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Sunday, August 29, 2010

The "Drug Wars" (22) Los Angeles 1973


Venice High School

The statue is of Myrna Loy, who posed for it as a student prior to becoming a film star. This photo was taken in 1948. For decades, it was a landmark. After years of removal, it has recently been restored.


Back in the mid-1960s, when I was in college, I played baseball on a semi-pro team in West Los Angeles called the Venice Athletics. Aside from a couple of us, all the players were African-Americans. I played for that team for at least a year, and one year, we won the city championship in a game played at the old Wrigley Field in LA.

Shortly before I moved on to another team, a young kid joined the team. He had been a star athlete at Venice High School. I never really got to know him well. Most of the older players, with whom I had been closer, had left the team, and I decided to move on as well.

Fast forward to 1973. I was a young DEA agent working in LA. One day, we executed a search and arrest warrant in Venice. We arrested the occupant and seized a small amount of heroin. The young man we arrested was the same one I referred to above. If he recognized me, he didn't show it, and I didn't remind him.

A few months later, out on bail, he was killed in a car accident under suspicious circumstances. During the same time frame, I learned that one of the older guys on our old team had been the actual head of the heroin trafficking group.

I still remember both of their names, but it is not necessary to mention them here.

3 comments:

Siarlys Jenkins said...

You're not blaming it all on Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood?

Gary Fouse said...

No, I'm blaming it on Ann Coulter.

Siarlys Jenkins said...

Makes perfect sense to me. You know time is running in two directions on this site.