David Mack (police officer)

As an athlete, David Mack ran track for Locke High School and was champion at the CIF California State Meet at 880 yards for two years in a row.[1] He earned a scholarship to the University of Oregon, where he ran track. After finishing sixth in the Olympic Trials in 1980,[2] he qualified for the United States national team, running the 800 metres in the 1983 World Championships in Athletics.[3]

Mack won three Pac-10 conference titles and an NCAA championship in the 800 meters. His personal best time of one minute, 43.35 seconds is the fifth fastest American in history.[4] A leg injury kept him out of the 1984 Summer Olympics and, after a final appearance at the 1987 World Championships in Athletics, the injury ultimately cut short his track career.[5]

Mack joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1988. He first worked as a patrol officer and then as an undercover narcotics officer. Mack next moved to a late shift in West Los Angeles in 1990, where he began a relationship with Errolyn Romero, a nineteen-year-old ticket taker at the Baldwin Theatre. Mack was awarded the LAPD Medal for Heroism in 1993 for shooting a drug dealer who reportedly threatened his partner, Rafael "Ray" Pérez, with a gun during an undercover drug operation.[5]

In August 1997, Romero became employed at a Bank of America branch near the University of Southern California campus. On November 6, 1997, Mack entered the bank and claimed he wanted to access his safe deposit box. Romero admitted him to the secure area, where he threw her to the floor and robbed the vault of $722,000.

In her capacity as branch assistant manager, Romero had ordered double the usual amount of cash to be on hand at the bank on the day of the robbery. After one month of investigation, Romero confessed to her role in the crime and implicated Mack as the mastermind.[6] He was arrested in December 1997. His two accomplices were never caught.[5][7]

Mack was sentenced to fourteen years and three months in prison and has never revealed the whereabouts of the money.[8] He was released on May 14, 2010.[9][10]

According to the Tupac documentary entitled 'Assassination: Battle For Compton', citing official legal documents, a reliable jail informant by the name of Ken Boagni, who befriended Rafael Perez in prison, stated Perez claimed the money stolen in the bank robbery was intended to go to Harry Billups, also known as Amir Muhammed, who was friends with Mack, for allegedly carrying out the murder of late rapper Christopher Wallace, also known as Biggie Smalls because Billups was not paid in full by his contractors, namely Reggie Wright Jr. and David Kenner, because he failed to also murder Sean Combs, the second intended target. Boagni claimed both Perez and Mack were involved in the murder of Wallace, but Billups was the shooter.

In April 2007, the estate of Christopher Wallace, a rapper who performed under the name The Notorious B.I.G., filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, which also named Mack, Pérez, and Nino Durden as defendants.

The lawsuit alleged that the officers conspired to murder Wallace, and that Pérez and Mack were present the night of the drive-by shooting which claimed his life on March 9, 1997.[11] In 2010, the Wallace family voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit and their claims against the city and the officers.[12]

• Sullivan, Randall (2002). LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records' Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 978-0-87113-838-5.
• Scott, Cathy (2002). The Killing of Tupac Shakur (2nd ed.). Nevada: Huntington Press. ISBN 978-0-929712-20-8.
• Scott, Cathy (2000). The Murder of Biggie Smalls. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-26620-2.

• David Mack at World Athletics