Officers may have seen rap killing

Several law enforcement officers may have witnessed the March 9 slaying of rap star Notorious B.I.G., according to law enforcement sources close to the investigation and associates of the rapper.

The revelation comes at a time when the investigation is reportedly stymied by a lack of reliable witnesses.

One off-duty Inglewood police officer, working security for the rap star’s entourage, was in a car directly behind Notorious B.I.G. when the rapper was shot in front of hundreds of party-goers outside the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard near Fairfax Avenue, law enforcement sources said.

It remains unclear how much information he or other officers have provided. Los Angeles police detectives refused to discuss the case.

Sources said the Inglewood officer was one of six Inglewood officers who violated department policy by working off-duty the night of the shooting as security for the 24-year-old rapper, whose real name was Christopher Wallace. They said the officer, who was driving a vehicle in Wallace’s entourage, may have fled the scene without reporting his observations about the shooting to investigators.

Sources also said that undercover officers from New York were monitoring Wallace and his entourage the night of the shooting as part of a federal investigation of criminals allegedly affiliated with the rapper’s label, Bad Boy Entertainment.

A trio of Wallace’s closest friends--two of whom were inside the rapper’s car when the assailant opened fire--echoed that assertion in interviews with The Times. They contended that they saw undercover officers trailing them during the final weeks of Wallace’s life.

All three of Wallace’s friends say that LAPD investigators assigned to the case recently showed them a stack of surveillance photos taken over two days in March--including one shot snapped as late as 10 minutes before the killing.

“If they were there all that time before, it just seems impossible to me that they didn’t see the incident. Where did they go? They had to see it,” said Damion Butler, Wallace’s friend and road manager who was in the backseat of the rapper’s sport utility vehicle when the drive-by shooting occurred.

Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Pat Conmay, who is handling the investigation since it was taken over two weeks ago by LAPD’s robbery-homicide division, declined to comment. So did representatives of the New York police and the U.S. Justice Department.

LAPD detectives are expected to go back to New York this week for another round of follow-up interviews with witnesses. Other law enforcement sources say the investigation is still focusing on the likelihood that the rapper was gunned down over a personal financial dispute with a Compton gang member.

Inglewood Police Chief Alex Perez confirmed that his department is investigating allegations that as many as six officers may have worked for Wallace. He declined to comment on allegations that one of them chased the assailant’s vehicle after the shooting and helped escort Wallace’s friends to the hospital, but did not tell investigators working on the homicide case what he witnessed until at least a day after the slaying.

“If an officer of ours was a witness to something like this and didn’t immediately report it, we would consider it a very serious matter,” Perez said.

Law enforcement sources contend that Wallace and his record company chairman, Sean “Puffy” Combs, have repeatedly employed members of the Southside Crips for security when visiting the Southland--an allegation that first surfaced in an affidavit filed last year by a Compton police officer seeking to obtain search warrants for a gang raid.

Law enforcement sources contend that before attending the industry party where he was shot, Wallace hung out at a Compton park with a group of Southside Crips gang members. Several of those gang members were allegedly seen in Wallace’s company at a celebrity basketball tournament game at Cal State Dominguez Hills that afternoon and are believed to have also attended the industry party.

Combs, whose New York-based Bad Boy Entertainment this week dominated the nation’s pop album and single charts, adamantly denied hiring gang members as security. The 27-year-old executive said his company only employed off-duty California and New York police officers for protection. He provided The Times with copies of invoices for security.

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In an interview at Bad Boy’s New York office, Combs insisted that Wallace did not visit Compton on the day of his shooting nor on any of his trips to California during the year before his death.

Combs also complained that he and Wallace frequently observed what appeared to be undercover officers monitoring their movements for weeks before the shooting. “We had no idea why,” he said. “We figured, hey, if the government wants to waste taxpayers money following artists and entertainers like us around, well at least we might get a little free security out of it.”

Wallace, a burly former crack dealer from Brooklyn, was gunned down at 12:30 a.m. on March 9 in a brazen attack in front of hundreds of people.

He was sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle at a red light on Fairfax when a lone assassin in a dark sedan pulled up in the next lane. The man, dressed in a suit and bow tie, stuck a silver 9-millimeter handgun out the window and pumped at least seven rounds into Wallace’s passenger door at close range before speeding off.

“Not one word was spoken,” said rapper James “Lil’ Caesar” Lloyd, who was sitting in the backseat of Wallace’s vehicle. “I didn’t really get a good look, you know, just a quick glance as the car passed by. He was driving with his left hand and had to come across with the gun in his right hand. All I could see was that he was black and had a [receding] hairline. He had a bow tie on and a suit. The guy was already set the second he drove up. As fast you could turn around, he was just shooting up the car.”

Lloyd and Damion Butler said they hit the floor of the vehicle the second they realized they were being ambushed. Butler, who was sitting next to Lloyd in the backseat, said he could not see the assailant, but saw Wallace duck down swiftly to the left just before the bullets began to fly.

“Biggie ducked and stayed all the way down,” said Butler, who lives in New Jersey with Wallace’s mother and daughter. “If he had made it, I could see by the look on his face that he could tell you who the shooter was. But he didn’t have time to say a word. He didn’t say, ‘Ouch.’ He didn’t say, ‘Yo, look out!’ He didn’t say nothing. He just laid there looking at me in my face. He died in my arms.”

Butler, Lloyd and Combs said they did not believe that the shooting had anything to do with the much-hyped bicoastal feud in the rap community between Bad Boy and Los Angeles-based Death Row Records. They also discounted widespread speculation that Wallace’s killing was connected to the September slaying of rap star Tupac Shakur, who insulted Wallace, Combs, Lloyd and other East Coast rappers on his recordings.

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If the assassin was acting in retaliation for Shakur’s death, they asked, why not also try to murder Combs and Lloyd during the same drive-by?

Wallace’s friends said the rapper never told them that anyone had threatened his life or that he owed money to anybody. Still, all three men agreed that they believed the assailant had clearly targeted Wallace as his victim.

“I was right behind him in the backseat. But not one bullet hit my door,” Lloyd said. “Not one bullet hit any other window. Every single shot fired hit Big’s door. They was after him for some reason I don’t understand. I told the police, I said, ‘Man, I will do anything I got to do to catch that dude.’ We all want the police to get this guy.”