In Laguna Beach, however, his mother learned that her boyfriend had been arrested; she decided Orange County was as good a place to live as any. Staying in a tent, Kading became increasingly desperate for stability. At age 13, he finally found it with the family of his best friend, whose father was a lieutenant with the Orange County Sheriff's Department. By the time Kading graduated from high school, he was calling his friend's father "Dad," and at 18 he signed up with the Sheriff's Department. Two years later, Kading moved north, where he became a rising star at LAPD.
Kading's big break came in 2003, when he was assigned to a task force of federal and local officers investigating George Torres, Numero Uno supermarket magnate and an alleged drug kingpin. Kading's job was to look into several murders possibly connected to Torres. He became indispensable to the prosecution when he turned up two of Torres' associates, convicted criminals Derrick Smith and Raul Del Real, who were in prison and willing to testify. The testimony from the star witnesses helped the U.S. Attorney's Office file a raft of charges against Torres, and hot shot Kading was the toast of the LAPD.
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Former LAPD officer Greg Kading
PHOTO BY HO
Christopher Wallace, aka Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls
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So much so, says Kading, that in July 2006 he was handpicked to lead the Biggie Smalls murder investigation. In the three years he worked that case, he was keeping tabs on Smith and Del Real in preparation for Torres' trial in 2009.
In what seemed like an instant, however, Kading went from the top of the world to the depths of a very public hell. Kading's reputation almost certainly will become an issue upon Murder Rap's publication.
In April 2009, a jury convicted Torres on 50 counts, including conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering and bribery. But it wouldn't last. Two months later, Federal Judge Stephen Wilson issued a shocking ruling, throwing out the verdicts. He cited the prosecution's failure to disclose evidence to the defense, such as phone calls between Kading and Smith and between Kading and Del Real, as well as his police notebooks.
Wilson publicly singled out Kading for making what appeared to be inappropriate promises of leniency and favors to the two witnesses.
Immediately, the media — including L.A. Weekly — painted Kading as a rogue cop. He says his supervisors quietly informed him that he could take any assignment he wanted but was being removed from the Biggie Smalls murder case while a secret Internal Affairs investigation was conducted into his actions in the Numero Uno case.
It now appears that Kading was unfairly blamed by Judge Wilson and the media. LAPD took nearly a year to complete its investigation of Kading. According to that April 14, 2010, Internal Affairs report, reviewed by L.A. Weekly, Kading was not to blame for wrongdoing that caused Judge Wilson to overturn Torres' conviction.
"Although Kading was one of the focal points of the defense's argument, the outrageous misconduct referred to in [Judge Wilson's] motion was related to items of discovery that the government did not provide to the defense," the report states. In other words, LAPD found it was not Kading's behavior but that of the U.S. Attorney's Office that botched the Numero Uno–George Torres case.
During the yearlong internal LAPD probe of his actions, Kading felt betrayed and heartbroken. He had been wrongly accused of the U.S. Attorney's errors, and he had already elicited two confessions that put him on the brink of solving Shakur's and Smalls' murders — yet had been yanked from the case.
According to that Internal Affairs report, Kading's alleged misstatements on a search affidavit in the Numero Uno case were trivial and unrelated to Wilson overturning Torres' conviction. Kading used the word "procedure" for "policy" when quoting someone in the affidavit and he changed an "or" to an "and." LAPD also determined there was "absolutely no evidence" that Kading "intentionally or maliciously misrepresented material facts," and, further, that Kading was "attacked by high-priced attorneys and was left virtually unsupported by the Assistant U.S. Attorney."
Kading now says the blame fell squarely upon the U.S. Attorney's Office and prosecutor Tim Searight. Searight declined to comment to the Weekly.
Most of Judge Wilson's key attacks upon the prosecutors did not blame Kading, even if much of the media coverage (including this paper's) tended to paint Kading as a villain.
Wilson admonished Searight, not Kading, for failing to collect all available recordings of phone calls between Kading and Derrick Smith at a Santa Ana jail. The defense later obtained many older phone recordings on its own, and Wilson made clear it was the U.S. Attorney's fault. "The prosecution basically got caught doing something they didn't know was wrong, but the judge ruled it a discovery violation," Kading says.
Kading had properly handed his notebooks of interviews to the prosecution. But it was Searight who decided not to give them to Torres' lawyers. Again, the defense attorney found out, and again, Wilson hammered Searight.
Also, the U.S. Attorney's Office redacted everything in Kading's journals that was not pertinent to Torres, but the defense found blacked-out entries that did relate to Torres. For the third time, Wilson determined that a discovery violation had occurred.