by Jack Webb
There is never a frog in its throat. That would be as disastrous, maybe more so, as a police department without a gun. Four main transmitters, spotted strategically throughout the city, are backstopped by two portable transmitters for emergencies and one completely mobile patrol station.
Additionally, LAPD maintains transmitters and receivers for inter-city and inter-state communications with police elsewhere. These handle radiograms for all Southern California law enforcement agencies, and a sixty-machine teletype system connects in with all county seats and major police agencies everywhere in California.
The good old days of outriding the posse to safety in the next county are gone forever!
Every minute of the twenty-four hours, the complaint switchboard is lighted with calls, and the policemen-operators must make their decisions on the spot. What does LAPD roll on? What is trivial and meaningless?
A complaint about a parked car blocking a driveway? Not unimportant if a physician is thereby prevented from making his rounds. The oh-so-familiar complaint about a barking dog? Not insignificant if perhaps the dog is barking because his master is dead. The decision must be made fast, the taxpayer gently treated.
“To every citizen, his call is important,” explains one operator. “Sometimes all he wants is to talk to somebody, to cry on somebody’s shoulder. We offer him the shoulder.”
At 4:17 p.m., the board suddenly receives a report about a store in the Wilshire District. There’s no doubt that LAPD will roll on this one.
A little white form reporting Code 2 (Urgent; no red light, siren) goes on the conveyor to the dispatch room for instant transmission. A torpedo is fired.
4:20 p.m. The “hot shot” phone, reserved for emergency calls, chimes beside the master control board. The radio car officer is already reporting back from the scene. It’s a “211,” a robbery, and he needs help.
Code 2 becomes Code 3 (Emergency; red light, siren) and more torpedoes are launched.
Now Communications sweats it out. Will still more help be required? What extra units are available and how close are they?
4:29 p.m. The “hot shot” phone rings again. Suspect apprehended, situation under control exactly twelve minutes after the first alert. All units return to normal patrol.
LAPD talks mostly in a clipped, number code not for purposes of secrecy but for quicker transmission and conservation of air time. With five to six calls going out every minute, each word is important, and “Code 1” is considerably less longwinded than “Acknowledge Your Call.”
There’s a number for almost every contingency from “Code 7,” Out to Eat, to the dreaded “Code 13 Daniel,” which is a disaster calling in all off-duty officers, reserves, and auxiliaries. Plain numbers like “211” for robbery and “484” for theft indicate the specific crime involved by its section under the California Penal Code. (The full Radio Code is printed at the end of this chapter.)
The druggist on the phone with the complaint board is hysterical. He is begging LAPD to save a woman’s life.
Two days earlier, he had made up a prescription calling for dilantin. Instead, by mistake, he had used a digitalis preparation. He has just discovered his mistake—a possibly fatal mistake, because if the woman follows the dosage prescribed on the bottle, she will die in about eight days.
From the sobbing man, the police obtain the prescription number; and in the next half hour, they accomplish this much:
The prescription is traced to General Hospital, where it had been issued three months earlier by a staff physician. The hospital gives a name and an address in East Los Angeles. The woman, it is found, had moved from there some two months previously. No forwarding address.
But detectives establish that she is of Mexican descent, thirty-four years old, five feet one inch, 115 pounds, red-haired. They find she has been known under three names and learn the whereabouts of her mother and other relatives.
Again, no luck. The mother explains that she seldom sees her daughter, and the other relatives can’t help.
Now the only hope of saving a woman’s life is a citywide search. Chief of Detectives Thad Brown immediately authorizes use of all LAPD’s facilities.
Every patrol is alerted, all jails and hospitals notified, a teletype flashed throughout Los Angeles County. Under Captain Stanley H. Sheldon, the department’s public relations unit appeals to newspapers, radio and TV to publicize the warning.
