LOS ANGELES (CN) — Paul "Doc" Wallace, a senior member of a South Los Angeles street gang who has been in and out of prison most of his adult life, might have thought things were looking up for him after he had helped organize a truce that ended a bloody, 20-year war between Black and Hispanic gangs in 2019 and he was lauded in the community as a reformed man.
Not so. In July 2020, he was arrested and charged in a federal racketeering indictment that could put him away for the rest of his life if convicted.
Federal prosecutors accuse Wallace, 55, of participating in a decadeslong conspiracy to murder rivals, extort local businesses and distribute narcotics. Among the long list of underlying allegations the government cites to beef up the racketeering charge are a 2003 murder of a fellow gang member who had disrespected Wallace and the 2014 murder of a rival gang member for which Wallace provided the weapon and drove the shooter to the victim's home.
If convicted of the charge of participating in murders as part of a criminal enterprise, he faces a mandatory life sentence. The government has said it won't seek the death penalty, according to court filings, which is an option under the law.
Despite Wallace's undeniably long rap sheet, his indictment was met with disbelief and sent a chill through the local community, according to Robert Weide, an associate professor at California State University, Los Angeles, whose forthcoming book, "Divide & Conquer: Race, Gangs, Identity, and Conflict," details Wallace's role in the unprecedented peace talks that ended a vicious war between two of South LA's largest gangs a little over two years ago.
"The whole community believes the indictment is related to the peace process," Weide said.
Weide said gang members who were involved in negotiating the truce and who had previously agreed to be named in his book have since asked him to leave their names out of it to avoid unwanted attention by federal investigators following Wallace's indictment.
Wallace has been a member of the East Coast Crips since the late 1970s, according to court filings. The gang controls a large swath of territory on the eastern side of South LA, hence its name, and is a loose confederation of multiple subsets. Wallace, prosecutors claim, is the most influential member of the so-called 6 Pacc, a collective of four sets named after their territories around 62nd, 66th, 68th and 69th streets.
The East Coast Crips engaged in a long-running, violent conflict with the neighboring Florencia 13, a Hispanic gang affiliated with the notorious Mexican Mafia prison gang, as are many other Hispanic street gangs in Southern California. According to a 2004 Rand Corp. report on gang violence in South LA, the conflict between the two gangs was caused by the East Coast Crips stealing a large amount of drugs from Florencia 13 members.
"This resulted in the Mexican Mafia putting a 'green light' out on the East Coast Crips, sanctioning violent retaliation against the East Coast Crips until the debt has been repaid," according to the Rand report.
The conflict started as a gang war but in the end mostly innocent people were getting killed just because they happened to be Black or Hispanic, said Skipp Townsend, the executive director of 2nd Call, a community organization that provides programs and classes for gang members trying to change their lives.
Townsend was instrumental in getting Wallace involved in ending the war in 2019, after his organization had been approached by an imprisoned Florencia 13 leader who wanted to find an East Coast Crips leader who could help the rivals sit down and hold talks. Wallace at the time was already a well-loved and respected presence in the local community center and young people looked up to him as someone who had turned his life around, according letters submitted in court in 2019 in support of his supervised release following a stint in prison for weapon possession.
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