim was excited. Just the idea reignited his passion for the job again. He would be doing real police work. Any other kind would never do for someone like him or Bob. They were of the same ilk as the character Lester Freamon in the HBO series The Wire. Cops with an instinct and a native intelligence for rooting out crimes, reverse-engineering their way to who did what, how, and where, no matter how dangerous the undertaking, how deep they had to go, or how long it took. What was referred to in The Wire as “natural police.”

 
; Tim Brennan (third from right) with the Monrovia P.D./L.A.S.D. Task Force in 2009.

  Now this natural police was officially back in the game. He’d been weeks, maybe even days away from putting in a request to chuck it all for a far more subdued life patrolling the sleepy, tourist-laden streets of Catalina Island. Although it seemed like a solution for his unhappiness, that kind of work would have been almost comically dull and probably would have made him even more miserable.

  He’d run into Greg Thompson at what seemed like the nick of time. The coincidence of it all was uncanny.

  Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence.

  Perhaps he’d willed the man, and the task force job, into his life without realizing it. He wanted a taste of it all again. He desperately needed it.

  In the bastardized words of punk funk/R&B legend Rick James, that natural police thing was a hell of a drug.

  ***

  Tim and Andy got started. Andy wasn’t well-known among the Homicide and senior detectives on the task force, but it wouldn’t be long before they would recognize his talent. Andy was a hard worker with sharp focus, and over time would become even better. He and Tim teamed up with a detective from Monrovia P.D., Stewart Levin. Stewart was just as hardworking as they were.

  The three spent twelve-to-sixteen hour days investigating unsolved crimes. There were a lot of them. The guys jumped right into the work, hitting the streets to interview witnesses, victims, and informants.

  Along with the other deputies on the task force, Tim, Stew, and Andy did police work “Compton-style” - hard and fast. Working this way, they were able to identify most of their suspects quickly.

  Over the next year, they had seventy percent of the cases solved. They made arrests on six murder cases and over forty attempted murder cases, almost all of which were filed. They authored search warrants for over a hundred locations, and recovered over 150 guns, as well as narcotics and cash. Every case to-date ended with a conviction, with sentences ranging from twenty-three years to 150 years.

  The task force was a huge success.

  It was the first ongoing collaboration of gang, homicide, major crimes, and support deputies using a wiretap investigation and aggressive re-openings of cold cases. In the year and a half prior to the formation of the task force, there had been ninety-six shootings. During the year after the task force was formed, there were only three shootings and zero murders.

  The L.A.S.D. took notice of the numbers and what Brian Steinwand’s task force had accomplished and decided to form a new Homicide Gang Task Force that addressed major gang murders in Los Angeles County. In the years that followed, Tim and his partner Andy investigated a number of gang murders and were instrumental in solving them. These included a triple murder, a boyfriend killed by his lover’s husband, a father murdered in front of his wife and kids, and an innocent boy caught in gang war in Compton. By 2011, Andy - now an excellent, proven detective - was promoted, along with Brian Steinward, to sergeant and both were transferred from the unit.

  Tim remained, continuing to investigate high-profile gang murders and shootings until his retirement in 2014.

  ***

  Bob had learned a lot during his years working in Compton. He’d learned how to play the game, and that included keeping his mouth shut. It didn’t mean he would take shit from anybody, but he understood the politics. He took those learned lessons with him at his job in the Garden Grove P.D.

  He was forty-seven. It was time to start thinking of his long-range objectives for himself and his family. Retiring as a sergeant would mean an increase in his pension. He put in the work, stayed inside of the lines, and in time, he was promoted to sergeant.

  At first, Bob was a patrol sergeant for two years, then he was assigned to be the sergeant in charge of the department’s gang unit. Prior to Bob, it had been run by Sergeant Martin for seven years. Martin had done a great job heading up the unit.

  On his first day running the unit, Bob was riding with Martin, headed back to the station. It was around nine a.m. When they turned down Lampson Avenue from Brookhurst Street, they heard a man and a woman arguing. Martin made a U-turn.

  They saw a big white guy, who immediately started walking toward them. Martin stopped the car and he and Bob opened their doors to get out. The guy stared at them as they exited, then broke out, heading down an alley. Martin jumped back into the car and sped off after him. It was just like old times.

  “I’m getting too old for this shit,” said Bob.

  After all these years, Bob, with his natural police instincts, could pretty much guess what kind of move a suspect was going to make based on the situation at hand. Bob figured this guy would run through yards to the next street over. Bob ran over to preemptively cut him off. His instincts proved right. There was the guy, running toward him through a pre-school lot. Behind him in the distance was Martin, who was much too old to play the chase-me game with a suspect like this. He couldn’t keep up.

