His presence filled a city block.
It wasn't that Taylor Trump was physically huge -- he was 5 feet, 10 inches and 260 pounds. It wasn't even the range of his avocations, the way he could savor discussing Buddhist and Hindu philosophers one day and swing a crack deal the next.
It was that Trump was comfortable in his own skin, even when he had absolutely no right to be. Even on a hot summer night when trouble lay straight ahead.
As he walked down N. 4th Street in downtown Minneapolis, FBI agents focused cameras on him from afar. His underclothing was laced with their surveillance wire. A lot was riding on what he was about to do.
With national standing in the Gangster Disciples gang, Trump was used to maneuvering through dicey situations.
But now he was trapped. It was August 2007, and federal prosecutors knew they had enough pinned on him to send Trump away for more than 20 years. They had forced his cooperation in a complex federal corruption case with serious implications if even half of what Trump and another informant claimed turned out to be true: Minneapolis cops allegedly taking bribes to provide inside police information to gang members, who paid them off with cash and prostitutes.
The Star Tribune, through confidential police and court documents, has retraced the inner workings of that public corruption probe from its origins on the streets of Minneapolis in late 2006. Dozens of interviews were conducted with police officials and sources close to the investigation.
When Police Chief Tim Dolan was sworn in on Jan. 9, 2007, he took over the city's largest department and a budget that has grown to $135 million, vowing to return "pride to the patch" and assure the public that the 900 sworn officers patrolling the city were beyond reproach.