CRIMINAL MINDED MEDIA: SUPER FEED

In creating the prospect, I started to realize that while I am vastly interested in tracking the rise of Wemby, and seeing what happens to a player that has already been anointed, the premise of the Prospect, keeps bringing up memories of all my basketball experiences, have given me the ability to track stories that are adjacent to the Wemby journey that cross-over into my thoughts on the modern d...

Vito Collucci was an undercover drug investigator who like Billy Chase was undercover inside drug organizations and the Mafia in Connecticut, he rubbed elbows with the same corrupt cops, politicians and gangsters that Billy Chase was bringing down. Vito decided to go after the systemic corruption inside Connecticut Police Departments who had been infiltrated by the Gambino Crime Family. His invest...

As my persistence to tell the story of the Hip-Hop Cops increased, my “fixers” — Steve Lobel and Pistol Pete, delivered on their promise to secure me interview subjects. What sounded good in theory, was in reality far different, as their strategy was to merely accost artists and executives pretty much anywhere—at studios, at parties, concerts, on the street, back alleys—they even spotted Kanye Wes...

Immediately after the bomb went off under Don Bolles’ Datsun, chaos ruled - at the scene, the Phoenix Police Department, the Arizona Republic & the Bolles home. Those early hours, an entire city scrambled to come to grips with the savage attack, and who might be involved. Bolles was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital where he was in surgery for 5 hours and had his right leg amputated above the knee. H...

In the journey of Victor Wembayama and whether he will become the NBA’s next greatest star or prospect, I stumbled across an article in New York Magazine, that I feel is very relevant to tracking Wemby’s journey. While the NBA news cycle was in overdrive this week, all around the trade of Kevin Durant to Phoenix, and Kyrie Irving to Dallas, I started to think about the larger NBA environment, and...

With the story we are telling, the elements that resonate as it pertains to Billy Chase, was that the deeper he got undercover, the more he started to unravel mentally. In a City like Bridgeport, Billy had targets, he had prey that he wanted to get at all costs. One of those targets was Mariano Sanchez, the leader of the powerful Number 1 Family. In order to understand the Number 1 Family and in o...

As I have started the introspective study of my life since the documentary I created 17 years ago, I don’t want to stray from my initial inspiration that catapulted me into my fascination with law enforcement and Hip-Hop, but more specifically, the nuances, perception, and uneven legal ground created by criminal prosecutors using lyrics, and their visuals, to pursue their criminal cases.  Like the...

When discussing the killing of Don Bolles, maybe the most important question is this – who was Don Bolles and what was he investigating in the years leading up to his murder? While he was beloved by his readers, subjects of his stories had a vastly different opinion of the man. So, what were the stories he wrote & more importantly, who were some of the people who may have wanted payback for having...

When I was in High school and obsessed with basketball, Street and Smith’s magazine used to put out an issue every year where it listed the top 100 high school basketball players in the country, I can remember scouring it for my name. My junior year, I was sent to the prestigious Five Star Basketball Camp, Five Star at that time was the premiere destination during the summer for any high school ba...

In his newly assigned position in the Special Services Division of the Bridgeport Police Department, Billy Chase interfaced on a number of cases with federal law enforcement officials, Billy was a cop in Bridgeport where advanced training was as common as a crime-less day. How does an undercover with no formalized training get started? In Billy’s case it was go where you know best – the streets. B...

If you have been listening in, a New York Times article about rap lyrics that I read by a pool in the Spring of 2022, really brought me back 17 years when I decided to explore the origins of a secret Hip-Hop dossier, and why the NYPD and federal government wanted to surveil, track, arrest  and indict Hip-Hop Superstars.   The way I chose to tell my story was in the form of a documentary I called R...

When looking at the Bolles case, it’s vitally important to reconstruct the landscape of Arizona at the time of his murder. In the spirit of Don Bolles’ most celebrated investigative series - The Menace Within -we look at the mafia’s infiltration of the state with the assistance of legendary journalist Don Devereux, who spent decades investigating Bolles’ murder & organized crime in the valley. Lea...

With the news, or let’s call  it the anointing of Victor Wembanyama as the next Jesus Shuttlesworth,  I needed to go in search of some more information, my fascination of this topic came from a few places mainly The Ringer and ESPN,  and Bill Simmons, who I have grown to listen to quite a lot, but obviously there are many things I don’t know about Wemby, and we need a baseline to start from, the k...

In Episode 1, journalist Lennie Grimaldi  started to lay the foundation as to the story of police officer Billy Chase, and also to explain  the mechanics of a time and place which is Bridgeport, Connecticut, an American industrial city in the 1980s. I think almost everyone in America has heard the terminology “crack cocaine” but I would be curious to know how many people truly understand how it co...

In Episode one, I talked about securing a weird dossier that was compiled by federal and state law enforcement to track Hip-Hop superstars, and their entourages, associates, and record labels. With the book in hand as a young journalist, I decided the best route to tell the story of the book was to actually make a documentary, but I had no experience, no money, and I didn’t know anyone inside the...

In today’s world across the globe, we read stories about journalists being killed in the Ukraine, or a headline of a Mexican reporter who was gunned down by a Mexican drug cartel. Anytime a journalist is killed doing their job, it is an assault on the freedom of the press, it is an assault on the truth. In the world today via social media we have been desensitized to violence in many forms, our TV...

Once-in-a-lifetime talent is a phrase seldomly used inside NBA circles; Lebron, Kobe, Luka, Durant — all players that have moved the needle on the basketball court and inside popular culture. The Prospect is an audio documentary series that will begin by tracking the story of what many call the best PROSPECT to ever play the game of basketball — a native of France — Victor Wembanyama. The Prospect...

Billy Chase could be killed at any moment. He was arguably the finest Undercover Cop inside the War on Drugs in Connecticut. He produced big numbers and put away big-time dealers. To them, Billy Chase is not just any undercover cop. He grew up in their neighborhood, went to school with them, and has had the audacity to infiltrate their drug world. Billy Chase was also an outcast in his own racist...

I grew up in the confines of suburban Norwalk, Connecticut, a fan of the hip hop music of Public Enemy, KRS One and Rakim. In 1994, at the age of 18, I left to pursue an interest in journalism and New York University. I was always fascinated by the rumors I heard surrounding hip hop culture, about murder, extortion, the laundering of drug money, the connection between criminal activity and the mus...