The 77th

I am never complaining about a tough day at work again.

Last Saturday night, I had the privilege of riding along with Sgt. Sandoz of the L.A.P.D. 77th Street Community Police Department. It's located in the heart of South Central Los Angeles, and to say that it's a busy division would be an understatement.

I joke a lot about growing up on the mean streets of West Los Angeles (north of Wilshire). But driving through South Central on my way to the station makes that joke ring incredibly hollow. I was born and raised here, yet I've never been in that part of the city.

Sadly, many residents there have never been out of it.

When I first arrived at the station, Sgt. Sandoz gave me a tour. I met many officers, who were all welcoming and surprisingly upbeat, funny and optimistic given the work they do.

And the high crime area they do it in.

I was shown things the general public rarely sees: the holding cells, all metal - makes it a lot easier to hose down. The watch commander's office. The weight room where officers work off some of the stress of the job. The very overcrowded jail at the station, including the two padded rooms which were occupied.

I was also shown the breathalyzer station, or as Sgt. Sandoz called it "Comedy Central", where drunk driving suspects try to fool the machine. I saw a few suspects try to do just that later in the evening when we came back to the station.

The vial of medical marijuana one of them had probably didn't help any.

Every day, the officers have to check out the weapons and patrol cars. We walked up to a counter in front of a room where the walls were lined with shotguns to get ours. Well, his. I didn't get one. (I also didn't get a bulletproof vest. Forest Whitaker got one when he was there researching a role for a movie. I'm just sayin'.)

Anyway, after Sgt. Sandoz got the shotgun and car keys, we went into the station lot to find our car: number 89173. Here's the thing about the 77th parking lot: sitting in the overhead pipes throughout the lot are giant stuffed animals keeping watch on everything. Don't ask.

We got in our car and were off. I told Sgt. Sandoz I fully expected the four words I'd hear most from him were, "Stay in the car." But he said not at all. I was riding with him as his partner. As far as anyone knew, I was a police officer and I was welcome to be right there with him on the calls.

While we were driving the real mean streets, I got to run license plates for stolen cars on this laptop that sits between the front seats in the patrol car. I actually was pretty good at it. When we'd pull up to a red light, or behind a Toyota or Honda (the most frequently stolen cars), I'd run the plates. Unfortunately I didn't get any hits. I was seriously hoping for a high speed chase. Maybe next time.

I also got to sit in at the 911 call communications center for the entire city of Los Angeles. Listening in on a few of those calls, and the way the 911 operators handle them, gives an entirely new definition to the word "patience".

I'm not going to go into great detail, but here are a few of the calls I went out on:

- A domestic violence call. We parked down the street from the address and waited for another unit to get there before we went in. The woman, visibly bruised and scratched, said her boyfriend was sitting in a car in the back of the apartment with their baby. The officers and I went around back, and saw him with the baby in the backseat of an old BMW. They asked him to come out and he didn't right away. There's a moment where you have no idea what's going to happen, what he's going to do to himself, the baby or us. But eventually he got out, gave the baby to the officers and the police cuffed him and took him away.

- An AIDS patient wanted to kill himself. He very calmly explained to both Sgt. Sandoz and me that he was overwhelmed with his own situation, and that his ailing mother who lived with him was driving him crazy and he wanted to end it - although he hadn't given any thought yet as to how. He was still healthy and showing no signs of the disease. A second unit arrived, and he was taken away for psychological evaluation.

- A man brandishing a gun. This was interesting for a few reasons. The apartment where this happened was at the corner of Florence and Normandie, flashpoint of the 1992 riots after the Rodney King verdict. Up until this point, I'd only seen this intersection from an overhead shot on the news. The man allegedly brandishing the gun was in a back unit you got to by going down a narrow walkway with apartments on both sides. The people he was threatening were family. Several units arrived (mention "gun" and the party's on), and a helicopter was called in to shine some light on the place. Myself and several officers were lined up against a side of the walkway, as they told everyone in the back unit to come out with their hands over their heads. Which they did. They were cuffed, and faced the wall as the officers went into the apartment to make sure no one else was there, and to retrieve the gun. It turned out there was never a gun, and it was an extremely heated family argument that triggered (see what I did there?) the whole incident. Once the situation was under control, we were back on patrol.

Since it was a relatively slow evening, at least the part of it I was there for (7PM-1:30AM), I didn't see anything really hardcore (bodies, shootouts, more bodies). Actually kind of grateful for that.

The real crime happening everyday is the budget cuts to the department that force these dedicated, overworked and underpaid officers to stretch their limited resources virtually to the breaking point. If you're so inclined, and you should be, sending a letter to Anthony Villaraigosa or Governor Brown asking them not to cut the budget where law enforcement is concerned can do nothing but help.

I want to give a huge thank you to Sgt. Sandoz and all the great people working at the 77th, not only for letting me have this incredible experience, but for who they are and what they do each and every day for all of us.

Roger that.