| Dennis Price | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Vital statistics | |
| Name | Dennis Price |
| Profession | Drug trafficker Youth Minister at Salvation Community Church |
| Gender | Male |
| Notability | Ran a drug trafficking operation out of his brother's church |
| Played by | Arjay Smith |
| First appearance | “Hindsight, Part 1” |
| Latest appearance | “Hindsight, Part 5” |
Dennis "Klip" Price is the younger brother of Daniel Price and a drug trafficker operating out of the Salvation Community Church.
History[]
Dennis grew up with his older brother Daniel in the territory of the 28th Street Bloods. Like Daniel, Dennis joined the gang, getting the nickname of Klip. He had encounters with Detective Stephanie Dunn who would state years later that she knew Dennis and that he was a snake charmer that couldn't be trusted. She would further state that Dennis always had good answers for questions.
In 2004, when Dennis wasn't even twenty yet, Daniel murdered Officer Malcolm Reese while robbing a flower shop alongside Emile Fisher. From jail, following his arrest, Daniel ordered Dennis to get rid of the getaway car so that there would be one less piece of evidence against him. On the recommendation of Emile, Dennis took the getaway car to Greg "Buddha" Mann who ran a chop shop.
When he arrived, Emile and his girlfriend Tamika Weaver, who had been in the car during the murder, were arguing about where Emile had dropped the murder weapon. Dennis promised to recover the gun in their own time and asked Buddha to get rid of the car. However, Buddha refused due to the car being used in the murder of a cop. Dennis forced Buddha to destroy the car at gunpoint, promising that they would work together again if he did.
During Daniel's trial, Dennis did not attend in support of his brother which was noted in the Sheriff's Department report on who was at the trial on which days. Instead, Dennis used the fact that Daniel was out of the picture to take over the 28th Street Bloods for himself. Dennis would later state that Daniel's arrest was the best thing that ever happened to him because it gave Dennis control over the gang.
Eventually, due to the murders of DDA Rachel Gray and her bodyguard Eric Dunn with Daniel's Uzi during the trial as well as the perjury of Detective Mark Hickman, Daniel was acquitted of Officer Reese's murder. Though Dennis was suspected of being involved in what became known as the Reese Murders, he had family-related alibis for all three murders. Though Daniel was acquitted, he had found religion in prison and got out of the gang life, allowing Dennis to retain control of the gang. He ended up with four arrests ending in 2009 with three assaults and one weapons possession. Following this, Dennis had no further run-ins with the police.
After Dennis gained control of the 28th Street Bloods, he began setting up a drug trafficking operation selling heroin. Once Daniel became the pastor of the Salvation Community Church, Dennis became the Youth Minister and officially gave up the gang life for religion alongside his brother. In reality, while Daniel's religious conversion was genuine, Dennis' was not. Instead, Dennis used the church as the base of his drug operation, using the church's taco truck to deliver the drugs and then hiding them in the altar. Dennis' operation gave him great power over both the Bloods and their rivals the Diablos. As part of his operation, Dennis gave Buddha cars that were charitably donated to the church for resale and had Buddha add secret compartments for hiding drugs.
While the police were aware of the drug trafficking, they could never prove it or get a warrant to search the church. The police also believed Daniel to be behind the operation due to his history with them. To keep his operation running, Dennis made sure the church got ten percent of his profits in the guise of charitable donations so that Daniel would not get suspicious. To help cover his operation, Dennis hired lawyer Peter Goldman to represent his drug dealers. Over the course of six months, Dennis called Goldman to represent seven of his dealers, including Jon Barnes, in court following their arrests.
In 2016, Tamika Weaver was murdered with the Uzi from the Reese Murders. At the crime scene, Dennis argued with Detective Julio Sanchez about the police's response time after Tamika was shot. Dennis also attended Daniel's press conference calling for the gangs to stand down and demanding answers from the LAPD for their slow response time. Though the LAPD expected a gang war following Tamika's murder, Dennis secretly used his influence over the Bloods and the Diablos to prevent one.
