ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — At least one police officer and possibly as many as six acted as security guards for The Notorious B.I.G. and may have witnessed his slaying, the Los Angeles Times reported today.
However, none came forward to say they were there, including the one off-duty officer who was in a car directly behind the rapper, the paper said.
„If they were there all that time before, it just seems impossible to me that they didn’t see the incident,“ said Damion Butler, friend and road manager of the rapper whose real name was Christopher Wallace.
„Where did they go? They had to see it,“ he said.
The 24-year-old rapper, who also went by the stage name Biggie Smalls, was shot and killed March 9 as he sat in a car after the Soul Train Music awards. Several shots were fired from a car as a crowd of people left the ceremony, but no one provided a good description of the shooter. No arrests have been made.
In nearby Inglewood, Police Chief Alex Perez confirmed his department was investigating allegations that as many as six officers may have worked the night the rapper was slain.
Among them was the off-duty officer whose moonlighting stint was a violation of department policy, the Times said.
Undercover officers from New York were also in the vicinity during the shooting as part of a federal investigation of criminals allegedly affiliated with the rapper’s record company, Bad Boy Entertainment, the paper said, citing unidentified sources.
The Justice Department, as well as the Los Angeles and New York police departments, declined to comment, the newspaper said.
