The monster and the police: Dexter to Hobbes

Abstract

On 25 February 2002, Rafael Perez, a former officer of the LAPD’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums unit (CRASH), appeared in court accused of various crimes: covering up a bank robbery, shooting and framing an innocent citizen, stealing and selling cocaine from evidence lockers, being a member of the Los Angeles gang called the Bloods, and murdering the rapper The Notorious B.I.G. In his statement to the court he pointed out that above the threshold of doors that lead to CRASH offices there are philosophical mottos such as ‘Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall’ and ‘We intimidate those who intimidate others’. Perez commented: ‘To those mottos, I offer this: “Whoever chases monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself.”’