David Mack (police officer)

David Anthony Mack
File:David Mack mug shot.jpg Mug shot of Mack
Born	(1961-05-30) May 30, 1961 Compton, California, USA
Relatives	Divorced, 2 children
Police career
Country	United States
Department	Los Angeles Police Department
Service years	1988–1997
Rank	Sworn in as an officer – 1988 – Police Officer III – Senior Lead Officer
Awards	– LAPD Medal for Heroism
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 on November 6th, 1997, for 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. Mack has never revealed the whereabouts of the money.

Early life

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. Mack earned a scholarship to the University of Oregon, where he ran track and after finishing 6th in the Olympic Trials in 1980, eventually made the United States national team running the 800 metres in the 1987 World Championships in Athletics. Mack won three Pac-10 conference titles and an NCAA championship in the 800 meters. As of 2008, Mack is still the fourth fastest American in history at 800 meters with a personal best of 1 minute, 43.35 seconds. 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).

Early career

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.

Medal for Heroism

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.

Later career and corruption

Bank robbery

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. 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.

Gang membership and alleged role in the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.

Main article: Rampart Scandal

Russell Poole had a largely unsupported theory that Mack was involved in the death of The Notorious B.I.G. Poole based his theory on the fact that many minorities had been admitted to the police force since the Rodney King beating, which implied that they (including Mack), were not qualified to be policemen and the fact that Mack owned an black impala similar to the one that was seen at B.I.G.'s murder scene. It was a common car. Another key fact on which Poole's theory depended was that Mack knew Suge Knight. According to both, they had never met.

Mack was cleared in the L.A.P.D. Investigation of involvement in B.I.G's death. The wrongful death suit (based on Poole's theory) by the rapper's family against the city of Los Angeles. was dismissed. Mack had limited legal recourse to sue Poole for defamation, however, due to Mack's prior conviction mentioned supra.

Prison sentence

Mack was released on May 14, 2010.. While in prison, he retrained in in the field of solar installation and has remained employed in that field.

Further reading

• Poole, Russell (2002). LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records' Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 978-0-87113-838-5.
• Scott, Cathy (2002 – 2nd ed). The Killing of Tupac Shakur. Nevada: Huntington Press. ISBN 978-0-929712-20-8. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Scott, Cathy (2000). The Murder of Biggie Smalls. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-26620-2.

External links

David Mack at World Athletics