by Cliff Yates
Things will happen, especially at a fast station, where you will be running to your car and responding to an emergency without the chance to do your normal vehicle check. Later these cloth seats would be replaced with hard plastic seats that are bolted right to the car frame. It was impossible to hide contraband anywhere. You might find it on the seat or the floor, but there was no way to push anything under the seat.
After you clear your backseat, depending on the deputies who had the car before, you may have some major cleaning to do. When I first started in patrol, chewing tobacco was a big thing. You might have spit marks down the outside of the doors. There might be spit cups left inside the car. Some deputies would just leave their car a pig sty. You would find all their food remnants. From paper bags, cups, and actual food strewn all over the car.
Next you had to check your Ithaca 12 gauge shotgun. You took that out of the rack and rotated the locking nut which allowed you to twist the barrel and remove it from the gun frame. There you would look down the barrel to make sure nothing was stuffed in there like papers or who knows what. Then you would slide the pump handle forward and pull the trigger as you held a finger over the hole where the firing pin would emerge. If it was firing properly, you would feel the firing pin as it jutted out upon pulling the trigger. Then you would reassemble your shotgun, load it with fresh rounds and replace it in the rack.
I was trained to always have clean windows before we went 10-8 in the field. For the rest of my career I always searched my car, checked my shotgun and cleaned my windows. I would even carry my own window cleaner to make sure I could start my shift with clean windows.
Field training lasted six months. Usually you were with your T/O (training officer) for four months, and on the fifth month you would work in a car by yourself with your T/O as your sister car monitoring your calls and there to back you up or assist you with calls you had trouble resolving. And on the final sixth month you would be back together for final tests and evaluations. This was a perfect world scenario, but with injuries, staffing shortages or some other reason, it might not go as planned. At some time or another your T/O would be assigned training, or have time adjusted for a court case, and then you would ride with another T/O. This could be good or bad. Your temporary T/O might tell you it’s a no stress day, and you would have a pretty enjoyable shift. It would depend on a number of factors. Where you were in your training and how you were progressing. All the training officers knew how each of their trainees were doing. So if a trainee was having trouble, when it came time with another T/O, it might get even harder. The T/O you’re with might not like your T/O. It was always stressful working with a different one. But everyone works different, so it was good to have exposure to different styles of policing and report writing.
My training officer was Deputy Marvin Washington. I think as of this writing he is still working as either a Chief or Commander. To me, he was the best of the best. He was so smart and just a great trainer. All that and he was a super cop. We had a couple months of very serious training, and as time went on we had more and more times we laughed our asses off together. Lynwood had everything as far as crime was concerned. You got hands-on training for every type of scenario you could think of. Some stations didn’t have that available to them, so they had practice scenarios. Not Lynwood, no practice anything. Every day we would work on something different.
I’ll call my T/O Marv. Since I’m off training now and we are great friends, I can call him that. One day Marv said, “Today is Heroin Day.” He took me to some back alleys where all the hypes hung out. He just called them over to us. He told them they were not going to jail but to show us where they last shot up. These hypes would tell us how long they had been using, where they liked to shoot. They showed us their old tracks, their new tracks. He would show me all the symptoms of someone under the influence of an opiate. We had a pupilometer card on us we could hold up to someone’s eyes to measure how small or large a person’s pupils were. In the case of opiates like heroin, a person would have pinpoint pupils. In the case of a stimulant, they would be dilated in spite of being in bright sunlight.
After we examined the third or fourth hype. we arrested one for being under the influence of heroin. After visually checking his pockets, Marv had the suspect pull out his pockets. A lot of these hypes were HIV positive. Marv told me deputies would ask these hypes if they had any needles on them before they reach in their pockets. Numerous deputies were stuck with needles reaching into the pockets of a hype who said, “No, I don’t have any needles.” Then the deputies would have to be tested. We finished booking our hype, and Marv showed me the procedure for noting the track marks and recent punctures where the hype shot up. Then he told me that was the last hype arrest we would be making unless we had to. He didn’t like arresting hypes. They had a lot of health issues that could be contagious along with the danger of HIV being transmitted to you by being stuck with a needle. He said when I was off training I could arrest as many hypes as I wanted. Sometimes you had no choice because we would catch them in the act of burglary or other felony they were committing to feed their heroin habit. I continued Marv’s policy for avoiding hypes for the rest of my career.
Marv loved getting crooks in stolen cars, and so did I. Maybe I got that from my dad who loved stolen cars too. He was the master back in NY So, I made that my mission. There was a lot of stolen cars rolling around. Gang members loved to steal cars to do their drive by shootings in and whatever crime they were doing. And there were a lot of gang members, so do the math.