A Sigalert bulletin is drafted; and every quarter hour the city’s radio stations, which between them reach into three states and Mexico, make this announcement:
Attention: This is a Sigalert repeat. The Los Angeles Police Department states that anyone knowing Josephine Aguilar, also known as Josephine Sandez, also known as Josephine Sanchez, please advise her immediately that the prescription she had filled on February 16, between 6:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. at a drugstore in the southern part of Los Angeles, was improperly compounded. It contains a highly dangerous drug, which could cause her death.
Anyone knowing this lady should report her whereabouts to 77th Street Detectives, Madison 4-5211, Extension 2618.
Lt. R. Selby—Lt. Lindsay Simmons
Ticket # 8-289
In just three quarters of an hour after the druggist’s frantic call, the detectives’ phones are hopelessly jammed with the public response. The flood of incoming messages must be partly diverted to the uniform unit and almost anyone with an extension, including Juvenile.
People who remember once having employed a Josephine Aguilar leave their homes at night and go back to the office to search old records for an address or phone number. Physicians and dentists who had treated patients of that name call in. Friends of the woman volunteer to help. Other Josephine Aguilars call to say they are all right and don’t waste time looking for them. Just, please, find that poor woman before it is too late!
There is something heart-warming in the way the public responds so instantly to a call for help. Even hardened LAPD men are impressed, and yet with all the calls, nothing is accomplished. The woman is still missing.
During the night, the flood of incoming messages falls to a trickle, and then at 8 a.m., the switchboard lights up again. Everyone in the county, it seems, knows a Josephine Aguilar.
Finally, a little after nine, a woman’s voice announces that she is the Josephine Aguilar.
Yes, she is the one who had the prescription filled. No, no, she is all right.
Right away, after getting them, she had noticed the capsules were the wrong size and color, not like the ones before. So she just hadn’t taken any of them.
Where is she now? Calling from a phone booth near her mother’s home.
When she got up this morning, she turned on her radio to a Spanish-language program. The announcer was talking about a big search for a woman with the same name. But she didn’t realize it was she herself till her mother’s name and address also were broadcast. She got dressed and went to mamma’s to tell her she was all right.
Yes, she would meet the detectives in ten minutes and give them the bad bottle.
In less than ten minutes, detectives are at the door, and Josephine hands over the deadly capsules.
Be a damned good one.
IV
At the wheel, he is maybe a drunk or just a kid showing off for his girl. Whoever he is, he is threatening every living thing in his path as he roars past the parked motorcycle officer at ninety miles an hour. In the dark, it is difficult to see a license plate at sixty feet. At his speed, he is passing the officer at 135 feet a second.
With his right hand opening the throttle, his left clutching the radio microphone, the officer takes after him.
“4 Mary 105 is in pursuit,” he says matter of factly to Communications. That means a speeder is being chased in the Hollenbeck police division.
Quickly Communications comes on the air.
“All frequencies stand by. Mary 105 is in pursuit.”
To avoid an air jumble, all broadcast ceases on the band. Other units wait
for a pattern to develop so they can converge.
“Outbound Santa Ana Freeway,” Mary 105 now reports. “Pursuit ‘58 Olds.”
Then silence.
Astride a 55-horsepower Harley Davidson, Mary 105 is now straining against the wind at one hundred miles an hour, trying to close the gap between him and the 265 horsepower Olds.
At that speed on a little bike, he is living, second to second, only by the grace of God. The blast of wind in his ears cuts off all other sound. He is at the mercy of the road, its curves, even a small stone. He couldn’t stop suddenly, though his life might hang at the next turn on a quick stop.
He hasn’t had time to slip on his glasses, and the wind rakes his eyeballs. He sees only space roaring toward him and a diminishing white line that slashes beneath his left foot.
Everything else, trees, houses, stone walls, are a meaningless blur. Light is shadow, and shadow is a black smear in the cobalt. Then a tail light ahead winks redder as the speeder brakes and finally stops.