  The suspect tried twice to jump over the pre-school’s fence. Each time, Bob cut him off.

  “Stop!” Bob yelled, his gun pointed at the guy.

  The guy jumped back and tried another route. Bob stopped him again, gun pointed.

  The guy glanced back. Slow-ass Martin was finally gaining on him. Panicked, he made a third attempt, this time rushing directly toward Bob. He had a look in his eyes that Bob had seen many, many times before. The “I’m gonna fight you” look. Bob still had his gun out, unsure whether the suspect was holding. The big guy came at him, this time clearing the fence.

  “Get on the ground!” Bob said, aiming the gun.

  The suspect kept charging toward him.

  Bob could now clearly see the guy’s hands. He didn’t have a gun. As the guy raced toward him, Bob had just enough time to switch the gun to his left hand and retrieve his flashlight from his back pocket.

  Bob was old school. He still carried his metal SL-20, which was nice and solid. Solid enough to knock the shit out of this guy if he was really trying to fight, which he was. He was badass enough to not be bothered by having a gun pointed at him three different times, so Bob knew this was going to be a good fight.

  The suspect ran up to Bob and grabbed him. Bob, his flashlight raised high, swung it with force at the guy’s head. That should end things quick.

  The guy ducked, and instead of being hit in the head, the flashlight landed with force on his collarbone. Shaken by the blow, he dropped down on his knees, still holding on to Bob.

  Gun in his left hand, Bob took another swing at the guy with the flashlight. The suspect ducked again, turning to avoid a blow to his head. The flashlight landed on his back instead. The moment it made contact, Bob simultaneously squeezed the trigger of the gun in his left hand.

  Bam!

  “Oh shit!” Bob said. “Fuck!”

  He didn’t mean to shoot the guy.

  The suspect went down long enough for Bob to holster his gun, then popped right back up and the fight was right back on. Bob kicked the guy to the ground and hit him several times with the flashlight until slow-ass Martin finally arrived, exhausted. They took the guy into custody for domestic violence and assault on a peace officer charges.

  Bob was shaken. His first day on the job as the sergeant in charge of the gang unit and he accidentally shoots someone. After everything he’d gone through in Compton, this shit had to happen. He couldn’t believe it.

  He was ultimately exonerated by the D.A.’s office, which was a tremendous relief. The suspect went to jail, but Bob didn’t exactly get off scot-free. He became the brunt of a running joke within the department, much in the way people made jokes about Dick Cheney accidentally shooting his hunting partner in the face.

  “Don’t turn your back on Bobby Ladd. He’ll shoot your ass.”

  “How come I’m forced to take a day off for this and you shoot a guy in the back and nothing happens to you?”

  There were many variations of the Ladd’ll-shoot-you-in-the-back theme, all of them at his expen
se.

  Bob learned to live with it. He was grateful nothing more came of the incident. He went about the business of running the gang unit.

  ***

  He and Martin had similar views about how to run the unit, but there were a few things Bob wanted to change. He’d noticed that, when it came to doing gang work in Garden Grove, there were two sides to how things were handled: the suppression side and the investigation side. If someone worked the suppression side, all that person did was arrest, photograph, and identify. The person never got a chance to work the investigation side of things and do any interrogating. Same applied for someone doing suppression.

  Working the gang unit was a five-year stint. Bob saw the two sides being separated as a waste of good talent.

  He knew that introducing the idea of having everyone work everything wasn’t going to be an easy sell. Garden Grove’s gang unit had been run this way since the nineties.

  In Compton’s gang unit, they did everything themselves. Suppression, identifying and photographing gang members. They worked a case from beginning to end. That meant testifying as a witness, writing search warrants, interviewing, and interrogating.

  Bob talked to his lieutenant about it first, explaining what he wanted to implement and what he hoped to accomplish by it. To his surprise, the lieutenant agreed. Bob had three investigators working for him, all of whom were great cops. Peter Vi, George Kaiser, Pat Gildea, then later, Jeff Hutchins, who stepped in when Gildea went back to patrol.

  Peter Vi, who was Vietnamese, was a legend in Orange County. He had been in the unit for over fifteen years and was the heart and soul of the group. On top of being able to do everything Bob needed from a good gang unit cop, he was a computer wiz. Pete had been doing the work of two investigators, so he was glad to hear about what Bob was looking to do. It would lighten his workload considerably.

  Pete once shared with Bob a story about an experience he’d had with the Compton P.D. before he was hired at Garden Grove. Pete was good friends with an officer Bob had worked with in Compton named Louie Mrad. Mrad and Pete had gone to the academy together and were both trying to get jobs on the Compton force.