Daniel was eventually called down to the Major Crimes Division of the LAPD with Goldman to discuss a search of his church. Learning of this, Dennis rented several motel rooms with his credit card and entered the church with several of the Bloods to remove the heroin from the altar. Dennis and the Bloods managed to remove the heroin observed by Mark Hickman before the police arrived to search the church with drug dogs, having obtained Daniel's consent. Though Dennis had succeeded in removing all of the drugs, the Uzi from the murders was planted in its place.
A few days into the investigation of Tamika's murder, the police noticed that Dennis was absent from his brother's trial and were immediately suspicious. Though Dennis had alibis at the time of the murders, they were all family-related so the detectives realized that his family could just be covering for him. Dennis was called into Major Crimes where he was interrogated by Detective Julio Sanchez and Lieutenant Louie Provenza. Though Dennis admitted that he and Daniel weren't good people in the past, he insisted that they have both changed and denied that he's Klip anymore anytime someone called him that.
Dennis acted mainly hostile and belligerent during the interrogation, admitting that Tamika struggled due to her drug dealing boyfriend, but that she also never wanted for anything. Dennis eventually realized that the LAPD suspected him of killing Tamika when Provenza asked for his alibis and about the drug dogs leading them to the altar and refused to cooperate further. Dennis told the detectives to focus on Emile Fisher due to how emotional and high-strung he was before stating that they were to contact Peter Goldman if they ever wanted to talk to him again and left.
Shortly afterwards, Emile was found murdered in Buddha's house. At the time of the murder, Dennis had the alibi of helping his brother prepare for Tamika and her son Jeremiah's funeral. Dennis later aided Daniel in running the funeral while continuing to use his influence to prevent gang retaliation following Jon Barnes being bailed out of jail and murdering three Latino teenagers in revenge for the murder of Tamika. At some point, Dennis located Barnes and allowed him to hide out in one of the motel rooms he was using to hide his drugs.
As their investigation continued, the LAPD comes to realize that Buddha could've destroyed the missing getaway car from the flower shop robbery and questioned him. In exchange for full immunity and "serious protection," Buddha told the story of the night that Dennis forced him to destroy the getaway car. After Buddha mentioned that once he started working for Dennis, he couldn't just quit. Buddha went on to make a deal where he told the police everything he knew about Dennis' drug trafficking operation in exchange for full immunity from federal crimes and entry into the Witness Protection Program.
Having learned that Dennis was the one behind the drug trafficking and not Daniel, he became the police's prime suspect in the murders. Having figured out that Dennis likely had Barnes stashed somewhere, Detective Stephanie Dunn called both Dennis and Daniel to ask that if they knew where Barnes was, to tell them as they thought that he held the key to finding Tamika's killer. Panicked, Dennis drove to the Secret Gardens Motel where he had hidden Barnes, tailed in secret by SIS Lieutenant Chuck Cooper and Detective Amy Sykes.
At the motel, Dennis met with Barnes. Their meeting devolved into a gunfight in which Dennis apparently fired first, but may not have drawn his gun first. Due to being a lousy shot, Dennis could not hit Barnes even with having fired first in the close confines of the motel room. Barnes dove out the window to escape the gunfight where he was killed in self-defense by Cooper. Dennis was arrested for the attempted murder of Jon Barnes by Sykes, but claimed self-defense. In the motel room, the police also recovered the drugs that Dennis had stashed there.
Though the police were able to connect the heroin to what Barnes had on him when he was initially arrested two months before, they could not charge Dennis with his attempted murder since legally, it was a mutual combat situation. The police learned about Dennis hiring Goldman to protect his drug dealers and decided to inform Daniel of his brother's activities in the hope of securing Daniel's help in getting Dennis to confess to drug trafficking and murder. To enact that plan, Dennis was held on the heroin found in Barnes' motel room which they connected to Dennis' credit card.
Represented by Goldman, Dennis insisted that the drugs were already in the room when he arrived and claimed to be "a soldier in a faith based community fighting for its life." Dennis was angrily confronted by Sykes who argued that Dennis retrieved the Uzi after having learned of its location the night he had Buddha destroy the getaway car, use it to murder Rachel Gray and Eric Dunn then sit on it for years until he murdered Tamika and her baby with it. Despite Goldman's orders to remain quiet, Dennis insisted that he was innocent in the murders.
