Tag: LAPD

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The Call Box

The Call Box: My Short Kidnapping Career

Part 2 of 2

By Ed Meckle, Retired LAPD

As I was formulating my plans I couldn’t help but think of “the Fortress” as I had called it. It was that in every sense of the word. It took up and entire city block and stood there looking like “Half Dome” at Yosemite. It was imposing, formidable, and let’s add insurmountable. We will see about that.

Before the day was out, I acquired a photo copy of a Times employee’s pass, which now bore my photo and the name, George Hearst—Patty’s father and Chandler’s major rival as the editor of the Examiner. I figured if I was captured, it would really piss them off.

I called in two of my teams and laid out the plan. Team one, “The Suits,” would try to talk their way in or if unable to do that, enter however they could. Team two, “The Window Washers,” would brazen their way in. I would bluff my way through Security. We would try to get close enough to touch Chandler and tell him he “had been taken.”

The next morning—in a suit, of course—and carrying a folder stenciled in large letters, “LA Times London Bureau—” Now let me pause here for a moment. As any cop can tell you, an air of confidence is all important, especially when you are going somewhere you shouldn’t or that has been denied to you. You cannon, repeat, cannot be hesitant or timid but must act with authority. Maybe even a bit of arrogance and superiority. “Stand back, I’m coming through and don’t even think of questioning me.”

Which is exactly what I did, flashing my “ID” while talking to the person next to me as though we were old friends.

So far, so good. I’m on the elevator but the floors are not marked. I don’t know where Notions or Lingerie is but I’m willing to bet the boss man has a top floor corner office.

The top floor is executive country. There is a receptionist in the hall as I exit but I ignore her and turn toward the northwest corner. Anything on the south would overlook a poorer section of downtown. Northeast is China Town but northwest is Civic Center.

Yeah, there it is. Outer over-sized door open to the hall with a tough looking old biddy guarding Chandler’s closed office door.

So far, so good—again. Courage, my boy. Breeze right past her with “He’s expecting me.” I opened his office door, entered. Even though it is the largest, fanciest office I have ever seen, he is not there.

All right, now quickly, plan B. Plan B? I barely had a plan A. And then to save the day, at that moment, Otis Chandler walked in not 10 seconds behind me with the biddy trying to explain who I was—followed by my window washers carrying a step ladder and bucket. Just like we planned. Yeah—I touched his shoulder.

I introduced myself and the team. Gave him the chief’s regards and informed him he was kidnapped, assassinated or whatever. He tried to talk but just stammered and sputtered, which I took as “Well played, lads. Give the Chief my best. Tell him he was right as usual and fortunate to have such clever and ingenious chaps such as yourselves working for him. Jolly good show.” Or at least, that’s what I thought he would have said if he could talk.

Back at the office, we laughed as we recounted what happened. “The Suits” were stopped at several points but then went to the loading dock and got in there. They got to the office about 2-3 minutes after we left. The “window washers” just walked in. Nobody even looked at them.

I discovered there was no official form to cover “the kidnapping of a newspaper publisher by police personnel.” One sheet of paper, single spaced, no embellishment to tell what we did, phony ID attached and I gave it to the captain. I came back from the chief several days later with one word in the upper right corner—“Wow.”

 

Speaking of kidnapping, “Intent to Hold” is an element of kidnapping which is the primary crime in my second novel Intent to Hold. Click on the link to check out the sample on Amazon.com.

 

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings: More on Bombs

By Hal Collier, Retired LAPD

 

If you respond to a good suspicious package call, you have to cordon off a 300-foot perimeter. That’s large in a dense area like Hollywood. We closed major streets, denied employees access to their work locations and more importantly they couldn’t get to Starbucks!  We basically pissed off the citizens who will vote for my next pay rise.

 

Building evacuations might be required but we usually leave that to the manager or boss of the targeted location. Most businesses don’t want to shut down, so they tell their employee’s to remain at work. To some money was more important than their employees’ safety.

 

Schools were different, the principal would send the kids out of the buildings in a flat minute. I once received a bomb threat at a private high school. Before I arrived the principal had sent most of the students’ home. It was a test day; did the caller sounded like a student? Of course there wasn’t a bomb! The next week when a bomb threat was called in the principal kept everyone in their classroom.

