Did
the LAPD's Chief Parker have Carter
followed by the FBI?
Carter
says so in The 16th Round -- but the LAPD
and the FBI didn't work together -- Carter's story is bogus
"As soon as
I'd checked into a motel... I received a phone call from Chief William
T. Parker of the Los Angeles Police, telling me I'd better get my ass
down to headquarters to register my ex-convict title before he sent some
of his boys over to get me.
"So you thought
you were sneaking into town on me, huh, Carter?" Chief Parker asked
smugly, when I finally got down to his office. He sounded very satisfied
with himself. "But we knew you were coming, boy; the FBI had you
pegged every foot of the way," he said. "You couldn't have
gotten into this city -- no way!" He was actually gloating.
"But he hadn't
fooled me at all," Carter wrote, explaining that he knew he had
been followed by a female agent with "a beautiful ass," because
he had spotted her at the airport, at the hotel, and that she was now
"trying -- and failing miserably -- to hide in (Parker's) office."
Can this story
be true?
In
1965, Chief Parker had over five thousand policemen serving under him.
How likely
is it that he would personally telephone Carter and meet with him just
to gloat that the FBI "knew he was coming?" Especially at a
time when he must have been preoccupied with the riots and was suffering
from a serious heart condition and was booked to go into the Mayo Clinic.
Carter wasn't an
activist. Parker didn't need the FBI to track Carter's movements.
If anybody in the police
station read the sports pages, they would have known Carter was coming
to LA for the match with Rodriguez. Carter didn't come to Los
Angeles to make speeches or lead marches, he came to box. (Although he
implies that he got "hung up" in the riots). So why would Parker
care if, or when, Carter got into town?
J. Edgar Hoover
didn't hire females as FBI agents. The FBI didn't hire female agents
until 1972, after Hoover died. And this supposed agent was so inept that
Carter spotted her following him every step of the way!
Carter may have
been required, as a condition of his bail on pending assault charges,
to notify the local authorities when he travelled. But did he have to
speak personally to the chief?
It turns out that
Chief Parker didn't and wouldn't work with the FBI. According to Daryl
Gates, who worked under Parker, J. Edgar Hoover and Parker disliked and
distrusted one another. Parker "simply ignored" Hoover and Hoover
"deeply resented" Parker. An FBI agent wouldn't have reported
to Parker, she would have reported to the FBI. Carter's story is exposed
as fiction.
The story is just
plain silly. But James Hirsch, Carter's biographer, repeats the story
of the gloating chief and the beautiful FBI agent. So did Penthouse
magazine.
On Watts: "With
every action there is an equal reaction. And with every act of brutality
the Negro resents and builds within himself a desire to return in time.
When you think of the lynchings, the hundreds of bombings in the South,
the church in Birmingham, the four little children killed, and no arrest!
Can you blame us if there is a time when he lapse into savagery because
we have been treated so savagely?" [L.A. resident and community leader,
Dr. Claude Hudson]
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