The motor officer pulls alongside. For a few seconds, as he unwinds, he has a bad case of the shakes. He fights for self-control, then says evenly to the frightened teenager, “All right, fella. Let’s see the license and registration.”
A fast pursuit by motorcycle is one of the most hazardous and draining of all police experiences. Quite accurately, LAPD calls its motorbike force the “Ironhorsemen.”
Surprisingly, despite the ordeal, there are always scores of policemen on the waiting list hoping for a chance to join the Traffic Enforcement Division. Riding a bike can mean as much as $50 more per month, but that’s the least part of it.
The standards for acceptance are challengingly high, the morale is superb, and TED is a flashy, spit-and-polish unit.
Its twenty-five man motor corps drill team has won the national American Legion championships, and there’s a proud jauntiness about TED that makes a man forget his own neck… some of the time.
Only policemen with at least one year’s experience are eligible for the transfer. Those tentatively accepted then undergo a series of strenuous psycho-physical aptitude tests. After that, they must pass an oral examination before ranking TED officers, personnel, and patrol, which is double-checked by the Chief of Personnel and two inspectors.
And that isn’t all.
There is a tough two-weeks’ course in riding school and a training course in traffic enforcement and procedure, during which each novice is under constant observation.
Is he a throttle-snapper or a hot rodder? He washes out. TED wants wary courage, not recklessness, much the same standards set for our military airmen.
Finally, he must be a gentleman because he will ride out to sell something that nobody really wants—traffic enforcement.
The records and various spot checks disclose that TED does sell enforcement. Only one in a hundred drivers tries to give the “Ironhorseman” an argument when he is ticketed. The other ninety-nine accept the paper graciously, or at least resignedly.
Before going on their individual watches, the “Ironhorsemen” congregate at the Police Building for roll call. There they are posted on the daily orders and any changes in procedures, briefed on unusual overnight crime that may affect them.
Then, typical of their tight morale, they informally put heads together to hash over what they call “frinstance cases,” theoretical situations which might just arise sometime and require special handling.
If the weather is rainy, they are given a reprieve from bike riding and temporarily assigned to Accident Investigation or Warrants. But if it is clear, they stand at attention by their bikes, suspiciously sniffing the air for signs of smog, then mount in unison and leave in smart, military formation.
With a loud, proud roar from his little 55-hp motor, each “Ironhorseman” peels off in turn for his own beat, which has been determined for him on basis of seniority. There is no favoritism in TED, and at the end of any month, an officer without “enough whiskers” can be bumped from his beat by an officer who outranks him and wants to change.
No officer can even guess what the day’s patrol will bring before he signs off, “139, end of watch.”
Officer S. W. Combs was shocked and outraged one day to discover a nineteen-year-old North Hollywood youth driving one hand on the freeway—and he didn’t have the other arm around a girl, either. He was shaving with an electric razor. Setting a new enforcement precedent, Combs cited him for reckless driving.
Responding to a Code 3 (Emergency; red light, siren), Officer Dale Phillips found that an unconventional bank robber had made his getaway in a taxi. Just as unconventionally, Phillips on his bike, rather than a radio cruiser, captured the cab, prisoner, loot, weapons, and all.
Any time an “Ironhorseman” overhauls a traffic violator, there is a quick, tense sizeup. The man behind the wheel may be just a careless driver and then again he might be a criminal.
Once, when Officer Fud Denny flagged down a car that had made a wrong lane turn, the driver convincingly flashed a bright new operator’s license which indicated impressive past driving experience in Europe. Something smelled wrong to the officer.
Questioning the man more closely, Denny found that he didn’t know the first thing about Los Angeles traffic laws. He detained him while Motor Vehicles ran a fast check.
The operator’s license, DMV reported, had been fraudulently obtained, and a further check disclosed the motorist had illegally jumped a foreign ship then docked in Los Angeles. He was handed over to the immigration authorities.
