Steve Polak was an [[LAPD]] narcotics detective who worked the streets of [[South Central Los Angeles|South Central L.A.]] from the earliest days of [[Crack Cocaine|crack]] in 1982. He became the most aggressive member of the Freeway Rick Task Force and ultimately planted a kilo of [[cocaine]] to frame [[Ricky Ross|"Freeway" Ricky Ross]].[^2] ### Early Career Polak was on patrol in South Central when crack first appeared. "We didn't know what it was. I was there as a cop in uniform. I was stopping people on the streets and seeing these rocks. I'd see them throwing these rocks, these little things, and I'd go, 'What the fuck is this?'" Users told him the rocks were bleached peanuts. Polak also observed improvised crack pipes made from Puerto Rican rum bottles and coat hangers with cotton swabs, used to vaporize the crack by dipping the swab in high-alcohol rum and flaming it.[^1] ### Personal Vendetta Against Ross Polak made no secret of his hatred for Ross. "What he did, he poisoned tens of thousands of people. He overdosed them. He killed them. There are a lot of crack babies out there now because of him," Polak said, holding Ross personally responsible for starting the L.A. crack plague. "There's no telling how many tens of thousands of people he touched. And not just in California, but like I said, it spread throughout the entire United States what he did with his organization. So he's responsible. He's responsible for a major cancer that still hasn't stopped spreading, even here in Los Angeles."[^2] ### Freeway Rick Task Force As a member of the Freeway Rick Task Force led by Sergeant [[Robert Sobel]], Polak and eight other detectives maintained constant surveillance on Ross beginning in January 1987. "When the task force was finally formed, we just dedicated seven days a week on him, and we just dogged him until he couldn't take it anymore," Polak said. The task force raided the Freeway Motor Inn on January 21, 1987, finding currency and paperwork in Ross's name, 31 grams of rock cocaine, $6,819 in cash, and a sophisticated 800 MHz handheld repeater radio. They raided Ross's mother Annie Ross's house the same day, finding a stolen 9mm Uzi and two bulletproof vests. Ross complained that Polak even went to court to get his mother's day-care license taken away.[^2] ### Planting Drugs on Ross Sobel acknowledged that it became common knowledge on the task force that Polak carried a kilo of cocaine in his vehicle's tire well. "Polak would be bragging about a present for Ricky Ross when they ran into him. There were constant jokes made about the dope they had ready [to plant on] Ricky Ross when they found him." On an evening in mid-April 1987, after Ross fled on foot from detectives and [[Ollie Newell]] and Cornell Ward were beaten with metal flashlights and leather saps, Polak drove up, opened his trunk, and "retrieved a kilo of cocaine in a black gym bag." Polak "displayed the bag to the others present, claiming that Ross had dropped the bag as he ran." Ross was charged with conspiracy, transporting controlled substances, and assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, and was declared a fugitive.[^2] ### Taped Confession and Dismissal After Ross turned himself in on May 5, 1987, task force members visited him in jail and goaded him about his attorney [[Alan Fenster]], claiming Fenster had abandoned him and was a cocaine user himself. The detectives discussed their frame-up of Ross on a tape recording. "The discussion was tape recorded," Justice Department records state. "They discussed their frame-up of Ross and unsuccessfully tried to turn Ross against his Colombian cocaine source." A forensic expert later found eleven erasures on the tape, attempts to obliterate discussions of a beating administered to Ross's brother David and accusations against Fenster. After hearing the tape, the judge threw all charges out of court. Ross was freed.[^2] ### Operation Big Spender and Downfall Polak was indicted along with other Majors detectives in the FBI's [[Operation Big Spender|Operation Big Spender]] corruption sting. The FBI discovered that Polak had liposuction performed on his buttocks and his wife had paid cash for a breast enlargement operation, purchases difficult to explain on a detective's salary. Polak was acquitted in the first Big Spender trial after jurors expressed outrage at the government's deals with drug dealer witnesses, but was later reindicted on civil rights and income tax charges. He pleaded guilty to violating Ollie Newell's civil rights by beating him. Embittered, Polak retired from the police force, complaining he had been sold out by his own department and persecuted by government lawyers who had "crawled into bed with drug dealers to go after cops." When Ross was rearrested in the 1995 DEA sting, Polak crowed to the L.A. Times: "Let him pay for all the people his drugs have killed. Let me see him turn over a million or two to the IRS and get a job. . .then maybe I'll give him some credibility."[^3] ### Footnotes [^1]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 8: "A million hits is not enough" [^2]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter" [^3]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 22: "They can't touch us"