Ed Buck arrested on drug charges
Activist is accused of running a drug house. Prosecutors call him a violent sex predator.
The prominent Los Angeles Democratic donor is suspected of injecting a man who overdosed on methamphetamine.
Prominent Democratic donor and LGBTQ political activist Ed Buck was arrested Tuesday and charged with operating a drug house, with prosecutors calling him a violent sexual predator who preys on men struggling with addiction and homelessness.
Buck was charged with one count each of battery causing serious injury, administering methamphetamine and maintaining a drug house, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. Buck is accused of injecting a 37-yearold man, who overdosed but survived, with methamphetamine on Sept. 11.
That latest incident comes after two men were found dead in his Laurel Avenue apartment in West Hollywood. In both cases, African American men — Gemmel Moore, 26, and Timothy Dean, 55 — had overdosed on methamphetamine inside. After the first death in 2017, authorities said there was insufficient evidence to file charges.
“With this new evidence, I authorized the filing of criminal charges against Ed Buck,” Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey said in a statement, adding that she is deeply concerned for those whose life circumstances make them vulnerable to predators.
Prosecutors said Buck lures his victims into his home, baiting them with drugs, money and shelter.
“From his home, in a position of power, Buck manipulates his victims into participating in his sexual fetishes,” prosecutors wrote
in court papers. “These fetishes include supplying and personally administering dangerously large doses of narcotics to his victims .... Not deterred by the senseless deaths of Moore and Dean, the defendant nearly killed a third victim last week.”
The latest victim, identified in court papers as Joe Doe, went to Buck’s apartment on Sept. 4, where Buck “personally and deliberately” administered a large dose of methamphetamine, prosecutors said. Concerned he was suffering an overdose, the man left the apartment to get medical help. He returned to Buck’s apartment on Sept. 11, when Buck again injected him with “two dangerously large” doses of methamphetamine, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors say Buck thwarted the man’s attempts to get help. The man eventually fled the apartment and called 911 from a gas station. He was taken to a hospital for treatment.
“The full scope of his consistent malicious behavior is unknown,” prosecutors said.
Buck is due in court Wednesday for his arraignment. Prosecutors are asking that his bail be set at $4 million. If convicted as charged, he faces up to five years and eight months in state prison.
Buck’s attorney, Seymour Amster, could not be immediately reached for comment.
In 2007, Buck unsuccessfully ran for West Hollywood City Council as part of the Save West Hollywood campaign slate.
Steve Martin, a former councilman who ran on the slate, said he ran into Buck in a grocery store about three months ago.
“He just seemed really anxious to talk,” Martin said. “He acknowledged that there were legal issues pending, so he couldn’t say much. But he looked really healthy. … He denied any drug use.”
In January, after Dean was found dead, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it would take another look at the first case.
The deaths sparked protests from activists who complained authorities are not doing enough.
Los Angeles County coroner’s officials had concluded that Moore died from an accidental methamphetamine overdose in Buck’s apartment. Paramedics found Moore naked on a mattress in the living room, the coroner’s report said.
They ruled Moore’s death an accident, and an initial review by sheriff’s deputies found nothing suspicious. But in August 2017, homicide detectives launched a new investigation after Moore’s mother and friends questioned whether the drugs that killed him were self-administered.
About 9 p.m. Tuesday, about a dozen onlookers gathered across the street from Buck’s apartment building, as police redirected cars on the blocked street.
“Today is like a celebration for us,” said Jasmyne Cannick as she spoke to those gathered.
Cannick, a political consultant and spokeswoman for Moore’s mother, said she was giving a speech in Leimert Park on Tuesday evening when she started getting calls from Buck’s neighbors saying he was being arrested.
She pulled up to Buck’s apartment building just as a police car was driving away.
Cannick has said she believed Buck got special treatment because of his political activism and fundraising, a charge officials have denied, and because he was white and Moore and Dean were black. “I feel vindicated for all the people who said it was never going to happen,” she said.
Cannick said she called Moore’s mother and Dean’s sister to tell them about the arrest, and “we were all crying.”
Times staff writer Jaclyn Cosgrove contributed to this report.