The Firing of One Cop Uncovered a Scandal That Rocked a City

In March 2007, an Inglewood police officer named Brandon Beak was fired for misconduct. On the surface, it was a routine, if sordid, story of an officer's career ending in disgrace. But Beak’s termination was not an isolated incident; it was the first visible crack in the facade of a police department teetering on the brink of institutional collapse. The life-or-death stakes of this dysfunction were already clear: between 2003 and 2008, five of the 11 people shot and killed by Inglewood officers were unarmed. This single firing pulled back the curtain on a crisis so deep it would eventually trigger a federal investigation and a desperate, years-long attempt by the city to erase its own history.