The Unsolved Mystery of the Notorious B.I.G
If you have about an hour to spare, take a look at this stunning expos� by the folks at Rolling Stone. It will make you sad and a little afraid at how tangled up policing and politics can become and do become on a regular basis. The fact that known murderers go loose in order to save some police supervisor’s career is shocking. Here is a clip:
Those who arrived as spectators at the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles on July 6th expecting to observe the fourth day of testimony in the Notorious B.I.G. wrongful-death suit swiftly discovered that they were on hand to bear witness to something else: history. In an announcement that stunned everyone who had been following the case in the media, presiding judge Florence-Marie Cooper abruptly suspended the proceedings and called a mistrial. Only a handful in the courtroom knew of the remarkable events of the previous days: an anonymous late-night phone tip; the extraordinary lockdown of a Los Angeles Police Department division; a stash of secret, incriminating documents. But the following day, Judge Cooper issued a written ruling stating that she had come to believe the LAPD had deliberately concealed a massive amount of evidence that attested to the involvement of rogue officers in the rapper’s slaying.
The article tells us that if Rosetta Wallace’s civil suit against the City of Los Angeles and the LAPD is successful, that it will probably bankrupt the department and the city. I’m not sure what kind of havoc or state/federal bailout that will cause but I hope that there will be serious consequences to every person involved up the chain of command so that incidents like this don’t repeat themselves in the future; not in LA nor elsewhere.