Tuesday 9 August 2022 02:37 AM 'Boss of bosses' Crips leader, 56, who was with the LA gang from age SIX is ... trends now
A 'boss of bosses' of the Los Angeles-based Crips gang who began ascending the ranks when he was six years old has been sentenced to 35 years in federal prison.
Paul 'Lil Doc' Wallace, 56, was sentenced for a racketeering conspiracy, which included the 2014 murder of a rival gang member shot dead while he was washing his car.
Wallace has been in prison since 2020.
His supporters, some of whom testified in his defense, argued that Wallace was reformed and had renounced violence. They said he played an instrumental role in arranging a truce between his gang, the East Coast Crips, based on the east of LA's South Side, and the Mexican-American Florencia 13 gang, who the ECC had battled for control of drug trafficking in their district.
But prosecutors said he was unrepentant, boasting about killing people and arranging the stabbing of a rival inmate in 2021. They also pointed to YouTube clips in which he told of torturing dogs.
'As a 'triple OG,' a 'big homie,' and the 'boss of bosses,' defendant could order violence and commit violence with impunity,' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Chemerinsky, deputy chief of the Los Angeles office's Violent and Organized Crime Section.
'And this is exactly what he did.'
Paul 'Lil Doc' Wallace, 56, was sentenced to 35 years in prison by a LA judge on Friday
Pastor Shep Crawford and LA CAN founder Pete White address the crowd at The Help Give Care Foundation in June 2019. Crawford appealed to the judge on Wallace's behalf during sentencing, saying Wallace was a reformed character who worked for the good of the community - but prosecutors said he was unrepentant and a skilled liar
Wallace was born in Vivian, Louisiana - a remote rural town near the Texas border, 30 miles north of Shreveport, according to documents obtained by Law & Crime.
His mother found out their father was married and had another family, and so she and her seven children moved to Los Angeles.
Wallace's lawyers said the move came 'at a time when the Crips and Bloods were beginning to form and the crack epidemic was in its infancy.'
Wallace's mother worked long hours, with older siblings taking care of the younger - and Wallace increasingly drawn to the expanding gang life that dominated the poor areas of south central Los Angeles in the 1970s.
Aged six, he began hanging out with gang members - sometimes riding around on the handlebars of their bikes.
He was officially initiated into the East Coast Crips in the 1970s, joining one of the largest African-American gangs at the time, which was locked into a rivalry with the Bloods and their subsets.
Wallace was known as Lil' Doc Thone.
Aged 16 he was shot seven times, and then again in the same year, and was first convicted on firearms charges when he was 19.
Wallace is seen in his younger days. He was around gang members from the age of six, and was shot seven times aged 16 - and again later that year
He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 1989 for a drive-by shooting, and went on to rack up multiple weapons charges and at least two more stints in prison.
He was convicted again in 1996 of another weapons possession charge while still in prison, and in 2016 was convicted of federal firearms offenses.
Wallace's second and final federal case was
