Books
The System

by Ryan Gattis
MCD, December 2020, $28

It’s so solemn and officious, they ought to have the guy from Law & Order narrating the preface…

“In the United States, the term criminal justice system refers to the institutions through which an accused offender must pass—until the accusations are either dismissed or proven, and punishment is assessed and completed,” and winds up a page-and-a-half later (after a brief history of California’s prison gangs who “direct the criminal activities of street gangs from behind bars”) with…

“This is the story of one such crime—those accused of it, those who witnessed it, the law enforcement who investigated it, the lawyers who prosecuted and defended it, and those left behind on the outside.”

All that’s missing is the two-note musical squonk.

Fortunately, Ryan Gattis is after bigger game, and once the po-faced intro wraps up, we’re in for a rollicking ride. Set in Los Angeles in 1993, this is an entertaining and eye-popping, Bonfire of the Vanities-style look at “one such crime,” the murder of dope dealer Scrappy, gunned down outside her mother’s Long Beach home, and the subsequent Greek chorus of memorable characters, the righteous and the wronged, who get caught up in the case. Everybody’s given a chance to tell their own stories, in their own voices, and oh what voices! Angry, frightened, self-serving and, perhaps most heartbreaking of all, bewildered. A glossary is helpfully provided for those of us who failed Homie 101 or Advanced Shyster, but it’s the sheer humanity and opposing world views that make this book such a treat.

Such an approach could easily falter, but Gattis never stumbles, confidently leaping from viewpoint to viewpoint, letting the characters speak for themselves, studding the action with just enough reproduced arrest warrants, affidavits, and court transcripts to make 87th Precinct fans feel right at home.

But it’s the first-person bloviations of the passengers on this voyage of the damned that make this trip really worth your while. No dry, stat-choked screed, this is a blow-by-blow account, drenched with humanity, that asks readers to simply bear witness to the people on this journey, and maybe, just maybe, try to understand.

Most pointedly, Dreamer, the young gang member fingered for the crime by Augie, a heroin addict who witnessed the murder. Augie was pressured by his racist parole officer Phillip Petrillo, who wants Dreamer put away so he can put the move on his “tasty treat” girlfriend, “good girl” Angela, whose cousin, the mercurial Wizard, is a big shot gangbanger, rapper wannabe, and Dreamer’s best friend. And that’s just the beginning.

As we follow Dreamer as he’s sucked into a broken criminal justice system straight outta Kafka, it becomes clear that, in this year of our discontent, we may not have come very far after all.

Forget 1993. This story, as compelling as it is at times painful, could have been ripped from today’s headlines.

Or tomorrow’s.

Kevin Burton Smith
Teri Duerr
7099
Gattis
December 2020
the-system
28
MCD