 

Here’s one for the books. I respond to a suspicious package at a residence. The lady tells me she was delivered a package at her house by the U.S. Post Office. The name on the package was not hers and she didn’t recognize the sender.  She took the package to the local post office and explained that the package was suspicious. The post office clerk told her to take it home and call the police, “It might be a bomb!” The lady put the possible bomb in the trunk of her car and drove back home and called the police.

No bomb and the bomb technician said he would have a serious talk with the local post office.

 

This still makes me mad. Reserve police officers are volunteer cops who go through training and work one day a month as a cop. Now I worked with a lot of reserves and loved them. They took the same risks as me, all for the pay of one uniform cleaning a month. We got a call of a suspicious package at a large apartment building. We were searching the area behind the building when the reserve officer spots a suitcase. He immediately drops down to one knee and opens the suitcase. Thank goodness it was empty or my kids would be writing this Ramblings.

 

After, we had a long discussion in a vacant Hollywood parking lot.

Next week: 9/11/2001

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings, Bombs part 2

 

By Hal Collier, retired LAPD

I spent 15 months as a new sergeant in Watts. I don’t recall one bomb threat or suspicious package call. I returned to Hollywood division and my second day back we had a bomb threat call. It could be me the threats were directed at! Here’s some more.

 

CBS news was located in Hollywood at Sunset and Gower. Every night near the end of the 11:00 o’clock news they would air an editorial and some critic would phone in a bomb

threat at the station. My first response after roll call was to CBS. We’d search the news room area but never found anything suspicious. We’d take a bomb threat crime report and head for coffee—it’s going to be a long night. We also got to know the staff and newscasters on a first name basis.

 

 

 

A side note Dr. George Fischbeck was the weatherman at ABC in Hollywood. Every night around 11:45 PM he would stop at the strip mall at Hollywood and Taft. We were drinking coffee from, yes, a donut shop, and he stopped at the 7-11. He would then walk over to us cops to say hi.

 

I’d ask, “Dr. George, what’s the weather for tomorrow?”

His reply was always the same, “I don’t know. I only read that crap on TV.”

 

Fast forward to 1984.  The Olympics have come to Los Angeles and the police department is on high alert. Things are going smoothly and I’m eating code 7 at the Denny’s at Sunset and Gower. I walk out to my police car and get in the driver’s seat. Just before I turn the ignition key, I notice a small object on the windshield wiper. I get out and notice it’s about a 3” X 5” package and wrapped in Christmas paper.

It’s July!  Typical of most cops I look around for another cop playing a practical joke on me. Next, I get down on one knee and look for a bigger bomb. Nothing!  I called the bomb squad—my momma raised a hero but not a fool.

 

The bomb squad responded and inspected the package. They x-rayed the bundle and then opened it. It was a small bible! Maybe the person who left it figured I needed a little religion or then again it could have been a test. I apologized to the Bomb Squad technician. His name was Ronald Ball. He was later killed diffusing a pipe bomb. He told me don’t ever apologize, always call us. I did from then on! He told me that if it was a bomb it was big enough to blow off my hand!

 

I already told of the time I walked into the police parking lot at start of watch to get my cruiser. In between the front seat was a hand grenade. It was later determined to be a dud but I wasn’t prepared to take a chance without first checking my horoscope. The previous watch found it in a parking lot and forgot to book it. They knew it was a dud. They got two ass-chewing’s—one from me and my partner and another from the LAPD brass.

 

Being Hollywood just about every big story was covered by the media. We handled a lot of bomb threat calls and most were false. There was a radio station at Sunset and Argyle, it was right across the street from the world famous Hollywood Palladium. We would get a bomb threat at the radio station and set up our command post in the Palladium parking lot across the street. After the third threat a bomb squad officer told us that the threats could be to see where we set up our command post. Then plant a real bomb in the parking lot and take out a lot of first responders. I think my next command post will be at Pinks.

 

The last Ramblings bomb threats will cover a few more bomb threats and  9/11.

–Hal

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings, Bomb Squad, part 1

By Hal Collier, Retired LAPD

First the disclaimer.

I never worked the Bomb Squad, I never wanted to work the Bomb Squad; their black jump suits added ten pounds to my toned body. I didn’t like responding to any of the bomb calls.

There are two kinds of bomb calls. “Bomb threats,” usually a phone call or letter.  Now days, there might be emails or texts. The other is a suspicious package.  Suspicious package can be anything from a brief case to a back pack both can get you hurt if the call is good. I used to think about my wife worrying about me every time I left for a normal day’s work—whatever normal is! In the Bomb Squad, you get a call out in the middle of the night and your spouse knows you’re driving to danger. You can tell your spouse not to worry. “I’ll be careful,” but that only reassures them for a few minutes. I’ll bet after you leave they look for an all-night news station on TV. They know you might never come home again.