Goldman went on to claim that Dennis experienced a religious conversion that changed his life and the police were forcing things to fit the way they wanted it to since they mishandled the case so badly. Goldman claimed that Dennis brought the gun for protection due to Barnes being a killer and that the most they had Dennis on was a misdemeanor weapons charge for firing his weapon within city limits. Goldman then departed to pay Dennis' $100 fine in order to get him released.
After Goldman left Dennis, he found the LAPD with Daniel. The detectives were able to provide Daniel with the heroin they had recovered from Barnes' motel room and proof that Dennis was using Goldman to protect his drug trafficking operation. After Daniel fired Goldman, the LAPD also provided him with Buddha's statement of facts as further proof and got Daniel to agree to confront Dennis and to wear a wire while doing so.
The next morning, Dennis was released by the LAPD and driven by patrol officers to his brother's church. In Daniel's office, Dennis angrily confronted his brother on his actions. Daniel angrily demanded answers from Dennis on why the LAPD told him that Dennis was trafficking drugs from his church, why the drug dogs scented heroin in the altar where the Uzi was found and why Dennis put up Jon Barnes in a motel room where heroin was found. Though Dennis ordered Daniel to forget the drugs and go on quoting the Bible to reporters while Dennis cleaned up the mess Daniel made by allowing cops to search the church, Daniel insisted on getting answers. "I have nothing to hide. Do you?" questioned Daniel.
At first, Dennis insisted that Daniel didn't want to know, but when Daniel continued to insist on answers, decided that maybe his brother should know. Dennis finally admitted that the church wasn't surviving off of collections but rather was "living off of my tithe." Dennis told his brother that he made sure that Daniel and Jesus "get your ten percent" and that all that Daniel had to do was keep taking care of the poor and the oppressed and to smile at the taco truck on Taco Mondays.
Daniel then demanded to know about the murders, but Dennis insisted that he had nothing to do with the murders of Tamika and her baby. When Daniel pressed him about the Uzi in the altar, Dennis pointed out that he would not be so stupid as to remove the drugs but to leave the gun behind at the same time. Dennis insisted that the Uzi was planted by the police and he had nothing to do with it.
Utterly disgusted by Dennis' actions, Daniel asked about Rachel Gray and Eric Dunn and if Dennis had returned for the Uzi while he was on trial and used it to murder them. "Now why would I kill those people? Hmm? To save your sorry ass? You really don't get it, do you? You being in jail was the best thing that ever happened to me. It gave me control of our boys. I've been in charge ever since. And you finding Jesus... that was just a miracle. You wanna know why Tamika's death never brought no real gang war until you were stupid enough to bail Jon Barnes out of jail?! My God, I'll tell you why: its because I am the cartel Daniel. And this church? This church is the cartel. The Bloods, the Diablos, they're all me. I cut the dope and I send it out to both gangs. And there's money, there's peace, there's love for everyone. If you would just let me handle Barnes we wouldn't have this problem!" exploded Dennis.
Dennis added that the big brother he grew up with would've been proud of his actions, but a tearful Daniel admitted to pitying Dennis who was going to Hell. Angry, Dennis left in a huff and promised to send Daniel to Hell first if he gave Dennis any trouble.
Based off of Daniel's confrontation with Dennis, the police determined that Dennis was guilty of trafficking heroin but not guilty of any of the murders. Captain Sharon Raydor reasoned that not only did Dennis' gunfight with Barnes not match the profile of their killer, but their killer was a professional shooter while Dennis' inability to hit Barnes at close quarters showed that he was a lousy shot.
On the recommendation of Lieutenant Andy Flynn, the LAPD chose not to arrest Dennis right away and to instead follow him for awhile and to check his finances since Dennis was so deep into the cartels. Based off of what he said to Daniel, the police were soon able to follow the taco truck and seize Dennis' next load of heroin. Based off of the recorded conversation between Dennis and Daniel, Buddha's statement and the recovered heroin, Dennis was presumably arrested eventually for drug trafficking and his operation shut down for good.