misdemeanor – Thonie Hevron Author

Roll Call: Northeast Vice, the Queen and the Motor Cop

By Mikey, Retired LAPD

Hollywood and Western–looks different in the daytime

During my vice tour at Northeast, from late 1978 to 1980, I had some very fun times, dangerous times and stake-out boring times. But not everyone saw my job as fun or even tolerable. Because Hollywood Vice was the premier divisional vice unit, vice units’ city-wide were required to send several of their vice coppers to Hollywood for a two-week loan—fresh faces. My partner Sam and I were working the corner of Sunset and Western where the drag-queen community owned the vice business there. At about 7pm (summertime, still light), Sam dropped me off on Western near the 101 Hollywood freeway and he drove the target area.

Five minutes later, he picked me up, saying he’d gotten a lewd conduct violation. We drove back to make the arrest. Instead of slowly driving up to the location and pointing out the violator, Sam went in like the cops, fast and furious, right up to a group where the violator was.

Sam yelled, “That’s him,” pointing at a 5’2” blond who bolted. Now, at the time I was heavy duty weight lifting, NOT running. This is gonna hurt.

The queen is running northeast across Western toward Sunset. No way am I going to catch him so, I yell, “LAPD, stop!”

He stopped, yup—all 5’2” right there, right in front of me and no way was this vice cop gonna come to a stop. I hit him and we both ended up on the street on our butts face to face.

He says, (I heard it ‘cause I was there,) “Why did you hit the queen?”

I answered, “You stopped!”

He says, “You told me to stop!”

I said, “NO ONE STOPS WHEN WE YELL STOP!!”

Well, he is bleeding from his forehead so it’s off to get him MT’d (medically treated and cleared) then to misdemeanor booking. The booking line was a bit long so I started on my paper work. My arrestee was standing to my left and there was a motor cop with his arrestee standing to my right and I can see he was not casting a favorable eye on my arrestee. The four of us are there for about 10 minutes, when the queen asked if he can go pee.

“Ok, over there,” and I point at the rest room just adjacent to the booking counters. This is jail after all and there are bars only, no wall, no privacy.

I watched as he sits down to pee when I heard two hands smack together.

The motor cop flashed past me saying, “That’s it!”

Crap, he was headed for the queen so I start after him not knowing what is going to happen.

Now towering over my arrestee, the queen looked up at him in horror as the copper reached down lifting the still urinating man up over his head and yelled, “You are a man, stand up and piss like one!”

The queen was screaming, the copper was cursing and talking in tongues. I was very focused on my arrestee and the fact that I don’t want to spend the night in a hospital with him in the event he is seriously injured. I grabbed the motor officer by his Sam Browne and yelled at him to let the guy go. But noooooo, he keeps screaming and shaking the queen and the queen keeps screaming and peeing!

A jail division sergeant grabbed the motor officer’s right arm which brings the copper out of his trance. He slowly lowers the now very hysterical queen down who fainted as he fell back onto the toilet in the sitting position exactly where he started.

The motor cop is escorted out of the rest room and I shook the queen. He came to with a start and screamed! I reassure him that he is OK now and I will not leave his side. We got to the front of the booking line and finished without further incident.

All of this for a misdemeanor!???

Ramblings: D/O Sheets

By Hal Collier, Retired LAPD

When I came on the job and was learning the difference between my elbow and a hot rock we had Pin Maps. Pin maps for the non-police are maps with different colored pins. Each color pin represents a type of crime. Robbery, burglary, GTA’s (Grand Theft Auto), etc. A colored dot on the top of the pin indicated what watch the crime occurred. The pins are placed on the streets where the crimes occurred.

Now, being a rookie I would study all the different colored pins and try to figure out just what the hell they represented. One night my training officer caught me studying the pin map. He told me to quit wasting my time. He said they’re only good if their kept up to date which ours weren’t. He said no use in studying crimes that occurred six months ago. He told me the detectives were responsible for updating the maps but they were too busy taking two hour lunches.

He wasn’t very fond of detectives.

do-sheet He introduced me to the D/O Sheet. D/O stood for Daily Occurrence Crime Sheet. See attachment. The D/O sheet was typed daily by our record clerks as they were called in the dark ages of the LAPD. I think they’re called Clerk Typist now days. They got the crime reports straight from the Watch Commander after approval. They would list the location, time, suspect description, vehicle description with license info and a brief narrative of the crime. If you look at the Kidnap/ Robbery crime in the attachment you’ll see that the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) committed the crime May 17, 1974 in Hollywood.

The D/O sheet was passed out in Roll Call. It was only useful if you read it. Some of the old timers sitting in the back row made paper airplanes out of them and had contests to see whose flew the closest to the Watch Commander. Their theory was, “I don’t need any paper to tell me how to make an arrest.”

Because of my training officer I became a D/O sheet fanatic. I’d get mine before roll call and have all the important information recorded in my officers’ note book. In the beginning, I looked for crime patterns in my car district. Later, I would look for crime patterns anywhere in Hollywood Division. I just loved arresting bad guys. Loved that adrenalin rush.

My first success was not so worthy. I spotted a car listed on the D/O sheet. I practically caused my training officer to have a potty training accident when I yelled out, “That car’s wanted.” It turned out the crime was a misdemeanor and California law states you can’t arrest a misdemeanor weeks after the crime. We did ID the criminal and made more work for our detectives. My partner advised me to narrow my D/O sheet scan to felony crimes where we could actually arrest the bad guy.

For years after that I could be seen with a folded D/O sheet stuffed into my sap pocket. I never carried a sap. Flashlight in one sap pocket, gloves and D/O sheet in the other. It was my quick Google reference, decades before Google was invented. I found the D/O sheet so informative I would read it in roll call when the W/C was trying to tell me how to do police work.

Next: the D/O sheet pays off big time. –Hal

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