In 2006, officer Brian Tyndall allegedly recruited L.A.P.D. Officer Greg Kading and a list of other individuals to "look into” the Biggie Smalls killing- a result of an ongoing civil suit filed by Wallace’s family and pressure on the L.A.P.D. to investigate the killing. It was ironically called "Operation Transparency".
Mr. Kading explains little about his involvement in the failed prosecution for 47 indictments against Numero Uno grocery store owner George Torres-Ramos. He completely misled LA Weekly about his ability to be cross-examined (I was never called as a witness", remember that one?) He's also never fully released the secret tape recordings of his own attempts at witness coercion (promises of houses, money and reduced jail time for testimony against Mr. Torres- Ramos). And while Holcomb told our investigator that 12-15 Keefe D recordings exists ("we always recorded the Davis interviews") it is fascinating that Kading, who has been repeatedly caught leaving out key admissions and is the Omission King, has offered up but a sampling of the 2008 era interviews.
Kading's public dissemination of forged federal documents re: Davis leads us to question if the tapes "made" of Davis have been edited together for effect. It would hardly been the first time Kading has been caught passing off bogus material.
Real Document...
Mr. Kading does not explain his earlier troubles with a probation-search gone awry where Kading is accused of pointing his weapon at an infant.
And this bears merit, when we look at why Kading – with absolutely no homicide investigation experience whatsoever, was asked to "lead” a murder task force- especially when he was set to work counter to the civil team in Wallace and to out- investigate the legendary L.A.P.D. homicide investigator Russell Poole who was assigned to the case to begin with. Why Kading?
Perhaps the answer lies in the entire makeup of the team. To say that L.A.P.D. assigned their brightest and best to the Wallace killing was the overstatement of the year. So let’s look at the All Star Lineup tasked with protecting a $500,000,000 claim against the City of Los Angeles?
BATTING FIRST: GREG KADING (Excessive Force)
L.A.P.D. knew Kading was already embroiled in the Motley vs. Parks suit. In a parole search, the searching officers went into the apartment with their guns drawn, and Sanchez, the parole officer, stayed in the living room while Kading and Black searched the apartment. Motley testified that during the search, the officers were "going through things," including closets and a file box, and that they "pulled out" a lot of things. Before the officers searched the bedrooms, Motley told the officers that her son was in the back bedroom.
According to the Court of Appeals findings, when Kading entered this bedroom, he pointed his gun at Motley's baby, who was on his back on the bed, looking toward the bedroom door. When Motley heard her five-week-old son start screaming, she ran into the room, where Kading was still pointing the gun at the baby. According to Motley, Kading kept his gun trained on the baby while he searched the room, and only put his gun away when another officer came in and helped him examine a box at the foot of the bed. Motley testified that the search of this bedroom alone took twenty minutes. Kading and the other the searching officers lied to Motley about Jamerson's (her paroled boyfriend at that moment in jail) parole officer being present, their possession of a search warrant, and Jamerson's custody status.
The Court of Appeals reversed the district court's decision that Kading, Black, Sanchez, and Ruegg were entitled to qualified immunity. The 9th Circuit Court Officer No QUALIFIED IMMUNITY FOR KADING and REVERSED the earlier ruling that Kading was blameless in the suit. To read the opinion:
https://tupacassassinationblog.blogspot.com/2025/03/links-go-back-to-westlaw-and-unless-you.html
BATTING NEXT: BRYAN TYNDALL (Failure to Disclose Material Facts)
Known more for organizing the "task force” Tyndall’s ethics and practices were questioned by famed defense attorney Tom Mesereau in the murder trial of TV star Robert Blake. Tyndall who had been with the LAPD for 32 years and a homicide detective for more than 13 of those years, was chided by Mesereau
Mesereau: As co-lead detective in the investigation of Mr. Robert Blake, do you consider it appropriate conduct for a lead detective to describe a book writer as his or her partner when confronting a witness?
Tyndall: It would depend on the content [sic.].
Tyndall was also caught up in the notorious 1999 "Rampart” cases, that involved false testimony by corrupt cop Raphael Perez which lead to several innocent police officers having charges filed against them. Perez told Tyndall’s old Rampart task force that ""if someone pisses me off, I'll throw their name in the hat and they will get investigated, innocent or not.” According to the Court of Appeals (HARPER v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Nos. 06-55519, 06-55715. Decided: July 14, 2008)
"Although Tyndall knew of these accusations, he never provided the information to Skaggs or Barling; nor was the information ever provided to Deputy District Attorney Laura Laesecke before charges against the Officers were filed.”
