A CRASH course in corruption;
This is a pretty good video that provides a decent overview of what prompted the investigation into the LAPD and how it progressed for those that may be unfamiliar. It’s a little overly generalized as it kind of gives the perception that it was just 4-5 cops involved, but it was nearly 100. Still very worthy of a watch. It really shows how far cops are willing to go to cover eachothers asses.
This was a very big deal at the time, but was overshadowed by 9/11, as the trials were happening around the same time, and it has conveniently been wiped from public consciousness.
I think whats most important is how it all panned out in the end. It turned into a flurry of lawsuits, with the highest ranking cop involved having his conviction overturned and winning a $5 million lawsuit against LA. It seems there was only 1 cop willing to talk and they mercilessly attacked his credibility knowing if they ruined the only witness, they ruined the case. No other cops would come forward to confirm his testimony. The blue code of silence is very real.
It was one of the greatest admissions of widespread wrongdoing by a major police force in modern times, and it should have led to more scrutiny on the police and sweeping reforms, but the only reforms it led to were the city of LA and the LAPD making sure this kind of revelation would never happen again. Even in a litigious progressive liberal beacon like LA, this has been swept under the rug and ignored.
Its really amazing it progressed as far as it did before it was snuffed out and ‘discredited’ through what appears to be collusion between the city of LA and it’s police force. Internal affairs investigations stifled it’s progression, and of course it encountered the same obstacles that most police internal investigations suffer from, namely the fact they are investigating themselves and dont want to portray the entire department badly so they cover up and make the corruption appear isolated and limited.`
The payout to one of the victims was the biggest payout by LA in its history, bigger than Rodney King’s settlement. The city was (and still is) hemorraging money, so they did everything they could to bury it and not pay out on any more lawsuits related to it. The film ‘murder rap’ for those who are familiar, was inspired by this effort to deny LAPD culpability in the $100 million wrongful death lawsuit of biggie smalls by his mother Voletta Wallace. Cops implicated in Rampart also worked Death Row Records security, and were named suspects in biggies murder. Greg Kading, a former LAPD officer, was hired by the city of LA to go on a ‘fact finding mission’ to look into these claims and determine if LAPD was responsible for biggie’s death. Surprise, surprise, an LAPD cop found no evidence of LAPD involvement and apparently this was enough to cause a judge to dismiss the Wallace suit saving the city millions and further embarrassment from rampart, the scandal that wouldnt die. Kading then sold the results of his ‘investigation’ in the form of a book which was later turned into a low-budget documentary, and now serves as the official story of the biggie and (ironically) tupac murders.
This is a deep story that has many implications and many far-reaching tentacles that include unimaginable systemic corruption, a potentially racially motivated cop on cop murder, and police selling drugs, which has seemingly been par for the course in the LAPD since the 60’s.
Some of you may remember the Chris Dorner case in 2012 where a fired LAPD officer allegedly killed 4 people with a sniper rifle before supposedly dying in a mysterious fire during a standoff with LAPD. His supposed manifesto alleged continuous widespread corruption by LAPD, which was the supposed motive for his actions.
It seems they are still up to their old tricks. Just a few months back LA cops were indicted for running drugs between LA and Vegas and providing police protection for illegal drug shipments.
The DA at the time was a man named Gil Garcetti. His son is the current mayor of Los Angeles.
A lot of connections can be made here, and this has brought a lot of suspected corruption to light and corroberated the accusations many have made over many years. You can bet if this happened before in LA it is continuing to happen there and in other major cities across the country, even with the added transparency of bodycams.
An object lesson in police corruption.
h/t logmoss82