 

My first personal experience with explosives was with fire crackers that I smuggled across the border from Mexico. Oh come, on I was only twelve! I once lit a fire cracker in a model airplane that I built. Did I mention that I had put some gasoline in the plane? I light the fuse and after the explosion, I spent the next ten minutes putting out the small brush fires it started. “Stupid is as Stupid Does.”

 

I think that Bomb Squad officers are smart and professional and more than qualified to handle any suspicious package as most bombs were called, but every once in a while something goes very wrong. No “take overs” with bombs!

 

I remember a few early suspicious package calls both at the old Hollywood Police station. The first was where some good intended citizen placed a package at the back door to the station. The bomb squad blew it up with a water cannon. It was a chocolate Easter Bunny. The second was placed in front of the station and when blown up 500 pieces of a jigsaw puzzle were scattered across Wilcox Avenue.  Both of those might have been a test to see how we’d react.

 

My first real recollection of a true bomb was August 1975. That was the night that the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) placed a bomb under a police car at the IHOP. I was eating six blocks away and thought it could have just as easily been under my police car. The bomb squad later placed that same pipe bomb under a car and set it off.  It would have killed both officers and a lot of IHOP customers. For the next thirty years, I bent down and looked under my police car to see if there was a bomb.

That’s tough on the knees especially when you get in your 50’s.

 

Next more bomb stories, including 9/11

Categories
The Call Box

The Callbox: Sully, a Real Friend

By Ed Meckle

Ed is a new contributor to Just the Facts, Ma’am. Here he describes himself. His stories are not to be missed.

I am a member of the “Old Centurion” Lunch and True Tales Bunch. Hal Collier moderates and we are only one of fifty plus LAPD retired groups that meet around the country to renew friendships and share experiences. There is a topic of the month wherein we share stories of said topics such as Bizarre, Funny, etc. This month’s topic was “Use of Force.”

Inasmuch as my time on the job was from an earlier era     [2-1-56 TO  10-1-76] ..my stories might just be from a different perspective. I have lots of tales to tell.

 

Let us first examine the meaning of the word “friend:”

Someone who is 100% honest with you. Ok

Sticks by your side, no matter what. Also ok

Someone you can trust in the time of need. Another big ok

There when glad-handers and pretenders are long gone

Let’s not forget the “frenemies” who tell you one thing but secretly gloat when you fall. They are there for their own good. The old saying goes, “A mouthful of howdy and a handful of gimmie”

That being said, on with your tale. Let’s start by tell you Sully was a really good police man/detective. He was smart, intuitive and funny, but looked at life at an angle. He marched to the beat of a drummer only he could hear. And not only thought “outside the box,” he didn’t even know there was a box. Great practical joker. He was a first rate interrogator, saw things that others didn’t and was one of the clumsiest people I ever knew. I never saw him angry and never heard him raise his voice. Calm cool and collected, as they say.

I first met him in 1958. My first night on vice, prowling a dark alley, we surprised the lookout for an illegal gaming operation. While speaking to him in a low voice, he had him undress, coat shirt, pants and shoes all went over the fence into someone’s back yard. It was a cold night and while the lookout stood shivering, Sully said, “You are not going to tell them we are here, correct?”

That said, we raided the house. All the while, I was convinced my career as a policeman was over and I was probably going to a Turkish prison.

I didn’t, it had only just begun—

 

A glimpse of Sully standing on the sidewalk in front of a bank:

A “211 (armed robbery) had just happened and the manager told him, “You just missed him by minutes.”

 

Sully looked left for a long moment, then right and told his partner who was putting out the broadcast, “Come on. I know where he is.”

 

Six doors away they found him in a cocktail lounge. When asked, Sully said, “The manager described him as calm, almost cocky. There is very little pedestrian traffic, no street parking and the bank is in the middle of a long block. I figured he was going to hunker down and outwait us.”

 

When I later returned form court and walked into the squad room, I saw a stranger on the typewriter. I gave Sully the “What???” look and he said, That’s my bank robber. I’m dictating and he is doing his own arrest report. Can that guy type or what?”

 

That was Sully.

 

Practical joke:

Someone set off a firecracker behind the elderly lieutenant who was inspecting firearms. For a few seconds, he was convinced he had shot one of his own men.

