Detective John Skaggs was a homicide detective for many years in the South Bureau, cutting his teeth during one of the most violent periods in Los Angeles’s history. Skaggs grew up in California; he was a gifted athlete and a neat, conscious, responsible young man. He followed his father into the police force after college bored him, eventually finding his way to homicide; curiously, although he made homicide his life’s work, he viewed it more as a responsibility than as a passion. Skaggs is tall and stoic, calm but forceful. He was known among colleagues and residents of South Central as an empathetic, diligent detective who was very good at his job, some years pushing a 100% clearance rate. As of the writing of Ghettoside, Skaggs was heading up a new West Bureau. 

Wallace “Wally” Tennelle was a homicide detective in the South Bureau; it is Wally’s son Bryant’s murder that is the ostensible subject of the book. Wally moved to Los Angeles as a kid; after a stint in the Marines, he found his way to police work, learning his craft as a homicide detective during the so-called “Big Years,” the decade prior to Skaggs; he eventually took a promotion to a supervisory position, then a “demotion” into a lower-ranked position in the elite Robbery-Homicide Division (RHD).