Above all, he remembers the boots the cops wore after they kicked down the door of his mother’s condominium. They yanked him away from bed and a deep sleep, 12 gang cops in riot gear looking out the room of a tall-for-his-age 10-year-old named Tionne Tisdale. "The place is it?" they yelled, manhandling Tionne till they realized he was solely a baby. In his terror and confusion, Tionne stared at their jackboots, considering, "How’d I not hear these on the steps?" Sixteen years later, that query nonetheless haunts him when he wakes, in a delicate panic, at 5 a.m.
Contained in the Battle for the Soul of the LAPD