Stolen cars are fun to stop, chase and recover. When I started in Lynwood we had no in car computers, so you really had to use your police skills in getting them. There were some obvious tell-tale signs. When you drove in traffic, you were looking inside the cars, and if you saw a rag or a towel draped over the steering column combined with a look at the occupants, good chance it was a stolen car. Sometimes you would look inside a car as you drove through traffic and see a screwdriver sticking out of the column where the key used to go. Good bet it’s a stolen car. On occasion the car turned out to be a previously stolen vehicle. It was stolen in the past, and since recovered and returned to the owner, they hadn’t repaired the damage to the steering column and/or ignition. We ran a check on every Toyota Camry and Honda Accord we saw with youthful drivers. These cars were the most stolen models in south central L.A. in the late 80’s. We got a lot of rollin stolens when I was on training.
I have to stop here and explain our radio system, which is a little complex and hard to understand even when you use it every day. It had to deal with simplex and duplex radio systems. In Livingston County the radio system was one where everyone heard everyone else. So when I called to the dispatcher over my police car radio, the dispatcher heard it along with every other car and portable police radio in the county. Now in L.A. County, it’s completely different. I’ll explain it and try not to go too deep into the weeds.
Each station has a station dispatcher and person answering phones and typing calls into the system. In East Los Angeles we have the main county dispatchers for the entire county. When a call is typed in, it is sent to the main East L.A. dispatch center and then dispatched to the cars. When I started patrol in 1987, we received all our calls over the radio and had to write them down and produce a paper log for the end of the shift documenting all of our calls. We had to document when we got the call, when we responded, how long it took to get there, how long we were at the call and when we cleared the call. Every log had to be tallied, and each minute of your 480 minute eight hour shift had to be accounted for, and if the numbers were off you had to find the error and correct it. Believe me, that was a nightmare. You could be two hours after your shift trying to fix your log and get it approved.
Fast forward a couple years when the computers were put in the cars, and your log and activity was done for you by the computer. And unless you messed up on your button pushing, your log was done at the end of shift and just had to be printed
out. And eventually you didn’t even have to do that. So with the computer, you pushed a button when you received the call, a button when you went in route, and a button when you went 1097 (arrived) and 1098 (call completed in service) when you were clear.
When you used the radio in L.A. only the desk and East L.A. dispatchers could hear you. Everyone heard the main dispatcher in East L.A. You could not talk to your desk directly unless you switched to a different channel which was used strictly for the desk to car communication. When you and/or other cars were on this desk channel, you all could hear each other. On the main channel you wouldn’t know when other cars were talking, except it made a beep beep when the channel was busy. So before you broadcasted over the radio, you first clicked the button. If someone else was talking, it would beep. If not, then you were clear to talk.
If there was an emergency you decided everyone should be hearing, you broadcasted 1033 (requesting emergency clearance) then the main dispatcher would flip a switch and say, “1033 go, you’re on the patch.” The other cars would hear “1033 go” and stop whatever they were doing, or at least stop trying to use the radio and listen up to what was happening. Then you would get on the radio, and whatever you were saying would be heard by everyone who was on that channel. For example, you might broadcast you were following a 1029 Victor (reported stolen car), give your location and request additional units to conduct a felony traffic stop. While on the patch mode you would also hear all the other cars, and you could communicate with them. In the meantime, while you were conducting this business on the patch, all other units on that channel couldn’t conduct any business over the radio. So you had to try and coordinate your business as quick as you could and then have everyone involved in your incident go to a separate channel so the main dispatcher could drop the patch and return the channel to normal operations.
Back in Livingston County we didn’t need this type of system. At any given time the total cars we would have patrolling for the whole county, including all the police departments would be less than 20. L.A. County on a pm shift with 20 plus patrol stations might be fielding 400 police cars. That’s not including detective bureaus and special units. So, the radio system is quite complex to say the least.
Back to stolen cars. So when you wanted to run a check on a plate, you would broadcast your car number and 1028, 1029 (registration and warrant check). If the dispatcher was ready to put the plate into the system, he or she would broadcast back to you go ahead with your 1028, and then you would broadcast the plate number. If it was stolen, the dispatcher would advise 1029 Victor, and everyone would hear that and wait for you to get on the patch for coordination or maybe you would be in pursuit. Or maybe it was just abandoned unoccupied, and you would advise that too. So if you were good at getting stolen cars, everyone would become aware of that because of the coordinated felony stop or chase which would follow.
Marv taught me so much. A City of Lynwood car requested assistance after responding to a loud music call. There is a distinction between a request for backup and assistance. Backup was routine, and assistance meant bad shit was happening and needed immediate help. No one at the station liked putting out assistance requests, some kind of ego thing I think. So any time we heard a request for assistance, we rolled hard.
We got to the location in a residential neighborhood of the city, and there were people all over the place. It was a Mexican wedding reception. There were about five police cars there. As we got out of our unit, we heard windows break from the house, and people were yelling and screaming. As we were getting out of the police car, Marv said, “Put your helmet on. This is a Mexican wedding. Soon the Budweiser cans will be flying, trust me.”
