RON BAILEY

In Episode 1, journalist Lennie Grimaldi  started to lay the foundation as to the story of police officer Billy Chase, and also to explain  the mechanics of a time and place which is Bridgeport, Connecticut, an American industrial city in the 1980s. I think almost everyone in America has heard the terminology “crack cocaine” but I would be curious to know how many people truly understand how it completely shifted the criminal underworld of every major American city. Each geographic location, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York had these crack cocaine crews that took over pockets of geography. It was inside communities where the police went from being in control to wave of violence and decimation that is still being reconciled to this day. For this story, I needed to understand the complexities of Billy Chase, a police officer who chose a dangerous path and in the process lost his mind and his soul, but for me, Billy Chase’s story resonates because it truly gets inside the gears of Bridgeport, and a police department that would send minority officers onto the frontlines, yet at the precinct didn’t have any respect….. Ron Bailey, worked with Billy Chase inside the Bridgeport Police Department, he also worked undercover inside neighborhoods like Father Panik Village, war zones, he also was a close friend of Billy, maybe the closest……. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices