I thought it fitting to give you Hal Collier’s Thanksgiving post on Thanksgiving. I’ll have a little something about being thankful on Sunday, November 26th.
–Thonie
By Hal Collier, Retired LAPD
The normal scenario for celebrating Thanksgiving Day is to skip breakfast and wait for the Thanksgiving dinner. Then put on a pair of loose pants or something with an elastic waist band. Then head to Grandma’s house or maybe your parents’ house. As you got older it might be your turn to cook the turkey.
But there’s a difference if you’re a first responder. Someone has to work even while everyone else is loosening their belts and watching football.
In the LAPD you had a holiday wish list for days off. You had a choice of five holidays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. If you were a rookie you probably got Arbor Day.
Now, even when I had over 30 years’ experience I didn’t get all five days off. So, I had to choose which days I preferred. Of course, I preferred Christmas Eve first. Christmas Day second, New Year’s Day third, News Year’s Eve fourth and Thanksgiving last. Funny but those were also my wife’s choices.
So, I worked almost every Thanksgiving. No big deal, I wasn’t that fond of turkey. Sometimes our family would celebrate Thanksgiving on Friday or maybe Saturday to work around every one’s schedule.
Trust me, I’ve cooked turkey almost every way conceivable. I’ve cooked bird on a rotisserie, in the oven, in a brown paper bag in the oven—very moist—and I’ve deep fried turkeys in boiling peanut oil. The deep-fried turkeys were good, but then we were reminded that our son is allergic to peanuts. Lately, we have served Honey Baked hams. Did you know they deliver to your front door?
My point is on Thanksgiving Day my Thanksgiving dinner was usually something fast food in a paper bag after talking into a clown face. For the majority of my career I worked graveyard, that’s 11:30 PM to first dawn. I’d leave for work around 10 PM and as I walked in the back door I was overcome by a tantalizing smell of turkey. I made my way up the stairs as the smell got stronger. Just before I entered the locker room I looked into the break room—two turkeys were sitting on the table. Actually, the cop came out in me and I investigated—let me be clear: there were two turkey carcasses on the tables. Picked clean. Oh, there were side dishes, too, but they didn’t have a carcass just empty pans.
I dressed and asked the Watch Commander where all the food came from? He smiled, said the local businesses always take care of the cops in Hollywood. I reminded him that I was a Hollywood cop, just working the wrong hours. Looks like another Thanksgiving meal in a paper bag.
You want turkey fries with that?
One year, I was off on Thanksgiving and thought about cops eating out of a paper bag. I deep fried two turkeys and took one to the station. Feeding Hollywood cops was my way of saying thanks. 
–Hal
I was reading Mikey’s blog about “Short Dogs” and it sparked a very old memory. I started the police academy on Oct. 5, 1970. The first month they crammed our brains with criminal law, self-defense tactics, PT (physical training), which I was told was rougher than Marine Corp boot camp. They also had us throw some lead down range at some silhouette targets. The second month they sent us out to patrol for one day on weekends. We were as green as could be, but we were dressed as real cops and even had loaded guns.
The next bench has four men sitting upright. We get out of the car for this group. Again, there’s a bottle in the brown paper bag on the ground. The men all have bloodshot eyes and one’s starting to lean to the port side. My partner asks the men to stand. None of them can. They seem to be a happy bunch as we put them into the back seat of our car.
We drive to PAB (downtown) where the local jail is for Rampart Division. We pull into the back of the misdemeanor section of the jail and then my partner taught me a lesson I used for the next 35 years. He handed the bottle of wine that we had found in the park and handed it to the four men. They each took a long drink until the bottle was empty. No one complained that they preferred white wine. I walked the first drunk up to the booking officer and the officer called my first arrestee by his first name. They were happy and gave us no problems during booking.
The closest I came was early one morning when Neil Diamond saved my life! I was working day watch and I liked to get my workout in before roll call. I would get up at 4 AM, shave, grab my lunch that my wife made me and get on the road. Now I only lived eleven miles from work so my commute was about 20 minutes. Very little traffic that time of the morning, mostly big rig trucks and few other knot-heads like me who start early. Oh, there were a few who were on their way home after a night on the town!
We were standing in the parking lot of the Wilshire police Station and we were debriefing the nights activities. Ok, we were standing behind the open trunk of a car drinking beer. That’s a big no no in the LAPD Manual. We had been debriefing for about one beer, oh, I mean 20 minutes when a shot rang out and whizzed past my head! We all ducked as a reaction but since the bullet has already missed us, a late response.
Think back to the days when you were very young. Your mom or dad would put you in bed and maybe kiss you on the forehead and say, “have sweet dreams.” Why did they have to say dreams? You were afraid to go to sleep in your bed. Some nights there were monsters under the bed or the monsters were in the closet. Didn’t matter—they were someplace in the room. You’d wake up screaming for your mom! If you had parents who never read Dr. Spock they might let you sleep in their bed for the night.
I’m about to describe some other bad dreams that sneak into what was supposed to be a restful night. That’s right cop dreams. Now, I don’t want some $300 dollar an hour doctor to analyze my dreams. I have enough things to think about when I lay my head on the pillow.
After thirty-five years of sometimes violent encounters, I retired. I assumed that after a while the dreams would be replaced by dreams of retired old folks. Wrong! I’ve been retired for over 12 years and I still wake up punching my pillow or yelling out to halt! In these dreams, I sometimes have partners that I haven’t seen or talked to in decades.
The apartment was an upper-scale building and I’d never had radio calls there before. We were met at the door by a male who stated, “Come in officers, I called you!” The man stated he and his wife had been married for over five years but the marriage was over. He pointed to an attractive well-dressed woman sitting on the couch. He said his wife was a school teacher and a very smart woman. He then said, “That is, until she tried crack cocaine at a party a while back. She now spends her entire pay check to support her habit. Now she’s removing household items and selling or trading them for more cocaine. She’s about to lose her job and I just can’t take it anymore.”
By Hal Collier, Retired LAPD
So I’m working this movie premiere and counting the hours until I can get off my feet. A young couple with 2 preteen-age kids approach me. With a Midwest accent ask, “Officer, do you know a good cheap place to get some hamburgers. We went to Hamburger Hamlet across the street but found it was over our budget.” 
I then advised them the best hamburger in California was a mere 2 ½ blocks away. I directed them to walk down Orange Drive to the corner of Sunset and Orange. Yea, that’s right—In & Out Hamburgers. I suggested a Double/Double with grilled onions. They thanked me and walked away. I expected to never see them again.
Every so often a police division will loan an officer to another division for a special assignment. If that loan becomes a permanent transfer, they must transfer another officer back. That’s were Jeff comes in. Rampart Division owed us an officer and, just like Fidel Castro, they didn’t give us the cream of the crop. In fact, they gave us Jeff. Now, the short time Jeff was assigned to Hollywood he made quite a reputation for himself. No one wanted to work with Jeff.
Jeff stopped my wife for speeding. Actually, she was going five mph over the posted speed limit. Now, in my 35 year career I’ve stopped about a dozen police officers for traffic violations. I never wrote one a ticket; the same for firemen. You called it professional courtesy. I have been stopped three times, once in Texas, and never had a ticket. Well my wife mentions my name to Jeff.