CRIMINAL MINDED MEDIA: SUPER FEED

With the story we are telling, the elements that resonate as it pertains to Billy Chase, was that the deeper he got undercover, the more he started to unravel mentally.

In a City like Bridgeport, Billy had targets, he had prey that he wanted to get at all costs.

One of those targets was Mariano Sanchez, the leader of the powerful Number 1 Family.

In order to understand the Number 1 Family and in order to understand the streets I went directly to an individual who worked the street corners for the Number 1 Family.

When people watch television shows or movies that take place in the drug world, a lot of times the stories create caricatures, when you talk to someone that lived the life up close and personal the nuances of what happened become more clear and concise.

Joel Gonzalez has lived inside Bridgeport all of his adult life and his point of view was different from anyone you have heard thus far.

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As I have started the introspective study of my life since the documentary I created 17 years ago, I don’t want to stray from my initial inspiration that catapulted me into my fascination with law enforcement and Hip-Hop, but more specifically, the nuances, perception, and uneven legal ground created by criminal prosecutors using lyrics, and their visuals, to pursue their criminal cases. 

Like the secret book I found, the use of song lyrics or the use of a music video to create a criminal narrative seemed as odd to me today as it did back in 2005. Art imitating life, or life imitating art, these questions I still struggle with as my understanding has deepened. 

Jaeah Lee who wrote the aforementioned New York Times article, opens the piece with the story of Tommy Munsdwell Canady, an aspiring rapper from Racine, Wisconsin, and when I say aspiring, I mean he uploaded a few songs to Soundcould, a feat my 10yr old niece can do.

Police in Racine were looking for suspects in three recent shootings, one of the victims, Semar Mcclain who was 19 at the time, was found dead with a bullet in his temple.

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When discussing the killing of Don Bolles, maybe the most important question is this – who was Don Bolles and what was he investigating in the years leading up to his murder?

While he was beloved by his readers, subjects of his stories had a vastly different opinion of the man.

So, what were the stories he wrote & more importantly, who were some of the people who may have wanted payback for having their criminality exposed in his articles?

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When I was in High school and obsessed with basketball, Street and Smith’s magazine used to put out an issue every year where it listed the top 100 high school basketball players in the country, I can remember scouring it for my name.

My junior year, I was sent to the prestigious Five Star Basketball Camp, Five Star at that time was the premiere destination during the summer for any high school basketball player, it was where you could be recruited, you could change your college future.

It also was there that I witnessed in person on the court, a Prospect that at the time was destined for college and NBA greatness, his name was Felipe Lopez.

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In his newly assigned position in the Special Services Division of the Bridgeport Police Department, Billy Chase interfaced on a number of cases with federal law enforcement officials, Billy was a cop in Bridgeport where advanced training was as common as a crime-less day.

How does an undercover with no formalized training get started?

In Billy’s case it was go where you know best – the streets.

Billy reconnected with the comings and goings of the streets of his youth back to inner city playgrounds where he once shot hoops into the strip bars and taverns that warehouse information about drug dealers, junkies, and prostitutes.

Most of Billy’s contacts thought he had gone overseas to play ball, this wasn’t the age of social media or cell phones, you could disappear or create a story that no one could check online. 

It is rare to have audio from 30 years ago, but the interview with Billy was very telling, the names of the drug crews, and the Feds, it wasn’t like Billy worked one case, he was almost a schizophrenic undercover, bouncing from drug dealers to junkies, soaking up information, in a city becoming consumed with crack, I am astonished that Billy could even keep all these names straight…

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If you have been listening in, a New York Times article about rap lyrics that I read by a pool in the Spring of 2022, really brought me back 17 years when I decided to explore the origins of a secret Hip-Hop dossier, and why the NYPD and federal government wanted to surveil, track, arrest  and indict Hip-Hop Superstars.  

