The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was the municipal law enforcement agency responsible for policing [[Los Angeles]] during the period when [[Ricky Ross|"Freeway" Ricky Ross]] built the city's first major [[Crack Cocaine]] distribution network.[^1] Street-level officers witnessed crack's emergence in South Central L.A. in 1982 but were unable to identify what they were seeing, and department leadership showed little interest in investigating. ### First Encounters with Crack Former LAPD narcotics detective Steve Polak, who was riding the streets of [[South Central Los Angeles|South Central]] at the time crack first appeared, described the confusion: "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?' I didn't know what the fuck it was, you know?" When Polak asked, people told him the rocks were bleached peanuts. "I'd put the handcuffs on them and I'd say, 'You know this is dope. I carry bleached peanuts all the time in my pocket and throw them away when I see the cops, so, you know, come on, give me a break.'"[^1] Polak also observed users with improvised crack pipes: "We were stopping these people and they had these little bottles of Puerto Rican rum and little glass pipes and what we called a torch, a torn-off piece of a coat hanger with a cotton swab wrapped around it. What they were doing was dipping the swab in the rum because of its high alcohol content and then they'd put the rock on top of the glass pipe and then they'd flame [the swab] up." Once users learned police were catching on, "We'd drive by and see them put their hands in their mouths. And we'd come back an hour later and they'd either be overdosed or wired like a motherfucker, jumping all around like little tops."[^1] Ross claimed LAPD was largely unaware of his operations: "They mighta got some dude with a few rocks in his pocket, but the LAPD didn't know nothing about what was really goin' on. The LAPD didn't mess with us at all."[^1] ### Arrest of Ricky Ross LAPD arrested Ross for grand theft auto on March 19, 1982, after finding a Mercedes Benz in his garage with mismatched parts. Ross hired attorney [[Alan Fenster]], who got the charge dismissed. Ross was also arrested for burglary and disorderly conduct on July 7, 1978, though charges were dismissed.[^1] ### Rock House Raids After [[Andy Furillo]]'s November 1984 Los Angeles Times story about the crack explosion, an embarrassed LAPD launched raids on several dozen rock houses in South Central. On December 13, 1984, a diversionary explosion police set off during a raid on a West Sixtieth Street rock house killed a woman who happened to be walking by at the wrong time.[^2] ### Weapons Seizures An LAPD summary of searches at locations associated with Ricky Ross, prepared by Deputy Chief Glenn Levant, documented that "numerous 9-mm Uzies [sic] were seized, along with an AK-47 assault rifle, a fully automatic Mac-11 machine gun, a fully automatic machine gun complete with silencer, and state-of-the-art handguns, rifles and shotguns." By 1987 the department listed "weapons sales" as among Ross's various enterprises. The weapons had been supplied by [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]] through [[Ronald Lister]] and the [[Mundy Security Group]].[^2] ### Disbanding the Anticrack Task Force In October 1986, about a week after the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] began, the LAPD quietly disbanded its thirty-two-member anticrack task force in South Central Los Angeles. Chief Darrell Gates told the [[Los Angeles Times]] the task force was needed "in other parts of the city" but assured residents they were not being abandoned. Reverend Charles Mims, a South Central minister, observed: "It seems illogical to move this task force from what most everybody grants is the most active rock cocaine area on earth."[^3] ### Understanding of the Crack Market By 1986, despite three years of the crack epidemic raging in South Central, drug agents still had very little understanding of its dynamics. Many narcotics detectives assumed the normal rules of the drug trade did not apply to crack because the marketplace appeared disorganized and fragmented. "We haven't encountered any major network. We're conducting these little skirmishes. It's very frustrating," one narcotics detective complained to the Los Angeles Times in early August 1986. DEA intelligence eventually revealed that "what looked like independent street corner pushers were actually the bottom rung of carefully managed organizations." The [[LASD Major Violators]] squad, using intelligence from the flipped [[Torres Brothers|Torres brothers]], reached the same conclusion: through two dealers named Rick and Ollie, the gangs had established a direct pipeline to the Colombian cartels. The circle was small, which was why its bosses had escaped detection for so many years.[^3] ### Freeway Rick Task Force On January 12, 1987, the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department formally joined forces to create the Freeway Rick Task Force, one of the few times in L.A. law enforcement history that a single individual was the target of a multi-jurisdictional squad. The LAPD contributed four detectives to join five from the sheriff's department, led by Sergeant [[Robert Sobel]] of Majors I. Detective [[Steve Polak]], who had worked South Central streets since the dawn of crack, was among the LAPD contingent. Deputy LAPD chief Glenn Levant called the task force "a model for other jurisdictions to follow to attack mid-level cocaine trafficking in California."[^4] The task force's tactics became increasingly aggressive. Detectives beat Ricky Ross's partner [[Ollie Newell]], smothering him with a plastic bag. They planted a kilo of [[cocaine]] on Ross after a foot chase in April 1987, with Polak retrieving the drugs from his trunk and claiming Ross had dropped them. After Ross's arrest, task force members visited him in jail and, on a tape recording, discussed their frame-up of him. A forensic expert found eleven erasures on the tape. After hearing the recording, the judge threw all charges out of court.[^4] ### Footnotes [^1]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 8: "A million hits is not enough" [^2]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it" [^3]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 14: "It's bigger than I can handle" [^4]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter"