What Happens When a Black Cop Goes Undercover with the Crips and Bloods in ‘Mormon County’

Faced with the dilemma of devoting their lives to their religion or firebombing the homes of rivals, the Mormon bandits decided they could do both.

In the 1980s and 1990s, young men in Salt Lake City engaged in wild beatings, stabbings and drive-by shootings over the turf of the drug trade and in solidarity with their crew members.

Some of these hooligans did this while carrying pocket-sized copies of the Book of Mormon in their pockets.

How did the capital of Utah, known for the snow-capped mountains, Karl Malone and John Stockton and being the center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, become a hotbed of crime?

When Ron Stallworth arrived there in 1986 to start and lead an anti-gang police unit, he saw the answer as clear as day: Crips and Bloods in Southern California were traveling nearly 700 miles to sell crack cocaine to devout residents, mostly white bee state and recruit followers into their gangs.

“When I and others in the criminal justice field tried to raise the alarm about the threat posed by street gangs, the church would not admit that its faith was failing its children,” writes Ron Stallworth in his memoir of forthcoming, “Gangs of Zion.” : A Black Cop’s Crusade in Mormon Country” (published September 17, Legacy Lit/Hachette).

“No one was willing to look past their religion and accept the fact that when they weren’t attending sacrament meeting, these kids were throwing Molotov cocktails through windows,” he adds.

Stallworth had already padded his law enforcement resume by successfully infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1979 — an undertaking he recalls in vivid detail in his first book, “Black Klansman” from 2014. (John David Washington portrayed him in the Spike Lee-directed film adaptation, BlacKkKlansman, released in 2018.)

His newest cover shows the ways his blue and blue identities often collided in the minds of others.

While Stallworth’s race allowed him to blend in easily as an undercover cop, he writes that he was also put down by coworkers, mistrusted by civilians who looked like him, and provoked by racists who didn’t.

However, he never backed down from a challenge. Stallworth’s stories read like excerpts from the “Shaft” script, as he regularly made his point by testing the limits of police protocol and ending conflicts with a joke.

Outmaneuvered by racists at a bar, he once responded to a skinhead’s taunts and threats by proposing to his mother — and then pulling his Glock.

When a Crip began spreading lies that he had beaten Stallworth, the officer challenged the much larger man to a fistfight until he left—an effective bluff that was anything but by the book.

It was that tenacity and brave demeanor that helped Stallworth in his mission to solve Salt Lake City’s gang problem and save the souls of local youth who fall for the lure of the underworld.

“Young people who get involved in gangs always get out; the question is how,” writes Stallworth. “We had to do everything in our power to encourage them to leave gangs – if not avoid them altogether – before prison or death were the only options left.”

Stallworth learned the language, customs and culture of the Bloods and Crips, trying to foster relationships with the members. It also gave juvenile offenders a leniency pass, taking them home to their parents instead of the precinct.

Yet Stallworth faced resistance from many fronts.

Many parents were skeptical of the unit’s anti-gang efforts, accusing Stallworth and his colleagues of bias or ulterior motives. Church officials refused to cooperate, with some insisting that only non-white Mormons—mostly Polynesian believers—were the problem.

But the most steadfast opposition came from police and government officials, who would not act on evidence that a federally funded youth vocational program called Job Corps had become an incubator and pipeline for SoCal gang members arriving in Utah.

Among those ranks was Gary Nicolas “Babyface” Avila, who, according to Stallworth, used a fabricated LA persona to build his Sureños 13 syndicate into Salt Lake City’s largest Hispanic gang — and inspired several others to followed after her.

“Amid all the escalating violence, Clearfield Job Corps officials steadfastly lied about the gang members in their program, denying their contribution to crime in Salt Lake City, so they could continue to receive federal dollars,” writes Stallworth, who later testified in a Washington. DC, the Congressional hearing focused on the effectiveness of Job Corps.

When Stallworth learned that gang culture was being transmitted through gangster rap, he was introduced to songs by NWA and Ice-T.

Despite initially being repelled by the musical genre, he would eventually develop an appreciation for its sharp social commentary and unbridled expression, becoming a rare badge-wearing advocate for the art form during an era when politicians and activists others called for censorship.

“We need to recognize music as a tool to make us better cops,” writes Stallworth, who would baffle peers, gangs and, once, even rapper Ice Cube, with a verbatim recital of “Fk” of the NWA. The police.” “The cops need to listen to the songs and if you can’t do that, shame on you.”

That self-education not only strengthened Stallworth’s work in his hometown; it also made him an industry authority who would be called upon to share his expertise on high-profile legal matters in other jurisdictions.

Stallworth testified at the 1993 capital murder trial of Ronald Ray Howard, who killed Texas Highway Patrol trooper Bill Davidson last year, while listening to Tupac Shakur’s anti-police song “Soulja Story.” He later testified in a First Amendment case in support of Shakur and the parent company of his record label, Time Warner.

“I needed to explain why gangster rap was a valid sociological expression for inner-city minority youth,” Stallworth writes. “However, I also felt an obligation to denounce the idea that music could legitimately be used as a defense for killing a police officer.”

Stallworth eventually became a champion for freedom of speech and artistic expression, and an opponent against the criminalization of minority youth—particularly children of color. His more than 30 years in law enforcement have given him a keen perspective on how to best protect and serve underserved communities.

Still, Stallworth books his memoir by addressing critics who fail to reconcile his former profession and his race—namely director Boots Riley, who, in a scathing critique, insisted that “BlacKkKlansman” is fiction.

“Blinded by their quest to assert their Blackness, these radically militant individuals cannot accept me into the ‘collective Blackness club’ that requires everyone’s sense of racial identity to pale in comparison to their own,” he writes. Stallworth for Riley and his ilk.

Elsewhere, he talks about being intimidated by the director of Sorry to Bother You during a competition at the 2019 Directors’ Awards.

“I wrote Gangs of Zion not only to recount my experience of policing in a very unusual context during an important cultural moment,” Stallworth writes, “but also to inform the Booty Rileys of the world that I am a cop who I get it. American history is a defender of his race and stands firm for civil and constitutional rights for all people.”