By Ed Meckle, Retired LAPD
BB Ballistics
With all the crazy, funny, bizarre things that cops experience, some happens right there in the station house.
I was working a radio car and along with my partner. We were in the juvenile office at the station. In custody, we had one defiant 12-year-old boy, one red Ryder model BB gun and one tube of BB’s. He was given to us by an angry motorist with a BB hole in his windshield who’d chased him down. The juvenile ditched the gun (which we found) but he still had the tube in his pocket. He denied everything but couldn’t explain the BB’s.
The juvenile officer, Leroy Goforth, also got a denial. Goforth directed me to bring him an office trash can. Goforth emptied it. Then he instructed me to place it across the room open end toward him. He fired one BB into the basket. I retrieved the basket while he rummaged in his desk drawer producing a large pair of tweezers and a Sherlock Holmes-sized magnifying glass.
He asks the boy, “Do you know what ballistics is?”
“No.”
“It is the scientific method the police use to tell if a particular gun fired a certain bullet. Understand?”
The kid shrugged.
“Well, we are going to do a scientific ballistics test on your gun.”
At this point, Leroy retrieves the bb from the basket. Holding the BB with the large tweezers, he examined it with the large glass for a good 10-15 seconds.
He gave the kid a long look. Then back to the BB. Kid, BB, kid, BB, kid, BB. Finally, shaking his head sadly, he pronounced, “Without a doubt, there is no question that this gun not only belongs to you but also fired the shot that struck the car. I also know it was an accident, you are sorry and will never do it again. Right kid?”
The kid nodded, “Yes.”
~~~
The Wisdom of Age
Many years later, I was the uniformed watch commander and notice one of my “old timers” with a quarter-sized hole in the front of his uniformed trousers. Knowing he was two weeks from retirement and not about to buy new trousers, I told him, “Charlie, do something about that. We can’t have you walking about with your chalk-white leg showing.”
“Ok, Elltee.” An hour later, as he entered the office the problem seemed solved.
I asked, “That looks much better, what did you do?”
He grins, drops his trousers and I see where he has taken a dark blue marking pen and colored his leg.
~~~
The Education of a Young Patrol Officer
Back in the day when we carried .38 revolvers, I held a firearms inspection. On command you drew your weapon, emptied the 6 rounds into your left hand which was held out for viewing. The pistol was held at “inspection arms” in the right hand.
One of my probationers held a bright shining revolver smelling of gun oil and an empty left hand. He also had a terrified look on his face. I quietly told him to see me after roll call.
“What was that all about,” I asked.
In a tremulous voice, he replied, “I cleaned my gun the other day and forgot to reload.”
I calmed him down and told he was not in trouble. I asked if there was anything I could say that would make him feel any worse than he was feeling already?
He shook his head. “No.”
I told him he would have to come up with some gimmick to make him think of his gun. Was it loaded? That sort of thing.
Years later the probationer, now a detective, entered an elevator I was on.
He stood next to me but did not acknowledge my presence, As he got off, he laughed, patted his gun hip and stated, “When the Elltee says stay loaded, I stay loaded.”
~~~
In 1950, William H. “Bill” Parker was appointed chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. He inherited a scandal-ridden, dispirited, and vastly understaffed department.
On this particular night, while following up on a citizen’s complaint of a dice game, we “took” a small crap game at the location. It was unusual, however, in that there were only three “shooters” and the operator. In addition, the lighting was supplied by several red light bulbs only. Also unusual, the table was covered in what appeared to be $20 bills. When I went to turn the regular lights on, the operator pleaded with me not to. The $20’s turned out to be bad photo copies not noticeable under the reds. The operator and two cohorts were flimflamming a high roller.
Working Metro, my partner Frank and I were directed to report to Robbery Division along with another team. They had a limited stakeout and needed two teams. The detective doing the briefing related the following:
To the very young of you, a teletype was the then police method of reaching a lot of other agencies en masse.
Two male suspects entered the gas station in separate vehicles and asked to use the vise in the closed garage area. They proceeded to hacksaw off the barrel of a .12-gauge shotgun in the garage, then used the gun to hold up the attendant. 
NB had obtained an antique .32 caliber revolver, either a Harrington and Richardson or an Iver Johnson. This revolver was a “break open” model and in order to load it, the barrel and the cylinder needed to be tilted forward. A small nut and bolt assembly served as the “hinge pin.” This particular revolver, however, was missing this nut and bolt assembly and in its place was a bent nail. When NB had selected his victim, he produced this weapon, and somewhere between “stick ‘em up” and “oh s**t,” the nail fell out. Now, logic tells us that the fallen nail was followed by the barrel, followed by the cylinder, followed by all 5 rounds, leaving our hapless NB holding a gun butt with only a trigger and a hammer attached to what used to be a revolver. The victim then produced his own weapon and shot NB in the foot from about 8 feet away, a point-blank shot. After units went on scene, all they had to do was follow the blood drops to NB’s hiding spot that was located several blocks away in a bush. 
We were still driving two and year-old Plymouths. They were all automatic transmissions and the heater worked sometimes. No air or power steering in the beginning. The brakes on the ‘69 Plymouths only worked after heating up. I almost had a few accidents just trying to drive out of the station parking lot.
Wearing only a baby doll nighty and a baseball cap (very fashionable) he targeted only female riders. Singles or in groups, it made no difference to him. He leapt from the bushes, shouted some obscenity, flashed the riders and disappeared back into the brush where they could not follow. Several spooked horses, thrown riders and complaints brought Metro onto the scene.
Building and safety department was quick to handle the problem, though—with a sign telling you to use the outer edge of the stairs. The sign was there the entire two and a half years that I was.
Pardon me while I try to keep that statement down. It was all cement, not a window to look out of. If you wanted to see what kind of a day it was you had to step outside. Once a month the city would come out and test the backup generator. The computers all had to be shut off during the power interruption. They’d run the generator for five minutes then shut it off. 
One day—it was bound to happen—the power went out and the station went into darkness. The generator switched on and worked fine for five minutes then shut down. This modern, state-of-the-art police station was pitch dark inside. The only lights were the phone lights and they just told you that citizens were calling for assistance. The Watch Commander sent a rookie officer to Sav-on to buy all the candles they had. It seems that every month they tested the generator but forgot to refill the gasoline tank. Yep, it ran out of gas during a real emergency.