On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look into the largest police scandal in LAPD history. It was called the Rampart Scandal, named after a police station in a bad part of LA. In the mid-90s, when gang violence was at its worst, the police developed CRASH units, designed to arrest gang members by any means necessary. This lead to the Rampart CRASH team becoming the epitome of corruption. They shot people and lied about it, robbed a bank, planted evidence, stole cocaine from the evidence locker, and sold drugs. They were tied directly to the criminal enterprise that was Death Row records when it was run by Suge Knight. Oh, and they very well might have killed Biggie Smalls. This is a wild tale of corruption, greed, and cops who were no different than the gangsters they were charged to capture.

 

Visit Our Sources:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/lapd/scandal/cron.html

https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2161&context=faculty_scholarship

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-21/ghost-rampart-lapd-gang-scandal

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/05/21/bad-cops

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/lapd/later/streets.html

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/lapd/later/reports.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_P%C3%A9rez_(police_officer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources_Against_Street_Hoodlums

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal

https://vimeo.com/428307871

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVBZ3YF800c

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAPD_Rampart_Division