 

[MORE TO COME]

 

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings, A Cop’s Irony, part 3

By Hal Collier, retired LAPD

 

I worked a lot of overtime but once because of overtime, I missed my son’s baseball game. The only one glad to see me when I got home was our dog.

Ironic

 

I once was chastised by my sergeant for driving through a red light after stopping, it was on a backup call. The irony is that he had thirteen on duty collisions and once used the pit maneuver decades before it was approved. He said he didn’t want me to follow his example?

Ironic

 

The news crew shows up at a homicide scene and films the sheet covered body. They then leave and come back when the coroner wheels the body into the back of the van hours later. Admit it—how many times have you seen the dead body on a gurney being wheeled to the coroners van on TV?

Ironic.

 

Here’s something really ironic: officers are involved in a shooting or major use of force. Suddenly politicians, college professors, and the media become experts on how the officers should have handled the situation. This is of course, weeks or months after a commission investigation. They also have all the information and make their analyses in a calm environment. No adrenaline, bad lighting, or stress. They have never been a cop or faced the danger that they just judged. They usually recommend more training for cops.

Train the public. Clue, if you point a toy or BB gun at a cop you’re going to get shot.

 

Next: How some cops deal with the sights, sounds and smells we encounter!   Hal

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More Street Stories

LAPD Remembers: All Is Not What It Seems

By Ron Ray, retired LAPD

Around 1980-81 my partner and I are working a T-car (traffic) and looking for dui drivers. We are in Hollywood Division driving west on Santa Monica Boulevard west of Cahuenga Boulevard. A car ahead of us is weaving all over the road and makes a left turn into a parking lot cutting off opposing traffic. The parking lot belonged to a low class nudie bar which had the reputation of having some of the ugliest dancers to ever get up on stage. If this guy was going in there then he was probably already drunk.

 

I get him out of the car and my suspicions were correct. The guy reeks of booze, he can barely stand, his words are slurred, and he generally looks like something the cat drug in. As I am about to give him the F.S.T. (field sobriety test), I notice the passenger in the car trying to get out to talk to my partner on the right side of the car. My partner tells the passenger to stay in the car. The passenger replies very loudly, “You can’t tell me what the hell to do,” and proceeds to get out of the car. My partner and the passenger start snarling at each other and I know things are going to go south.

I quickly handcuff the driver so I can go help my partner in the fight that I know is coming. As I walk around the back side of the car I can see that the belligerent passenger can hardly stand up by himself. He is rocking back and forth shifting his feet constantly to maintain his balance. He looked like a fisherman standing on a deck in rough seas. As I get close the guy takes a swing at my partner who ducks and then grabs the guy by the front of his jacket. In a smooth motion my partner picks the guy up, turns him upside down and slams him to the pavement much like you would see a pro-wrestler do to his opponent………and breaks the guy’s back.

 

The guy is bent in the middle with his legs up and around both sides of his head. It appears that my partner has turned this guy into a paraplegic. The guy is screaming and my partner tells him to shut up and quit sniveling. As I watch this I thought of two things. First, that my partner was much stronger than I ever imagined and that secondly, we had to get our story straight. This is the kind of thing that today would probably get us sent to Federal Prison.

 

As the guy continues to scream I notice a pair of single pole crutches  along side the front passenger seat. They were the kind that have a handle and a u-shaped support for around the back of the arm. We come to find out that all is not lost and that my partner was not as strong as it first appeared.

My partner had just body slammed a double amputee. He was missing both legs mid-thigh and his prosthetics (not the high-tech ones of today) loosened and popped off.

 

Later after getting another unit to transport the amputee home and us booking the driver in jail, I teased my partner about what had occurred. I said, “My my, body slamming a poor little double amputee,”

He calmly replied, “That guy will never mess with me again.”

 

Ron Ray LAPD Retired.

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings, Code-7 the Last One, Really

By Hal Collier, LAPD retired

Ok, enough of interrupted code-7’s

I’ll finish with a few facts. Some days you worked alone or if you got stupid and promoted to sergeant you almost always ate by yourself. Now, you don’t usually want to eat with the patrol cops because they won’t relax around a supervisor. That’s their time, leave them alone. Now, every once in a while I was asked to eat with them, that’s a sign that you are accepted and an honor.

In my later years, I brown bagged Code-7. Actually I ate better than most cops. I brought in leftovers from my dinner from the night before. When eating at the station, I was not chasing perpetrators. Of course, I was often interrupted by the desk officers asking a question or advice.