While certain officers were dismissed from the claims (including Perez). The jury awarded each officer compensatory damages in the amount of $5,000,001 plus attorney fees. The Court of Appeals affirmed that order.
UP NEXT: OFFICER SHANDS MCCOY
IN 1999, the LA Times printed an article that spoke of six Wilshire CRASH officers receiving suspensions of two to 35 days after being judged by two separate LAPD discipline boards. The internal investigation was launched after a suspect’s father complained that his son was beaten by officers.
The first discipline board in 1996 dealt only with Apodaca and found him guilty of six violations. A year later, the second board found five of Apodaca's officers guilty of various misconduct counts, including filing false reports, court records show. Three officers including Shands McCoy, were found guilty of using unnecessary force, such as choking Cordova or striking him with fists or flashlights.
Those three– who sued to overturn the findings, charging that the penalties were unreasonable and that Cordova (the suspect) lacked credibility. The Court backed the LAPD findings in the second discipline board.
AFTER THAT: DARYN DUPREE
It appears odd that a currently serving Los Angeles Police Officer Dupree is soon to be the star of his own fictionalized cable drama; name one other time that has happened (and how is that not a MAJOR conflict of interest) but that is not the oddest part of this story.
On October 20, 2000, the Los Angeles Times, in their piece "L.A.P.D. Misconduct Cases Rarely Resulted in Charges,” outlined the case of Detective Daryn Dupree. They noted that the D.A.'s office had declined to file charges against L.A.P.D. officers even when its own lawyers concluded that a crime had indeed been committed.
Daryn Dupree, according to district attorney files, was overheard by FBI agents conducting a wiretap as part of a drug investigation. Dupree was telling his wife that he "shouldn't use" the phone he was on because it was "chipped," a term for a legitimate cellular phone account that has been captured and illegally cloned into another handset. The FBI passed the information along to the LAPD's internal affairs unit.
Detectives in the Internal Affairs Unit there found that Dupree also had improperly accessed the department's computer system eight times, seeking information on the girlfriend of the FBI's target in the drug probe.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Poey declined to prosecute Dupree on either charge, though he acknowledged in his explanatory memo that "the evidence presented indicates that Officer Dupree violated [the law regarding the use of a cloned phone]."
In rejecting the illegal computer access charge, Poey reasoned that Dupree might claim that he was investigating a crime. Poey concluded that "in the interest of justice … disciplinary action against Officer Dupree would be best handled administratively."
An LAPD Board of Rights found Dupree guilty of both charges and suspended him without pay for 44 days, department records show. Dupree, who remains with the LAPD, declined comment.
NEXT UP: WILLIAM HOLCOMB
William Holcomb was another Appellate loss. In the case Keiko Larez, Plaintiff-appellee and Cross-appellant, v. William Holcomb, Defendant-appellant and Cross-appellee, 16 F.3d 1513 (9th Cir. 1994) detective William Holcomb appealed a lower court judgment on a jury verdict in favor of Keiko Larez in Larez's civil rights complaint. It was alleged that Detective Holcomb stopped her, arrested her, and then detained her for several hours at a police station for questioning without probable cause, in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights.
Larez testified that the officers, with guns drawn and pointed at her and Jimenez, instructed them to place their hands on their heads and turn around, and then handcuffed them. Larez said she did not resist, but asked the officers for an explanation. The officers conducted a pat-down search of both Larez and Jimenez, and informed the two that they were conducting a murder investigation in which Eddie Larez was a suspect. Larez claimed that she and Jimenez were put in the back of an unmarked police car and driven around the corner. Roughly ten minutes later, she says, a number of other officers arrived at the scene, including Holcomb, and one of the officers took Larez out of the unmarked car so that Holcomb could speak with her. Larez claimed that she remained handcuffed, did not respond to any of Holcomb's questions, and, after several minutes, was put back into the car, and taken to the Hollenbeck Station.
Larez testified that she was led, still handcuffed, through the back door of the Hollenbeck Station into a small holding cell, and that the cell door was closed and locked behind her. The handcuffs, she claimed, prevented her from finding a comfortable position in which to sit or lie down in the cell. Although a number of officers observed Larez through the window in the cell's door, Larez stated that no one responded to her requests that the handcuffs be removed. She testified that she remained in the cell alone for about two hours before Holcomb came in to speak with her.
After Holcomb questioned her for about twenty minutes regarding the murder, her knowledge of the existence of weapons in her family's house, and the whereabouts of her brother, Eddie, Holcomb drove Larez home at her request. Larez claimed that at no time was she told that she was under arrest or that she was a suspect in the investigation. She testified, however, that she believed she was under arrest.
