Word: antigang
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...though, is definitely not a cop you've seen on TV before. In the pilot of FX's astonishing The Shield (Tuesdays, 10 p.m.), he brutalized a suspect to find a kidnapped girl, then murdered a fellow Los Angeles cop who was about to rat on him and his antigang Strike Team for corruption. By this week's season finale, he has become the most memorable, divisive and hard-to-pin-down character of the TV season--and his series, a lesson in the difference between network and cable TV making...
...beat of 24 not-guilty verdicts, racial profiling, police brutality, the rights of minorities and the promises of the Constitution were funneled into a compelling narrative. A different but equally riveting tale is unfolding in Los Angeles, where last week the FBI joined a widening investigation into allegations that antigang cops acted like gangsters themselves--lying, stealing and shooting people with no cause. The arguments about the consequences of policing the police now have a clear dramatic arc; the debate can now be conducted in parables...
...upshot has been the biggest police scandal in Los Angeles history. At the center is the Rampart division--a police station in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods--and its special antigang unit. In the six months since Perez started talking, lurid revelations about law enforcement Rampart-style have emerged almost daily: allegations that cops raped a woman while on duty; accusations that a cop interrogating a handcuffed man beat him until he vomited blood; a fast-growing list of prisoners who were allegedly railroaded with fabricated evidence and police lies...
...area back, the L.A.P.D. established a special antigang unit, Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or CRASH. In addition to their weapons and swagger, CRASH officers were armed with a powerful legal tool--sweeping antigang injunctions (since lifted) that gave them free rein to push around suspected gang members. Among the offenses the injunction covered: blocking sidewalks and carrying pagers...
That all changed when one of CRASH's own started talking. Perez says he was part of a tight-knit group of CRASH officers who played by twisted rules. This antigang fraternity acted a lot like a gang itself. When a new recruit joined the unit, CRASH members allegedly circled around and beat him--an initiation ritual that criminal gangs call "jumping in." In one case, a white CRASH officer leaving the scene of a police beating of a civilian--for which the city had to pay a $25,000 settlement--allegedly yelled out, "¡Puro Rampart! [Totally Rampart...