Of course, drivers being drivers, some things are just bound to happen again and again, the “Ironhorsemen” know resignedly. For instance, though they handle the wheel better, the men drivers are going to give the bike man more trouble than women drivers. Say what you will about that woman driver, it’s the man who does the most speeding and commits the most deliberate violations. That’s the truth.
The freeway is a more rugged watch than the “surface streets”; that is, those off the freeway. Everything, anything can happen on the freeway, and the “Ironhorseman” almost gets cross-eyed watching for speeders, creepers, tail riders and unsafe lane changers, not to mention truck and trailer violations and a few spilled loads here and there.
Whatever his beat, he is charged with enforcing all laws and ordinances regulating traffic. Since enforcement has to be selective because of the small size of TED, the motor bike man is deployed in the area where accidents are occurring. If inside passing has been causing the trouble, he tails traffic for a stretch, watching for the offenders. If it is speed, he parks on a side street till some Oldfield speeds by.
Rule o’ thumb, the motorcycle police consider the “normal flow of traffic” in judging speed. Depending on the street, time, and weather, this is an elastic rule which can be stretched from fifteen mph to fifty-five and even more.
Since a man couldn’t possibly write all the traffic violations he spots during an eight-hour watch, general enforcement has to be discretionary, too. He picks out the best— or, rather, the worst—of them for tickets.
“There are no hard and fast rules,” says Fred McGrew. “We just put ourselves in the driver’s shoes.”
Officer Frederick J. McGrew, age 37, six feet one and a half inches tall, 195 pounds in weight, a veteran of the U.S. Armored Tank service, is one of TED’s most imposing traffic-law salesmen. He draws more than average pay and has the privilege of riding his bike to and from work. (All LAPD motorcycle officers take their bikes home to assure the department a ready, mobile force, if needed.)
But he has extra costs, too. While the department kindly furnishes his white crash helmet, his uniform, including boots, costs more than $100, and his leather jacket stands him $55. His gun represents another $75 investment; and, in addition, at assorted prices to him, he totes a chain and whistle, Sam Brown belt, handcuffs, baton holder, ammunition case, gloves, flashlight, guide book, “hot sheet” holder, baton, and pen. Also his badge and book of traffic citations. Fortunately
, the latter two items don’t represent much additional weight, and they come free, courtesy of the Los Angeles Police Department.
At the end of two weeks, McGrew’s take-home pay is $156.55. But he is paying taxes and dues to the Police Protective League and the American Legion. He is making payments on pension, insurance, and car. He is buying a house and bringing up two children. He rides a tight budget.
And like every other “Ironhorseman,” he never knows what the next watch will bring. One night, McGrew and a partner were riding the night watch—8 p.m.-to-4 a.m.—in a smart business-residential district. They rode that way by night in the motor corps, in tandem, one hand helping the other. It was a lazy night. The drunks were home, or hadn’t yet left the bars, and the speeders weren’t hitting this area.
At 12:30 a.m., as the officers were passing a commercial intersection, a man ran out of a large food store, waving frantically to them. He was the store manager, he explained, and he had returned a short while before to check the books. There had been strange noises—someone was in there right now!
Guns in hand, McGrew and his partner accompanied the manager inside. They turned on the lights and, in one office, found the safe door had been smashed open, apparently by a meat cleaver, which lay nearby. But the sizable weekend receipts had not been disturbed.
Obviously, they figured, the intruder had been scared off by the manager, but probably hadn’t had the time to escape. Counter by counter, they searched the market, poked into corners and kicked the big food boxes stacked here and there.
McGrew kicked one box, and it didn’t move. “All right,” he snapped. “Come out fast.” A head and then a hand clutching a .45 emerged slowly. McGrew sent the automatic spinning and collared his man.
The intruder, who was employed in another store of the same food chain, knew the weekend receipts would be heavy and knew the employer’s routine. He had secreted himself in the store till everybody left about 10 p.m. and then had gone to work on the safe with his meat cleaver. Just as his industry had finally paid off two and a half hours later, the manager had returned.