The Call Box: Cops and Robbers

By Ed Meckle, Retired LAPD

Cops and Robbers? How many kids have played the game? Or cowboys and Indians? Or the heroic shot or homer to win the big game? Most will never achieve those dreams yet the cops part is most likely.

Maybe we never really intended to wind up here but for whatever reason (and there are many) we did. We have heard of the brotherhood or the calling or even the protection of the innocent but whatever the actual set of circumstances was “here we are.” And for better or worse we do the job.

The slackers, the lazy and the misfits are easy to spot and avoid.

From my 63rd anniversary of graduating from the academy I can look back a looong way. I have been sharing my tales with you now for a number of years and hope you still find them interesting. What follows is a collection of random thoughts. Brief moments that still bring a smile.

Working Metro, a late-night stakeout for some long-forgotten reason. We were in San Pedro perched on the mid-level platform of an inoperative oil derrick. The wind coming in off the ocean had convinced me I was going to freeze to death by daylight. 

Not a problem, says my partner as he stuffs his jacket with sleeping pigeons.

My friend Sully had come upon a sleeping drunk behind the wheel of a car in the ivy on the freeway shoulder. Sully was headed for the station for EOW (End of Watch) and didn’t want to get involved in booking a potential drunk driver. He pocketed the keys while he looked the car over. He broke off a toothpick in the ignition, then dropped the keys on the floorboard.

Back at the station when he tried to get into his car, he discovered he has the drunk’s keys.

The drunk was still asleep when he went back to make the change.

Still Sully.

We have all heard of the radio mic cord becoming a “lie detector” but Sully came up with the copy machine polygraph. A stack of pre-printed sheets labeled “TRUE” or “LIE” were fed into and discharged by the machine as necessary while our not too bright subject stood with his left hand on the machine and his right hand in the “I swear position.”

Working vice, we had a hooker who came up with the great idea of having her potential tricks swear under penalty of perjury that they were NOT police. She figured if she was busted, she could claim the officer perjured himself. 

Didn’t work in court.

Last Sully:

While we all worked the Robbery Squad at Wilshire Detectives, he swears his Chinese victim, owner of a laundry told a stick-up man who simulated a gun, “No gunny, no money.”

Tha Tha That’s all folks…