Let me leave you with one last thought. If you eat a heavy meal, don’t get in a foot pursuit. Now days, people will have a video tape of you throwing up on You Tube before you finish your shift.

Hal

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings, Code-7: Absolutely the (next to) last one

By Hal Collier, LAPD retired

Ok, this is the absolutely (next to—from Thonie: there will be one more next Sunday 4/24/2016) last Ramblings on Code-7. Some of you must think that all I did for thirty-five years was eat. Actually a lot of times cops miss Code-7 due to an arrest, a busy night, or no other police cars available to cover while you ate.

Then was something called a Tactical Alert. A Tactical Alert was called when a major incident occurred anywhere in the large city of Los Angeles. Tactical Alert means no one eats and the waitresses throughout the city get stiffed on our quarter tips. Sometimes an incident has occurred in the Harbor, LAPD Communications Watch Commander will broadcast a city-wide Tactical alert. Now, if I drive up to Mount Lee just above the Hollywood Sign I can see the harbor but there’s little chance I’ll be sent there. Later, they would scale the Tactical Alert down to a bureau. It still means that you’re likely to eat Code-7 off the hood of your car.

Ok a last code-7 interruption (we already discussed this–it’s not the last).

When I moved to day watch, the locations to eat Code-7 multiplied by 800%. I liked a little Italian place, “Stephano’s.” It was family owned and run plus they had the best lasagna and garlic bread you ever tasted. If you weren’t very hungry they served a baby pizza. So one beautiful day, I’m dining at Stephano’s with my former partner, Lindy, and her future husband, Lou. He’s a LAFD firemen but I’m not prejudiced. I’ve eaten with the homeless if you remember a previous code-7 Ramblings.

So we’re sitting in a booth with a view of Vine Street. Just as we’re being served our lunch, Lou yells, “Look, a perpetrator.”

A what?

Who calls them perpetrators?

We look out the window and see a guy fleeing from the Pavilion’s Market across the street. Someone is chasing him. Now I might have thought they were just out for a midday jog but Lou said it loud enough that the rest of the restaurant patrons are now looking at us. Crap, keep my food warm. My partner and I run out to our car and catch up to the suspect—see? A suspect. I never caught a perpetrator in my entire career. He had been shoplifting when the security guard tried to arrest him. We had another police car meet us and take the suspect to the station while we returned to Stephano’s and finished our meal. We were then tied up with the shoplifter for the rest of the watch but at least we had full stomachs.

 

Sometime later the LAPD equipped their officers with handheld radios. They were carried on your gun belt which was already overloaded. There were advantages and disadvantages. The advantage was you were always within sound of Communications. The disadvantage was you were always within the sound of Communications! If you were eating and an, “Officer Needs Help” call comes out, you dropped your fork and responded. Later you had to go back and pay for the meal you didn’t eat. If you were still eating and a little over your allotted Code-7 time, the communications dispatcher would ask you if you were clear. That usually meant they had a call for you.

–Hal

Read the absolutely and for real last Code-7 post next week.

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings, Code-7 Interrupted

By Hal Collier, Retired LAPD

This is not the last Ramblings about eating Code-7.

Most cops need a break from the usual stress of being a police officer. Admit it—every time you see a police car you look to see what they’re doing and if they’ll notice that you’re not wearing your seat belt.

 

With everybody having a cell phone, Joe Citizen is recording your every move on duty—you’d better watch where you scratch. If they saw a UPS or mail truck they wouldn’t give it a second look.

That’s the life of being a cop!

 

So you get that break and sit down to eat.  Your meal is served and you don’t want to be bothered. You just want to unwind. Some good intended citizen comes up to you as your putting that first fork of dinner into your mouth and says, “I don’t want to interrupt your meal but,” then they do just that! Ten minutes later they say “Well, I’ll let you get back to your meal.”  Unfortunately your 23 minute Code-7 is almost over. 

By the way—that code-7 is on the officers own time. In the LAPD if you worked an eight hour shift you worked eight hours and twenty-three minutes. If you’re on a twelve-hour shift you worked twelve hours and forty-five minutes. If you didn’t get Code-7, you could put in for overtime but then you had to listen to the wrath of your sergeant for abusing the system. 

You would’ve thought that the overtime was coming out of your sergeant’s pay check.

 

Next week , a few examples of my interrupted code 7’s.