The way I chose to tell my story was in the form of a documentary I called Rap Sheet, and where I left off was, I was now in business with Pistol Pete and Steve Lobel, and my best buddy Rick Phillips was my main source of financing.

I was in the hole $50K and I had never gone to film school so what did I really know, but there were some core themes that were important for me and remember I wanted to tell a story that resonated this connection between Hip-Hop and law enforcement.

In this episode we hear from Murder Inc's Irv Gotti about his case with the Feds and his relationship with none other than the mythical street legend, Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff. We also meet THE Hip Hop Cop himself, Derek Parker.

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When looking at the Bolles case, it’s vitally important to reconstruct the landscape of Arizona at the time of his murder. In the spirit of Don Bolles’ most celebrated investigative series - The Menace Within -we look at the mafia’s infiltration of the state with the assistance of legendary journalist Don Devereux, who spent decades investigating Bolles’ murder & organized crime in the valley.

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With the news, or let’s call  it the anointing of Victor Wembanyama as the next Jesus Shuttlesworth,  I needed to go in search of some more information, my fascination of this topic came from a few places mainly The Ringer and ESPN,  and Bill Simmons, who I have grown to listen to quite a lot, but obviously there are many things I don’t know about Wemby, and we need a baseline to start from, the kid is only 18 years old, so I am not looking for any scandal here, but in the social media generation I was curious as to what exists already prior to this coming out party.

Wembanyama was born in Le Chesnay France , his father was a long jumper, and his mother played women’s basketball , growing up it was his mother who served as his basketball coach.  

At ten years old he joined the youth system in France which is called Nanterre92, his parents at that time refused offers from other European clubs like FC Barcelona in Spain, and a club called ASVEL.

Again guys, this kid is only 18, so anyone looking for high school scandals or an Allen Iverson and his infamous bowling alley brawl type stuff, I haven’t found anything yet, and I have a feeling that would already be circulating with how much this guy was covered in the last two weeks:

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In Episode 1, journalist Lennie Grimaldi  started to lay the foundation as to the story of police officer Billy Chase, and also to explain  the mechanics of a time and place which is Bridgeport, Connecticut, an American industrial city in the 1980s. I think almost everyone in America has heard the terminology “crack cocaine” but I would be curious to know how many people truly understand how it completely shifted the criminal underworld of every major American city.

Each geographic location, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York had these crack cocaine crews that took over pockets of geography. It was inside communities where the police went from being in control to wave of violence and decimation that is still being reconciled to this day.

For this story, I needed to understand the complexities of Billy Chase, a police officer who chose a dangerous path and in the process lost his mind and his soul, but for me, Billy Chase’s story resonates because it truly gets inside the gears of Bridgeport, and a police department that would send minority officers onto the frontlines, yet at the precinct didn’t have any respect…..

Ron Bailey, worked with Billy Chase inside the Bridgeport Police Department, he also worked undercover inside neighborhoods like Father Panik Village, war zones, he also was a close friend of Billy, maybe the closest…….

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In Episode one, I talked about securing a weird dossier that was compiled by federal and state law enforcement to track Hip-Hop superstars, and their entourages, associates, and record labels. With the book in hand as a young journalist, I decided the best route to tell the story of the book was to actually make a documentary, but I had no experience, no money, and I didn’t know anyone inside the Hip-Hop industry, but fuck it I started anyway.

At that time in 2007 I was fascinated by what they called the Hip-Hop Police, and I was also fascinated with how much mystery was behind this unit. 

In revisiting the film almost 17 years later in hindsight my quest, my search or curiosity was one part bold, two parts naïve, and somewhat dangerous, at that time Hip-Hop was just hitting the mainstream, so violence, gangsters, and a certain allure was all a part of the story I wanted to tell, but I need some help, I needed people who knew the industry, could get me interviews, or people who could talk…. 

So, I traveled down to Miami, where the annual Source Awards was going on, to this day why I went, and who I met, changed everything……….

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