Power Concedes Nothing by Connie Rice

Author:Connie Rice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

Chapter 13

BO TAYLOR AND THE PREDATOR TRANSFORMATION BUSINESS

The inside strategy for LAPD would have to wait until after Parks released his iron grip. In the meantime, we would continue our gladiator tango with LAPD in court and grooming our army of Serpico cops willing to challenge unconstitutional policing. There was plenty else to do, including our landmark bus riders case that was putting over $1 billion into the bus system, and finding a new partner for my exploration of gangland and its nether orbit of the prisons.

By 1996 I had lost Fred Williams. The last time I saw him was in late 1995. An LAPD officer called me with a terse warning to quickly get Fred out of the county, but he had already left California. Even though disruption from arrest, eviction, and job loss could strike at any time in his world, the abrupt ending to our partnership bothered me. I wished him safety from whatever threat he’d had to flee, and I began to disengage. Without a gifted street Sherpa, my exploration of gangland had to end.

I half hoped that Fred’s replacement would never appear. Three of our big cases had reached critical stages, and it would have been a blessing to skip the street work in Watts. By late 1995, in our case against the MTA for gutting the bus system on which L.A.’s poor relied, we’d just maneuvered the agency into settlement talks by getting the U.S. Department of Transportation to withhold MTA’s federal rail money until it settled our case. Like a junkie in withdrawal, MTA wanted immediate settlement talks that would take up a lot of time from Kevin, Robert, Bill, and me. At the same time, Carol, Barry, and I were at the height of our discovery battles in Tipton, and Molly was pulling me into meetings to gear up for battle against a man named Ward Connerly, who wanted to usher in the Age of Aquarius by abolishing affirmative action with Proposition 209. Exiting the emotionally draining world of gang intervention would have been a welcome break. But I didn’t have the heart to leave Black, who said he still needed my help. And then one day I found Fred’s successor, a man whose game had advanced way beyond truces, midnight basketball, and handing out turkeys at Thanksgiving.

Darren “Bo” Taylor exploded into my life at a high-voltage meeting called by California state senator Tom Hayden in 1997 to introduce midcity and coastal gang intervention leaders to potential supporters. I didn’t know any of the other attendees, a mix of advocates like me and middle-class or wealthy supporters from Hayden’s Westside district. During the fourth speaker’s anemic expression of “concern” about the plight of L.A.’s gang zones, Bo shot up out of his seat and shouted, “Look, I’m sorry, y’all, I just can’t sit here and listen to this bullshit no more.” He proceeded to vividly cuss us out for accommodating the killing like it was some “fucking wallpaper” on our dining room walls.

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