Bryant is referring to "K Boose," real name Jonathan Leon Toliver, a reputed member of the Gerson Park Kingsmen charged with 24 counts of murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
"I really don't have much to say about what they're saying," Bryant says. "He's good people."
They—cops—think otherwise. Authorities claim Toliver—lengthy rap sheet including federal murder charges for the September 13, 2004 shooting of 20-year-old Gilbert Henry—is the black-clad, bandana-over-his-face man on Hood 2 Hood palming a Glock 17 and warning would-be neighborhood trespassers, "they come around here, this is what they gonna get."
With Toliver in custody, Metro has turned its attention on his cohorts, most of whom didn't conceal their identities on the 2005 DVD. After all, it's not every day that thugs, pumped up on thuggish bravura, tell on themselves for the whole world to see.
"It's real stupid to go on television and brag like this," says Detective B.J. Plaskett, his voice oozing Noo Yawk—attitudinal, chip-on-the-shoulderish. Plaskett works intelligence and operations for Metro's Gang Crimes Bureau and hadn't seen Hood 2 Hood until the Weekly loaned him a copy.
We watch inside the conference room of Metro's gang unit. Throughout the Vegas segment, he shakes his head in slack-jawed disbelief at:
• The thugs' Warholian audacity. The scene opens with a young man, pick axe resting in his right shoulder, leading you into a dilapidated house where young toughs boast about their street names and affiliations. Plaskett jots them down on a piece of brown paper.
• The imperial arrogance of the guy holding a bag of what appears to be marijuana and bragging that he has the "bombest weed on the block."
• The 17-year-old who fires two shots from what appears to be a revolver.
"Now you've just committed a crime," says Plaskett, incredulous.
• Thugs embracing the reality show/DVD craze. But it comes as little surprise to gang unit Lt. Brian Evans, who says the DVD market is filled with self-styled documentaries of ghetto life. Everyone thinks their neighborhood is the roughest, their thugs the grimiest—the DVD refers to the neighborhoods as the "crimiest" in America—their drugs the most addictive, so what better way to prove it than offering a sneak peek? That misguided sense of posterity, while creating mini-celebrities of some of those profiled (Guce, who appears in the Bay Area segment of Hood 2 Hood, received calls from rappers like Fabulous and Lil Wayne, according to an East Bay Express article), has also tipped off cops.
In the segment on Compton, some Bloods from MOB Piru (Money Over Bitches)—the purported gang of rap mogul and former UNLV defensive end Marion "Suge" Knight; the back part of the DVD touts visits to the hoods of rappers like Jay-Z and Eminem—tacitly admit to murdering an offending Crip. Identifying himself as "Young Jig," the young man in the Vegas segment says he killed the person who shot him.
"We don't know if all of what they are saying in the DVD is true. People tend to start sensationalizing things when they're in front of the cameras," Evans says. "It's not the brightest thing to get in front of the camera and talk about the things you did. The guy with his face covered probably did some of the things that he claimed."
That guy? Toliver.
But the search is on for some of Toliver's cohorts. Cops recently visited the home of one of the young men on the DVD, only to find out he hasn't been home in two weeks. "His parents are concerned about where he's at," Evans says. Finding them is one thing, prosecuting them, another. Authorities are unclear if they can prosecute the incidents committed on television.
"There are a lot of questions: Which house were they in? What gun was used? Was he [the 17-year-old] shooting into a wall?" Plaskett says. "It could be a waste of resources [trying to prosecute someone for admitting knowledge of murder and drive-by shootings or for showing drugs]. The first thing a defense attorney might say is, where is the marijuana? We could explore this if the person has been a major cause of trouble or is currently in trouble but we need something to go on."
As far as Bryant is concerned, there's nothing to pursue. What's on the DVD isn't what you think. "They were acting and everything in there was props," says Bryant, who spent 18 months traversing the country and staying in rough neighborhoods to get his footage. "I don't know how they can use acting and props in the courtroom." Counters Evans: "There are guys in the video who we have identified in our databases as being associated with street gangs."
No matter how it plays out—Bryant wishes the best for everyone on the Vegas portion; "cool dudes," he calls them—he's already moved on to the next project, chronicling ghetto life overseas. Travels to hoods in Kingston, Jamaica, London and Liberia, Africa, among other places, have made him oddly appreciative of American ghettoes. "It made me realize that in America, we have it better than most people," he says. "We had people going to bat for us like [Martin Luther King Jr.]. It makes you respect King and everyone else for fighting for us. But man, in these third-world joints, it's real serious. Anything and everything goes."