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From HipHopandPolitics.com

By Davey D.

On Monday, May 4th, Freeway Ricky Ross will finally be released from prison after serving 20 years for being a “drug kingpin.”  The real Ricky Ross oversaw a Los Angeles based multi-state drug operation in the early 1980’s, which earned upwards of $2 million dollars per day at its height.

After L.A.P.D. set up a sting operation to bring him down (The Freeway Taskforce), Ricky finally turned himself in, weeks after a rogue police officer attempted to set him up and murder him in an alley.  Ricky was sentenced to prison and released in 1996.  After 6 months, his former cocaine distributor, who was working for the CIA (unbeknownst to Ricky), asked Ricky for a favor—it turned out to be a set up, and in 1996, Ricky Ross was sentenced to life in prison for orchestrating the purchase of over 100 kilos of cocaine from an undercover federal agent.

Ross’ sentence was later reduced through appeals and after a series of explosive articles by the late Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb wrote a series titled “Dark Alliance” for the San Jose Mercury News, which exposed the C.I.A.’s role in importing cocaine into black communities to fund Sandinistas in El Salvador, as part of the Iran-Contra scandal.

That series turned into the best-selling book, “Dark Alliance,” that blew the lid off of the alleged CIA complicity in the importation of cocaine into the US, creating the exceptionally profitable, and damaging, crack cocaine epidemic spread through many inner city neighborhoods.  Congressional Hearings, in the late-90s, found the book’s facts to be true.

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Watch a Documentary on the Real Rick Ross

Check Out The Real Rick Ross Pictures