'Hard Core': U.S. attorney's debut novel reflects turmoil of 1992 L.A.

By Kurt Anthony Krug Legal News It wasn't much of a stretch for R. Michael Bullotta to extrapolate his experiences with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office when he was just starting out in 1992 into his debut novel, "Hard Core." "I worked in the Hard Core Gang Unit. There were so many homicides in L.A. in 1992 when I started. There was this surge of street gangs... This was on the heels of Rodney King Riots," recalled Bullotta, 44, of Rochester, referring to what is more popularly called the 1992 L.A. Riots or the South Central Riots. The unrest occurred in late April 1992 when four officers from the L.A. Police Department--three of whom were Caucasian--were acquitted in the 1991 videotaped beating of King, a black motorist. As a result, thousands of people in L.A. rioted over a period of six days. Widespread looting, assault--most prominently, the televised brutal beating of a Caucasian truck driver named Reginald Denny by four black rioters--arson, and murder occurred. Property damage cost approximately $1 billion, 53 people died--10 of whom shot by the authorities--and thousands more were injured. The National Guard was sent in to restore order. According to Bullotta, there were more than 2,500 homicides in L.A. County in 1992 vs. 392 murders in 2010. "It was such a really violent time there," Bullotta said. "There was this feeling of distrust with law enforcement. My first assignment was in Compton (a city in southern L.A. County), which has a very diverse population (that is predominantly) African American and Hispanic. Here, I was this white kid from Rochester... I was a fish out of water there. First of all, I didn't even know how to pronounce their names. I'd be looking for a Jesus Carrillo," he noted, pronouncing "Jesus" as in Jesus Christ rather than the Spanish pronunciation of the name with an "H." Bullotta continued: "What I learned really fast was having police officers as witnesses at that time in history had you at a disadvantage--there's a story in my book based on my first trial in Compton--we'd rather have any other witness say they saw a guy with a gun than a police officer. There was this presumption that they were lying--that was very unique for me." In "Hard Core" (Millverstead Publishing $14.95), Jordon Stowic, a newly-appointed prosecutor in Los Angeles who is originally from the Midwest, moves to L.A. in 1992. He eventually becomes entangled in Det. Juan Jose Ramirez's investigation that involves the murder of the officer's son, a crime void of promising leads. As a result of Jordan's involvement, he becomes a target of the gang responsible for this murder. "For the book, I tried to take my experiences as a gang prosecutor and write the quintessential legal thriller along the lines of my favorite novel, 'The Firm' (considered to be the definitive novel of the legal thriller genre by New York Times best-selling author John Grisham). Instead of having a new lawyer in a law firm, we have a new prosecutor intersecting with this veteran gang detective. From there, the whole legal thriller plot unravels," said Bullotta. One reviewer compared Bullotta to Grisham, which the first-time novelist considered an honor. "That's a phenomenal compliment. My goal was to write something like 'The Firm,' which is the gold standard for legal thrillers. For me, that set the bar," he said. An alumnus of Brother Rice High School in Birmingham, Bullotta earned his undergraduate degree in political science from Villanova University in Philadelphia and his juris doctorate in law from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. "I always wanted to be an actor," Bullotta related. "I always heard that lawyers are just frustrated actors. I liked the idea of being in front of people and performing. My dad actually sat me down one day and said when I was really little: 'There are three things you can do. You can be an engineer like your dad, but you have to like math.' I didn't really like math. 'You can be a doctor, but you have to like blood.' I was really scared of my own blood. 'Or you can be a lawyer, but you have to read a lot.' I like to read, so from a really young age I was thinking that's what I probably should do." Bullotta continued: "I was recruited out of Georgetown to the L.A. County District Attorney's Office. I think that was the only time they had a committee of interviewers go around the country to get a class of diverse folks from different areas of the country to be in the starting class of new D.A.s... I drove my dad's old Corvette across the country to L.A. I still have this tape, where I'd interview people along the way about the (1992) election, about current events--it was kind of fun. I got to see the country. If you've never driven across the country, it's something you should do just once." Bullotta worked in L.A. from 1992 to 2001, the last five years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office in L.A. He returned to Michigan in 2001, where he has worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit ever since, prosecuting public corruption cases. Two of his most prominent cases include Monica Conyers, the former Detroit City Council president pro tem who pleaded guilty in 2010 to bribery charges, and Kwame Kilpatrick, the former mayor of Detroit who was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in the aftermath of the infamous text message scandal. "I love my day job. This is the most fun you can to play cops and robbers," said Bullotta. "Writing is a wonderful creative outlet. It's the ultimate in creative exploration." A 10 percent donation from the proceeds of each book sold will be made to Forgotten Harvest, an organization that rescues surplus perishable food and delivers it to emergency food providers in the Metro Detroit area. "Hard Core" is also available for purchase in both paperback and electronic formats on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and Milversteadpublishing.com. Published: Tue, Nov 29, 2011

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