GETTING THE JOB DONE
So, what do all of these men have in common? They have all be found guilty of inappropriate (and sometimes illegal activities while on the job, and in most cases, abuse of power. They have filed false reports, held people against their will, withheld evidence. Not exactly the L.A.P.D.’s "best foot forward” in the case of Wallace, to be sure. This leads us to the question asked about Kading at first: why him? Why was a detective with some "departmental issues” selected to be on this "task force”? Why were these particular people picked by the L.A.P.D.
There was recently a movie called "Suicide Squad” directed by David Ayers. Ayers had previously directed a movie called ”End of Watch” which was based on the alleged adventures of…Daryn Dupree?
Yes, the same Daryn Dupree that is on the Wallace "Task Force” was already the subject of a movie about him while he was still on the L.A.P.D. So, clearly this group was no stranger to the "cop story for sale” angle of being a police officer. Seems many of the Wallace Task Force wanted their own book or TV show. Tyndall was working with an author on the Robert Blake case (he referred to the author as his "partner” and accompanied the author on his crime scenes.) Kading and Dupree have another show on their hands with the aforementioned "Unsolved” show. I digress.
Back to David Ayers. Ayers directed a movie entitled "Suicide Squad.” The premise was that to catch bad guys the government needed to assemble a team of the world's most dangerous, incarcerated Super Villains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government's disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. The government has figured that only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose, can do some "gray area” things- there is no telling what they will do.
But the truth is that they weren't picked to succeed, but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail. In the fantasy version of the story we get a team who overcomes all of that and defeats the bad guy.
In the real world however, we get a team of ethically handicapped cops assigned to what the L.A.P.D. claims publicly to be their best efforts in solving the Wallace homicide. And the upside for the L.A.P.D. is that so long as these guys are in charge, they might break a rule or two (that is their past performance) and so long as no one finds out, and we have nothing better for them to do, they might jar a new lead or two out. But if the investigation goes sideways, they get caught repeating bad behaviors or are besmirched, the police can run to "prior bad acts” and sever the "suicide squad” from the investigation- all the while claiming plausible deniability for upper brass.
Perhaps the mission for the suicide quad was best summed up in the newspaper article that ran before the task force started working- it illustrated a prejudice toward a certain narrative- a narrative convenient to the L.A.P.D.- the other narrative (at that time working its way through the courts in the Wallace civil trial) spoke of Raphael Perez and other "dirty” L.A.P.D. cops as part of the Wallace homicide scheme:
In Kading’s book "Murder Rap”, Kading makes the claim that he was recruited to join the task force on May 1, 2006. He was called by Tyndall
From Kading: "Brian,” I asked straight up when Tyndall called me on May 1, 2006, with his offer to join the team, "are we supposed to solve this case or are we supposed to protect the department?” "Greg,” he replied, "we’re going to go wherever this takes us. You have my word on it.”
However, the plan seemed to be figured out very quickly- wherever it was going to take them seemed in a rather fixed position. And even before the Task Force could get its bearings, two months later L.A. Times reporter Chuck Philips writes:
"The leading theory being pursued by the LAPD task force involves the possibility that Wallace was killed by a member of Compton's vicious Southside Crips gang as part of a bicoastal rap feud linked to Shakur's death, law enforcement sources said.” (Exactly where Kading said the investigation landed when he retired in 2010)
"Another theory involves allegations that Wallace was killed in retaliation by a Blood gang member hired by rap impresario Marion ‘Suge’ Knight, owner of Shakur's record label, the sources said. Knight denies any involvement in the murder.” (This was the "Poochie Fouse/Tammy Hawkins” coerced "confession conclusion- also exactly where Kading said the investigation landed when he retired in 2010.)
So it sounds, again, like Tyndall withheld knowledge from the "Biggycide Squad” just like he did in the Rampart/Liddy matter. Because "wherever it lead” conveniently lead right where the L.A.P.D. wanted it o.
NOT GETTING THE JOB DONE
And according to new information to be published, the Wallace Task Force did nothing for close to five years of taxpayer spending.
Speaking of Kading, Kevin McClure, who really ran the task force (but somehow was, like many others, omitted from Kading’s tome) had these things to say:
"I have no problems with Greg," McClure said. "We followed every viable lead that we had at the time and pushed it to the point where we needed something else to occur in order to move the case forward. And that something — someone else coming forward to corroborate what we had — didn't happen." La Weekly 10-6-2011.
"We kept pounding the doors on the same cold leads,” he also said in a March 2017 L.A. Times article.
Of course, they did; it was fixed earlier in the game that they were supposed to take a 20 year-old shaky narrative and "prove” its truth.
