The Gangs of Zion: A Black Cop’s Crusade in Mormon Country

Stallworth follows up Black Klansman with another fascinating account of his undercover police work. In 1989, a decade after his infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs, Stallworth joined the Utah Department of Public Safety to help combat the state’s gang problem. Two years before Stallworth began his work in Utah, the LAPD had warned state officials that members of the Bloods and the Crips had started operations there; by the time Stallworth arrived, the rival gangs had set aside their differences to partner on crack cocaine sales in Salt Lake City. As Stallworth infiltrated the gangs with the help of a special task force, he discovered that Utah’s federally funded Job Corps was skimping on background checks for applicants, and thus inadvertently flooding the state with gang members. Stallworth wrings gripping drama from his fight to expose the holes in the program, which earned him pushback from community leaders and led him to testify before the U.S. Senate in 1995. Readers will be astounded. Agent: Sarah Passick, Park & Fine Literary. (Sept.)