Travel Photography > Desert Southwest > Los Angeles River

But like all good things, the Pachuco's became institutionalized into modern gangs with the ethnocentric trivialities of people who don't know the world beyond their city - the Mexican gangs despise the Armenian gangs, the Armenian gangs hate the Filipinos, the Filipino gangs hate the Koreans and so on. Like a college fraternity, a chain of weak links is still heavy - and as we pass through the Rampart neighborhood; all of this nonsense is put in quotations.

Notorious Biggy Smalls' death in the Mid-Wilshire district received, strangely, a short police investigation. Before Notorious was killed, an undercover white cop got into a road-rage shooting match with a black cop, killing him. The investigation into the dead cop - Gaines - accidentally uncovered some suspicious activity. Detective Robert Poole realized that Gaines had been part of a massive scandal - the Rampart Scandal - which consisted of cops moonlighting for Death Row records, drug dealing, thievery, manipulating evidence, cops robbing banks, burying bodies in Tijuana and so forth. The police station was a scam; and everyone involved was getting what they wanted. And that included Freddy, for his cocaine was funneled through these neighborhoods.

But Poole went so far as to suggest that there was enough evidence to make suspects of policemen in the death of Notorious Biggie Smalls, the investigation was called off. The policemen - armed agents of Death Row Records, were apparently seeking justice for the death of Tupac Shakur. Shakur was an LA - based Death Row rapper; and it's now believed, with considerable evidence to support it, that Shakur and Notorious Biggie were killed as part of a gang feud - Bloods versus Cryps, East versus West, Big Boy versus Death Row - and that the Los Angeles Rampart Police Department finished off the dirty work.

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