'Stomp your head' was their theme song
Lena Sin
The Province Thursday, September 20, 2007

Tyler Murphy remembers being amazed at the drunken, rowdy antics of a gang of 'cool' Cloverdale teens. 'I wanted to be a part of this,' he says. 'I don't know why.'

Back when Tyler Murphy was going to high school in Cloverdale, there were two types of "in" crowds.

The rich guys lived uptown, had money and dressed preppy.

And the rough kids, who came from single-parent homes, listened to really bad rap music and dressed like they wished they were from Compton.

They were known as TAF -- The Authority F---ers.

"Long story short, I wanted to get in," says Murphy. "And eventually I got in."

TAF has been described in a report by the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family as a "social gang" comprising misdirected youth engaged in gratuitous violence and bullying.

To Murphy, now 20, TAF were the cool kids in town who earned the attention of the local press.

"Drunken, rowdy teens using the Cloverdale elementary school grounds as their party pit are driving neighbours crazy," The Surrey Now reported in September 2002.

"They drink, do drugs, have sex. They get rowdy, they scream and yell -- it's spilling on to our street. They have set fires back there. We've watched them trying to pull out shrubs and breaking windows," resident Shannon Camparmo told the paper at the time.

Murphy remembers just being "so amazed at what was going on. I wanted to be a part of this. I don't know why, but I wanted to be a part of this."

In Grade 10, the six-foot-two lanky teen weighed only 130 pounds. He wasn't all that popular and not much of a fighter, either. It seemed like aligning himself with TAF was a good idea.

"I was always the tall guy and people just liked the challenge -- 'Oh, I'm gonna knock this tall guy out.' So trouble would just come my way," says Murphy.

So he took the necessary punches to get in with TAF -- bought them beer, gave them money, was the butt of their jokes. And slowly, he became friends with them.

"What we'd do is find the meeker kids and what they'd do is pick on a kid, throw him on to the ground and have five guys kicking the s--- out of him," says Murphy.

To psych themselves up for these nights, the 11 to 15 TAF members would listen to Doomsday Production's "Stomp Your Head" before going out.

But their notoriety didn't last long and Murphy remembers the pathetic decline.

By Grade 12, most of the TAF members had been kicked out of school and the group's momentum, which relied heavily on being visible in the community, was starting to come to a halt.

"I remember two TAF guys got into a fight about money. It was like over $50," recalls Murphy. "I remember [a third] TAF guy was like 'What you fightin' for? What you fightin' for? This is all we've got left.' I just remember thinking, this is the end."

Today, Murphy, who's studying at Kwantlen College, says he doesn't speak to any of his former TAF friends.

"It just sorta faded," he says.