Just then Sergeant House arrived in his patrol car. Sergeant House was a tall, lanky male black sergeant. He had recently been transferred to Lynwood after being promoted to sergeant from the International Liaison Division of the Sheriff’s Information Bureau (media relations). He was a very nice, intelligent man who spoke several languages and was a fish out of water at this assignment. Sergeant House was trying to assemble arriving deputies in his calm voice and trying to keep this situation from escalating out of control. Sergeant House tried to arrange deputies in some kind of formation to enter the large crowd of wedding attendees who were still fighting all over the place. Marv told me to take note of the sergeant and the group of deputies who were not wearing helmets as we were and a few other veterans saying, “They have no idea.”
Suddenly like an L.A Dodgers foul ball, a full Budweiser beer can came flying high and fast out of the crowd, hitting Sergeant House on the right side of his head. He was staggered and grabbed the right side of his head. His calm voice was gone as he yelled, “Getem!”
Marv said, “I told you” as we ran toward the crowd pr24 (side handle batons) in hand.
My memory of the next few minutes is a blur. Lawsuits that lasted years came out of this incident. I do remember arrests, and people sent to the hospital that night were in the double digits. I think Sergeant House was processing paperwork from that night for months. That night Sergeant House became fully aware he was not at Sheriff’s Headquarters anymore. Like many supervisors, he adapted and transferred out of there as soon as possible. It was not an easy place for a supervisor. Since most newly assigned supervisors transferred out as soon as they could, there was too much happening too often for field sergeants to keep up.
I had some overwhelming days while on training at Lynwood. One day we arrested two in a stolen car. We arrested someone for being under the influence of drugs, and he had a gun. We took three burglary reports. And on the way into the station at the end our shift, we arrested two for being in possession of PCP. Finally the shift was over, and I had started none of these reports. I had not booked the evidence let alone started my log. Sometimes you just didn’t know where to start. It was not unusual to get off your shift and see trainees writing reports, return sixteen hours later to start your next shift and see the same trainees still writing reports.
Marv and I mostly worked the Willowbrook Car, which was the unincorporated area of L.A. bordering Watts and Imperial Courts housing projects. If we were lucky, there would be two cars assigned to the area. Years later I heard there were three or more cars assigned to the area. Hard to believe while I was on training, many times it was just us in unit 253.
There were the normal gang killings and retaliation, along with the cocaine wars between drug sellers and controlling gangs. PCP was everywhere. It was wild times. One pm shift they gave us a call; 245 (assault with a deadly weapon) just occurred 109th Street between Alameda Street and Mona Blvd, several down, 253 had the handle. Several down, what the fuck. I got on the radio and coordinated the response of assisting units to create a containment and lock down the crime scene and called for an aero unit.
When we arrived there people lying in the street and crowds of people running all over the place. Later Marv laughed and said when we arrived on the scene, he looked at me and my face went pale. I don’t know about that, but maybe it did. All sorts of assisting units arrived. This was a large crime scene and containment area. Marv was telling me, “Direct them where to go and what to do.” We had the handle and deputies and training officers were waiting for me to give them a task or assignment. I was directing deputies to containment locations and directing them to conduct interviews and to give me a supplemental report. It’s a weird dynamic when you’re on training. Walking around the station or anywhere, you know your place. You are polite to everyone and have a very subservient attitude, especially to training officers and also to any deputy no longer on training. In and around the station, you’re expected to keep quiet, listen and do what your told. In a field situation during an emergency or operation, you’re expected to take control delegate where you need people. You have to dance between these two protocols.
We taped off the entire length of 109th Street from Alameda to Mona Blvd. as a crime scene, a distance of a couple hundred yards. We had three gunshot vi
ctims laying on the street, still alive. A deputy was standing over a body in a front yard under an air conditioner. He yelled, “Marv, this one is dead!” Now I had one dead shooting victim and three others who were shot and down on the street. The whole street was a crime scene, and we had a containment area of the surrounding blocks. We didn’t know who shot who, but we had it locked down.
The helicopter was overhead, ambulances were arriving for the victims who were still alive. I was manning our makeshift command post. You have to coordinate all these resources. Request a tactical frequency for your operation. You have to advise the desk who is where and doing what. They have to know who is available for the calls that are coming in for other crimes. The watch commander needs a call so he or she knows what’s going on. The field sergeant arrives and wants to know what we and everyone else is doing. He knows soon the watch commander and maybe Division Commander or Chief will arrive and ask him the same questions, and he better have the answers.
The suspects were last seen running west from the location between houses. I had about eight cars and fifteen deputies on this containment. Some training officer would have their trainee write everything from the verbal reports from other deputies. My smart training officer taught me to be efficient. He told me to tell every deputy that I assigned a task to give me a supplemental report. Then all I have to do is write the initial crime report and collect all the supplementals and turn them in with the initial crime report. The deputies that went to the hospital to check on the medical condition of the wounded and take their statement wrote me a supplemental report on the statements and medical condition. The dog handler and the deputies that went along on the search gave me a supplemental report. The deputies who interviewed witnesses gave me their supps. A gun was recovered at the scene. The deputy who took control of the weapon and booked it into evidence wrote me a supplemental report on that. So although initially these calls can be overwhelming, in the end once the activity is parceled out and everyone writes a supplemental report on what they did, it’s not so bad.
