The Lapd Crash Unit and Rampart Scandal

In the early 1970s, the Los Angeles Police Department established a unit called Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or CRASH for short. The purpose of the unit was to combat the continuing increase in criminal gang activity in the inner-city areas of Los Angeles. During the 1980s, LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates greatly expanded CRASH units as gang violence escalated in the area. Members of the community, who saw CRASH officers as eager to arrest without cause and equally eager to use violence to subdue suspects, often questioned the unit's tactics. In an interview for the PBS program Frontline, defense attorney Gerald Chaleff described members of the CRASH unit in this way: "They were some of the most, you could say, gung-ho or ambitious officers that wanted to get into this office, because it was highly prized, and they had freedom...