In the late 1980s, a young detective named Ron Stallworth left his job at the Colorado Springs Police Department to take a position in Salt Lake City.
Stallworth, an El Paso native, had left his stamp on Colorado. The department’s youngest and first-ever Black detective, he impersonated a white supremacist and infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan – an investigation that Spike Lee turned into an Oscar-winning movie called “BlacKKKlansman” in 2018.
Now, Stallworth has written about his time in Utah, where he built an anti-gang unit from scratch after discovering Crips and Bloods in Salt Lake City. Stallworth joined the Texas Standard to talk about his new book, “The Gangs of Zion: A Black Cop’s Crusade in Mormon Country.”
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: So we’re talking the late 1980s in Salt Lake. Did anyone in the department already have an understanding of the gangs that were operating there? I know you’d been warning about it.
Ron Stallworth: No, they were in denial. Salt Lake City P.D. had a policy at that time: Their officers were not allowed to use the term “gangs” in police reports. They could call them youth groups, community groups, anything but the word gang.
What was that about?
That was very common among police officials at that time period. There were cops in metropolitan L.A. whose departments took the same approach.
I, on the other hand, knew what was going on, and I said what was going on. And every time I had the opportunity to make a declaration in public, I said gangs.
There were police officials who felt like saying the word gang would be a detriment to their reputation, their policies, and it would put their city, their department, in a negative light. And I always told them, acknowledging a problem exists is not a detriment. It is a plus. How can you address a problem that you know to exist if you don’t, first of all, acknowledge that it exists?
Well, did anyone from the community try to put up barriers to your work? I mean, if you’re conceding that there are gangs in the city, I can imagine how some people, for political reasons, might try to put up obstacles.
Yes. Believe it or not, we got a lot of pushback from some parents who didn’t like the fact that their kids were being labeled gang members based on the criteria we had and didn’t want their kids in our files.
I had one Hispanic mother come and report me to the chief of police because I had put her son in the gang database the day before. And when the chief asked me about it, I told him that her son met the criteria. I gave him a list of it. And I said that’s why he was put in.
The woman’s response was, “well, I was a gang member and I didn’t turn out too bad. So what’s wrong with my son being a gang member?” And I told her, “that’s the reason why your son has the problem that he has, because of the type of parent that you are.” Which wasn’t a wise thing to say, I might add.
But the chief told me, be quiet … and told the woman that you can go ahead and complain all you want, but we’re not going to take your son out of the file.
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I know a big part of your investigation and a big part of this book involved diving deep into the intersection of rap and gang activity. Why was that so important to you?
Because I was finding out that there were white Mormon kids, weekly churchgoers – grew up in a conservative household, but they were white – who were adopting all the characteristics of the Black Crips and Bloods out of South Central L.A.
And when I asked them, “where are you guys learning this stuff?” they said, “from the rap music we listen to.” I said, “what kind of rap?” They said gangsta rap, which was the first time I’d ever heard the term.
So I started listening to gangsta rap music, starting with N.W.A. And once I heard these songs, it spelled out almost verbatim how to be a Crip and Blood gang member, South Central style. So these kids were adopting that and were learning to put that to use to identify themselves.
So I started deep diving, as you said, into the correlation between gangsta rap music and street gang activity.
So how long were you in Salt Lake City, and what was the gang situation like there by the time you left?
I was in Salt Lake City from 1986 until I left in 2016 and moved back to El Paso. The problem increased over time and got much worse because in my day on the streets – we’re talking about the early 90s – the gang members were shooting small caliber handguns – 22s, 38s.
There were no fully automatic weapons; that came into vogue about the time I was getting out of the gang unit and we started seeing Uzi, every now and again a MAC-10, and shootings became more prevalent after I got out of the gang unit. The drugs became more prevalent. There were more gang members dealing in drugs, especially crack. So it got worse.
And I had to deal with people connected to the Mormon Church. I’ll give you an example: The state Senate majority leader during this one period of time, I met him at a function, and he told me his solution to the gang problem was to authorize funding to build a juvenile detention facility in the desert west of the Great Salt Lake. To surround this facility with a 12-foot-high electrified fence.
And he said, then put all of these gang members in there – and he singled out Mexicans, Blacks and Polynesian gang members – and turn on the electric current and let them have at it with their gang warfare and let the current settle the problem for Utah citizens.
I thought he was making an attempt at an ill-timed, horrific joke. And he said, I’m very serious. I said, you realize what you’re saying is a violation of 14th Amendment rights of due process. You can’t do that. Especially with juveniles. I said, that reeks of cultural elitism and racism on your part.
He stared at me for a few seconds and then he turned around, walked away and never said another word to me.
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You devote a good part of the introduction to your book to your identity as both a police officer and as a Black man. And you write,”cops did not accept me because I’m Black, and minority communities distrusted me because I was a cop. Yet to me, these seemingly incongruous selves made me the perfect person for the Black Klansman investigation in Colorado, as well as the anti-gang work I did later in Utah.”
Could you say more about why you felt you were the perfect person for your job there in Utah?
The underlying theme of my book, “Gangs of Zion,” is don’t be afraid to speak truth to power. I’ve always been somewhat of a raise hell kind of guy when it comes to authority figures.
And dealing with the problem in Utah, I had to challenge the authority figures in departments that I dealt with, and I had to let them know that this is what I believe in, this is the approach I’m willing to take. And I don’t care who you are, what you’re going to attempt to do to stop me. I’m pushing forward. You can come along and ride the train with me, or you can get off and get the hell out of my face.
And again, speak truth to power. Don’t be afraid. And you can accomplish good things.
