| David Anthony Mack | |
|---|---|
Mug shot of Mack |
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| Los Angeles Police Department | |
| Born May 30, 1961 | |
| Place of birth | Compton, California, USA |
| Service branch | United States |
| Years of service | 1988–1997 |
| Rank | Sworn in as an officer – 1988 – Police Officer III – Senior Lead Officer |
| Awards | – LAPD Medal for Heroism |
| Relations | Divorced, 2 children |
| Other work | Convicted in connection to the Rampart police corruption scandal |
David Anthony Mack (born May 30, 1961), is a former LAPD Rampart Division Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) officer. He is one of the central figures in the LAPD Rampart police corruption scandal. Mack was arrested for masterminding the November 6, 1997, robbery of $722,000 from a South Central Los Angeles branch of Bank of America. He was sentenced to 14 years and three months in federal prison.[1] Mack has never revealed the whereabouts of the money.
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David Mack grew up in the same Compton neighborhood as Suge Knight.[2]
A remarkable athlete, Mack ran for Locke High School and was champion at the CIF California State Meet at 880 yards, two years in a row.[3] Mack earned a scholarship to the University of Oregon, where he ran track and after finishing 6th in the Olympic Trials in 1980,[4] eventually made the United States national team running the 800 metres in the 1987 World Championships in Athletics.[2][5] Mack won three Pac-10 conference titles and an NCAA championship in the 800 meters. As of 2008, Mack is still the third fastest American in history at 800 meters with a personal best of 1 minute, 43.35 seconds.[6][7] A leg injury kept him out of the 1984 Summer Olympics and eventually cut short his track career.
Mack joined the LAPD in 1988. He was married with two children. Before the scandal, Mack held the rank of Senior Lead Officer (two chevrons above a star).
He started out on patrol duty in the department's Southeast and Rampart Divisions but soon was assigned to the Narcotics Bureau as an undercover narcotics officer. Soon after that, Mack gave up his assignment to the Narcotics Bureau to work the graveyard shift in West Los Angeles. He allegedly needed to spend more time with his wife, son and daughter. The flexibility of his new schedule also allowed Mack to devote more hours to his extracurricular activities. Among these was his relationship with Errolyn Romero, who was a nineteen-year-old ticket taker at the Baldwin Theatre when Mack began a relationship with her in 1990.
In 1993, Officer Mack was awarded the LAPD's second-highest medal, the Police Medal for Heroism, for shooting a drug dealer who had drawn a gun and taken aim at the head of his then-partner, Officer Rafael "Ray" Pérez during an undercover drug operation.
Mack was involved with Errolyn Romero in August 1997, when Romero went to work at the Bank of America branch at Jefferson Avenue and South Hoover Street, just north of the USC campus. Normally the bank kept about $350,000 cash in the vault, but slightly more than double that amount had just been delivered by armored car on the morning of November 6, 1997, when a black male (Mack) wearing a three-piece gray suit, sunglasses and a tweed beret, walked into the bank and headed for the bulletproof door that separated the tellers from customers.[8] After the man in the suit (Mack) told a security guard that he wanted to get into his safe deposit box, Romero buzzed him through the first gate, then left her window and unlocked a second security door that opened into the vault area. Mack immediately shoved Romero to the floor, opened his suit jacket to reveal a Tec-9 semiautomatic pistol hanging from a shoulder strap, pointed it at two women counting money and threatened them. By the time Mack and his two accomplices abandoned their white van a half-mile away, they had pulled off one of the largest heists in Los Angeles history.[8]
Mack was a member of the Bloods, a gang with ties to Death Row Records. Mack was hired as an off-duty body guard for Death Row Records by Death Row founder Marion "Suge" Knight, also a Blood. Investigating LAPD detectives Russell Poole (Ret.) and Brian Tyndall (Ret.) both believe David Mack was involved in the conspiracy to kill rapper The Notorious B.I.G.[9]
What helped to make Mack a person of interest in the case was the black seventh generation (1994–1996) Chevrolet Impala SS parked in Mack's garage next to a wall decorated with Tupac Shakur posters and memorabilia, as well as the extremely rare 9mm Gecko bullets used in the shooting; detectives described it as a sort of "shrine" to the slain rapper who was murdered when an unknown number of assailants in a white, four-door, late-model Cadillac killed him.
"As soon as I learned that David Mack owned a vehicle that matched the one used in the Biggie Smalls killing and that Mack had used it in the bank robbery, I asked to have it tested by our forensics people," Russell Poole, the lead investigator in the Shakur murder investigation, recalled in 2001. "But the brass said they didn't want to step on the FBI's toes. What they didn't want was to find out that one of our officers was implicated in Biggie Smalls' murder."
Mack did not become the primary focus of Poole's investigation, however, until the detective learned that the first person to visit the officer in jail was former Oregon teammate Harry Billups aka Amir Muhammed, who at the time was also suspected in the murder.
Mack was named in the April 16, 2007 wrongful death lawsuit filed by the rapper's family against the city of Los Angeles.[10]
Mack has refused to cooperate with police, and was known to brag to fellow prisoners that his $700,000 bank score was invested in such a way that it would have doubled in value by the time he concluded his 14-year sentence.[2] While in prison, Mack severed his ties with the LAPD and became an avowed member of the Bloods street gang. Mack's jailers reported he used a red toothbrush, wore red socks, and wore as much red as could be attained in a federal prison. According to former LAPD Chief Bernard Parks, "It appears he has completely divested himself of all relationships of his life as a police officer. He is basically a gang member. He has taken on the role of being a gang member in jail."[2] While serving his sentence, Mack apparently was involved in a gang-related confrontation while in prison that resulted in him being stabbed.[11]
Mack was released on May 14, 2010.[12]
IAAF profile for David Mack (police officer)
| Notable accused officers | Victims | Coverup and investigation | Gang involvement | Other elements |
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