‘The Gangs of Zion’ by Ron Stallworth is the El Paso Matters Book Club’s Pick

El Paso native Ron Stallworth became one of the nation’s most famous police officers through Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” an Oscar-winning film adaptation of Stallworth’s book “Black Klansman.”

That film and book were about how Stallworth, then a young police officer in Colorado Springs, infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and helped foil planned cross burnings and other Klan terrorist acts.

Stallworth, who grew up in El Paso and returned to law enforcement after retiring, says people often asked him what became of him after the Klan investigation was dropped. The answer is in his new book, “The Gangs of Zion: A Black Cop’s Crusade in Mormon Country.”

The book—published by Legacy Lit, an imprint of Hachette Book Group—focuses on Stallworth’s final stop in his law enforcement career, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Stallworth arrived in 1986 and worked as a gang investigator for the Utah Department of Public Safety.

“The Gangs of Zion” is the El Paso Matters Book Club selection for September-October. The book club introduces readers to area authors. The club offers bimonthly book selections, book reviews, and author Q&As, as well as one-on-one conversations with authors.

You can join the bi-monthly club by clicking here.

Conservative, predominantly Mormon Utah isn’t the first place most people think of when they think of criminal gangs. And much of “The Gangs of Zion” is about the political and religious denial Stallworth faced when he tried to raise awareness that the Crips and Bloods street gangs had infiltrated Utah.

“I had to convince key groups in Utah society to accept what I and other law enforcement officials across the country already knew: members of the Los Angeles Crips and Bloods gangs were increasingly infiltrating the state, importing drugs and violence into the community,” Stallworth writes in the book’s introduction.

The rising popularity of gangsta rap music in the 1980s and 1990s is prominently featured in “The Gangs of Zion.”

“I also discovered what few others had noticed: that gangsta rap’s appeal to young individuals—the frustration with inequality expressed in its lyrics—transcends race and culture. I began an in-depth, ongoing investigation of gangsta rap and began to understand these kids: where they came from, what motivated them, what gangs they supported, and more,” Stallworth writes in the introduction.

Stallworth’s latest book is part memoir and offers more personal insights than Black Klansman, which was largely a police novel about an unusual investigation.

“Throughout my time in Utah and my career in general, I have often encountered people who could not accept that I was a Black man in law enforcement who could simultaneously uphold the values ​​of both my cultural identity and my professional role,” he writes in his introduction. “The longstanding distrust of law enforcement in minority communities exists for good reason, and I was understandably accused of being pro-police at the expense of other Black people and other racial minorities. The truth is that I was not just one thing. No one is ever just one thing.”