After all, we have one of the most storied PDs in the world, so sooner or later I was bound to pay a visit to the Los Angeles Police Museum. A short jaunt up the venerable 110—and by “venerable,” I mean “Careful on Exit 30A, going from 80 to 15 on a tight curve is hard”—and we find the Highland Park brownstone that houses the museum. And if it looks like an archetypal police HQ, well...
...that’s because it originally was. In fact, it’s the city’s oldest surviving police station—opened in 1926, closed in 1983, and then repurposed as a museum. Consequently, the holding cells remain intact as an exhibit; once the bunks were stacked three high, the station could house up to twenty-one offenders between the misdemeanor and felony cells. If the cramped accommodations weren’t incentive enough, there was only one shower stall for all of them, so it seems like you’d want to dry out pretty quickly here.
And that’s without taking the immediate facilities into account. So, uh—do I get my call to Beyoncé now?
The LAPD as we know it goes back to 1869, during the Wild West days and only about twenty years after California attained statehood. Starting with a mere six paid officers, the force expanded very gradually but always showed a progressive streak in some regards, with Robert Williams Stewart becoming its first African-American officer in 1886.
And then in 1910, Alice Stebbins Wells—that’s her in the upper right—became the first American policewoman. Lucy Gray preceded her as LA’s original police matron in 1888, but Wells was the first woman to have full arrest powers. That said, female officers’ field duties were basically limited to handling female arrestees and juvenile delinquents until things started to equalize in the ’70s, with equal status on the force finally granted in 1980. Check out the purse that was part of the official policewoman’s uniform as late as the ’60s! Came complete with a holster for the lipstick as well as the .38. Bleh. Just give me a fully equipped officer, regardless of gender!
Another look at those early decades comes from the Daily Police Bulletin, a blotter sheet that began in 1907 and ran for about fifty years, providing a unique window into the kinds of suspects, thefts, arrests, and missing persons cases of the times—suspects’ fingerprints included. These are now archived and undergoing preservation efforts at the museum, along with a collection of Los Angeles Police Beat magazines (1947–1978), the covers of which are viewable by touchscreen. Huh. Is that the kid from Changeling?
The museum’s also loaded with the hardware of the job. The LAPD broke ground not just with the people it hired but with the equipment it used, opening the first municipal crime lab in 1923. That’s where you’d find something like this forensic camera, used in the infancy of ballistic fingerprinting to photograph recovered bullets in enhanced detail.
And then there’s an extensive display of field restraints, from ye olde ball and chain to more kinds of handcuffs than I imagined existed, historical to modern. Granted, I could obviously slip out of these easily, but it turns out they’d still be prepared for miscreants my size.
Going out the back door, we find the Vehicle Holding Area, which contains everything from a vintage cruiser to this retired police helicopter, an old Bell Jet Ranger that predates the current black and white color scheme. But old or not, how funny if not downright ironic it is for me to be sitting in one of these choppers—usually I’m on their receiving end.
There are also a couple of armored transports and even a Bomb Squad forklift, which is when the gravity of this place really starts to feel real. But nothing hammers that sense home as much as...
...this Chevy Celebrity, which has clearly seen better days. And one decidedly dark day, because this is the actual getaway car from the North Hollywood shootout of 1997. That was before my time, but even rusting away on cinderblocks, it’s still eerie to see firstpaw.
As a matter of fact, back inside and up on the second floor, there’s an entire room dedicated to that incident. What otherwise would’ve been an ordinary bank robbery escalated into an extended firefight in a residential area, due to the two robbers wearing body armor and wielding automatic guns against the less-equipped LAPD. While the police ultimately won the battle after nearly 2,000 rounds of ammo were exchanged between both sides, it was a seminal moment because it resulted in (among other things) the force upgrading its weaponry and tactics in a big way.
Also receiving an expanded exhibit of its own is the notorious Symbionese Liberation Army, with a natural emphasis on the 1974 siege that similarly ended in a victory for the LAPD but at the cost of injured officers and the deaths of all involved perpetrators. It’s remembered as one of the earliest high-profile deployments of the SWAT team—LA being the first city to create such a task force—as well as a pivotal moment in news media, which at the time was new to covering that sort of event on live TV. Now, of course, it’s just digitized footage on an interactive monitor here, and I mostly only know Patty Hearst from her guest appearance on Veronica Mars.
Speaking of TV detectives, it wouldn’t be an LA museum without some kind of Hollywood tie-in, and in this case it’s a sports jacket worn by Jack Webb during the ’68–’69 season of Dragnet. So...no love for the Dan Aykroyd version? Then again, I suppose you couldn’t very well have the music video playing on a loop right next to the intense shootout clips.
As for real-life policewear, another room houses display cases of guns and uniforms from across the decades. One of the earliest looks drew heavily from the classic British wool uniform—stovepipe hat and all—with a lighter olive version worn in the summer. Since there obviously was no women’s equivalent when Alice Stebbins Wells got her badge, she had to sew her own from the olive drab, skirt and all; later policewomen wore a dark blue incarnation that was closer to Navy WAVES uniforms (also on display here). Meanwhile, by the ’50s the men’s uniform had more or less evolved into the familiar design we still recognize today, the biggest difference since then being that it became unisex in the ’70s. You’ve come a long way, Officer.
Same story with the police badge, which saw several early models and then a final one by midcentury. In fact, most of these are medals for valor or shooting—the evolution of the LAPD badge itself only required the six steps in the center, from the eight-pointed starburst of 1869 to the modern shield of 1940. And just like the uniform, the only significant alteration after that was making it unisex in 1973, changing “policeman”/“policewoman” to, simply, “police officer.”
The remainder of the second floor is dedicated to more service gear, including an old dispatcher’s station and bomb-disposal equipment. To my surprise, the LAPD Bomb Squad has had only two on-duty deaths: Arleigh McCree and Ron Ball were killed in 1986 because standard procedure at the time required that bombs be preserved for analysis and trial instead of simply detonated from a safe distance. And thus, remote-controlled units such as these, which I hope I only ever see from the rear hereafter.
Something I would be happy to see from any angle, at least if it were mine? A good old-fashioned police motorcycle! The LAPD has gone through quite a few different bikes—Thors, Moto Guzzis, Hondas, BMWs, Harleys—with Kawasaki KZ1000s such as this one becoming the hog of choice for a time, from the ChiPs era until the model was discontinued, at which point it was back to Harleys. Hey, whatever gets the wind in my fur!
So now that I’m feeling inspired—and in keeping with its history of innovation—is the LAPD ready for its first rabbit officer?
Okay, maybe not; it kind of looks like I’d have to sew my own uniform first.
