[vienna]

Never been arrested, but had some interesting experiences with the law...

In my hometown of San Francisco, I never had a run-in with the law. They are much more laid back there and I was friendly with quite a few of the local police and even had a whole family whose members were in various law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area who lived a couple of houses down from mine. No problems there...

Then I moved to Los Angeles...

From the moment I got here, I was pulled over, stopped on the street, and generally seemed to be a favorite of the LAPD. This started in 1970 and continued for a number of years. I would get stopped at leats once week, either while walking or driving. The LAPD was run buy a rather right-leaning leadership and they seemed to take the whole "Dragnet/Adam 12/Jack Webb" bit rather seriously. The main reason I seemed to be a target was that I was a long-haired male who, in their eyes, was either a drug user (never used them, though) or a Commie/Radical. The stops were almost comical and served to do nothing but waste my time and their's. The upshot of each stop was either they filled out what is called a "Field Interview Card (FIC)", where they note all the "suspicions" reasons they had for stopping you and all your vital information (home address, workplace info, etc.) or, if I was driving, a ticket for some trumped up infraction or another. I once was stopped while driving, had myself and my car searched, and then given a ticket for the ever convenient reaso, "burned-out tail light". This happened a block and a half from the downtown traffic court building, so when I was allowed to go, I drove a little under two minutes to the court building and went to the vehicle inspection station located in the parking structure. Thsi is where one goes to verify repairs or coorctions have been made that were cited by the officer issuing the ticket. The inspection station was run by the Califronia Highway Patrol. I showed thr offier my ticket, he went around to the back of the car, told me to step on the brake and verified the light worked. As he was completing the paperwork, he looked again at the ticket and said, "Wait a minute; you got this ticket a couple of minutes ago. How did you fix it so fast?" I told him I didn't fix it because it wasn't broken or burned out. He had me pop the trunk and he very carefully inspected the light fixture from inside the trunk. After he was sure I had not made any repairs, he was very angry and said I should fight the ticket in court and offered to give me a letter regarding his findings. I told him what would happen would be I would go to court, the officer wouldn't show up, the ticket would be dismissed and both his efforts and my time would be wasted. He reluctantly agreed and told me he and his fellow inspectors had seen this sort of ticketing abuse by the LAPD before far too often, had made complaints about the problem and the time wasted, but had not gotten any response from the LAPD...

I was once handcuffed and placed in the backseat of an LAPD car. I used to work swing shifts at a bank data processing center from about 4:00 PM to about 12:30 AM and one night/morning after work, I decided to drive out to a theater where a musician friend of mine worked as a projectionist in a theater on the Westside. He was a film buff and would often find rare or odd films or compilation reels of vintage movie trailers and would screen them for himself and some his friends after the theater's regular hours. I went to the theater, but it was dark and there was no response when I rand the bell, so I just guessed he had gon e straight home after work. You had to go down a sort of alley/passageway off the sidewalk to get to the entrance to the theater, and as I walked out of the alley, I saw two police officers wlaking towards me from aruond the corner of the block. I said hello to them, started to walk to my nearby car, and then they stopped me and asked where I was coming from. I told them about my friend and why I was coming out of the alley. One officer walked back around the corner and came back driving a police car. The officers then ran me for "wants and warrants" (I had none; I'm am a very law abiding/boring individual) and verified my vitals. They also searched me and my car which was parked a few feet away. One of the officers then backed the patrol car a short distance down the block and parked it while the other officer handcuffed me and walked me down to where the car was parked and put me in the backseat, closing and locking the door. As I sat in the car, I looked up and saw the patrol car was parked in front of a jeans store (sort of like a Gap store) whose windows had been broken out in an apparent burgurlary. It then dawned on me I was been held as a suspect in the burglary (since the beginning of the whole event, the officers neither infirmed me of why they stopped me or read me my rights or engaged in any other conduct one would expect in an arrest). As i sat in the car, I could hear them talking because they had left the window partially down. They stood in front of the store, standing amidst the broken glass, shining their flashlights in to the dark interior of the store. The dialogue went something like this:

Officer 1 [Off1]: There's no lights on in there...
Officer 2 [Off2]: Yeah, it's really dark in there...
Off1: You think anybody might be in there?...
Off2: Can't tell from here...
Off1: One of us should go in and check it out. You go in, I'll stay with the prisoner...
Off2: Me? You go in and I'll stay with the guy...
Off1: Why should I go in?...
Off2: Why should I go in?...

This went on, back and forth, for about a couple of minutes, and I was about to call out that I would volunteer to go in if it sped things up, when all of a sudden, the officers drew their guns and aimed them at a door that was just barely opening at the side of the building near the store front. The officers ordered whoever was at the door to come out with hands up. Two young men came out shouting out they lived in the apartment over the storefront and they had been the ones who called in the burglary report to the LAPD in the first place. The officers verified this by making a radio call back to the station and brought the two men over to the car saying "We caught one of the suspects" and pointed me out to the witnesses. They Looked at me in disbelief, looked at each other, turned to the officers and said "There is no way this guy (me) was involved". The officers then said "Are you sure? Are you positive? Are you certain? Could you look at him again?...etc." One of the witnesses became rather annoyed and told the officer to check out the original report he, the witness, called in, because, as, the witness put it, "This skinny, long-haired white kid does not look like a group of 5 or 6 large Black guys with two pickup trucks, which is what we reported to the emergency operator on the phone". The officer persisted for a very brief period, but gave up knowing the situation was not really going to go in their favor. They got me out of the car, took off the handcuffs, filled out a FIC on me (probably in the event I suddenly became 5 or 6 large Black men at a future date) and busily set about to secure the crime scene. The two guys who witnessed the crime from their aprtment window apologized for not coming down sooner to clear things up, but they were afraid the LAPD officers would shoot first and ask questions later if they came out the door (which nearly almost happened). I told them I was just glad they showed up at all and thanked them for getting me out of a potentailly nasty situation. They offered me a cup of coffee or tea, which I accepted. When I finally left the scene a bit later, there were more officers on site and I saw one of the two original officer talking to a sargeant who then walked over to me as I was unlocking my car. He asked me about what happened, I told him, and he offered me and apology and said it should never have happened the way it did. I thanked him, got in my car and drove away...

The LAPD has since gotten rid of the wingnuts previously running the Department and have very much improved and modernized their policing activities and methods under new leadership. Gone are the days of looking for commies and subversives, strutting around obliviously as if they were in some Jack Webb fantasy world while the street gangs grew, organized, and armed themselves. There were a lot of really good officers on the force back in those days, but they were overshadowed by the antics of those who posed rather than policed...


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