BY BRENT HOPKINS
LA Daily News
LOS ANGELES — Officer Will Beall stands in the concrete chasm of the Los Angeles River, breathing in the graffiti, dead animals and broken toys. He smiles at the beauty.
As a Los Angeles Police Department gang investigator, he came to this vividly rotten spot beneath the Olympic Boulevard bridge to meet a friendly snitch for leads on a case.
As an author, he re-sketched the scene with horse-mounted neo-Nazis, snipers, a rookie with a rare flash of conscience and dirty dealing coppers itching to arm themselves with rockets.
Here, the spray-painted tags tower taller than a man and a baby stroller lies abandoned, impaled on a fence. As Beall’s leather shoes tread carefully around the algae and castoffs of the city, his two worlds collide. . .Full Story