In this episode Steve and Ken interview LAPD veteran Bill Urrutia. Bill started his career in 1985 and has some great stories from the mean streets of LA.
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this is things police see first-handaccounts with your oast Steve goldhey guys it’s Steve welcome to thepodcast at interviews active and retiredpolice officers about their most intensebizarre and sometimes humorous momentson the job with me as always as KenRoybal Ken hello it’s it’s like we’redoing this for a second time it’s soweird so we we talked for about twominutes and I hit record so now nowwe’re gonna record what we’re sayingwe’re gonna go live again live makingthis a podcast okay today we have a28-year veteran of LAPD Ken’s all Amadahe’s name is Guillermo garita what doyou think about that Adam all Guillermoyeah got ithe goes by Bill which is good for me I’mgood for you yeah that’s good for my formy white mouth so he’s been on the jobor he was on the job 28 years he was ap1 through a p3 retired sergeant and heworked Wilshire 77th and central so he’sgot some stories yeah yeah he’s been hewas all around I’ve known him for allthose years but I think he came on afterme but still he came on in the age we’llwe’ll find out though excellent and Ihad a question for you look the p1 rankscan you does anybody ever go from a p1to a sergeant or do you is it usually p2p3 jumbo now P ones a probationer soyou’re on probation and right out ofKhadem e for a year and if you passprobation you automatically get bumpedto p2 police officer – got it they saythose guys that do a career as p2 orcrazy men cuz they stay a badass theypatrol patrol for too long they have thebackbone of the department p2 s are thebackbone of the department ba Baracusall right should I um should i dial inbill dial in bill man let’s get him online here we go bill welcome to thepodcast sir good morning welcome welcometo my house yeah thank you for coming onman we you bet you had quite the careerat LAPD 28 years from p1 to p3 tosergeantsounds like you got some storiesI do I have quite a few excellent youknow Ken yeah I work with Kenny for awhile thank billI know I’m no no I was at well sure ineighty I got there in 82 it was at 82 itwhen did you get there bill I got therein 84 right a traditionall right all right yeah and yeah Iremember you’re there a couple yearsafter me but yeah we were go back to the80s so we can get some dirt on Ken heremaybe you always had that nice mustacheit is a good mustache I have to agree Iam blessed yeah so yeah we go way backyeah yeah we do we had son you wereworking money went to where you been ahright I hated morning watch I wasn’tthere very often very longmostly PM’s or mid PM’s okay yeah yeahwell it was probably during that timethat we actually met because onprobation I wasn’t moving much the firstwhatever months I was there yeah yeah wewere it was so long ago Steve that I washandsome and bill had hair so well yeahlong time ago so well you know I I wouldstill have my hair but you know I didsomething in 2004 that was very profoundto do and I actually showed my neighbora lot of support by doing it she hadcanceryeah and every time she went in fortherapy she’d lose her hair so at thelast time I said hey you know I wasprobably gonna do with your hair and shewas all they’re gonna give me somevitamins and all that so I won’t lose itthat’s okay I thought their husband andI said look if anything changes you letme know because I promised her I wouldlose my hair if she lost theirs and thatwas balding already anyway so one day Ilooked at him and said hey yeah how’severything doing this is like a peeledonion look at yield onion yeah um so Ihung over to my her and I said hey shaveit giggles I can’t wait a minute you’rea barber shave it I can’t I’ll takeget down to as little as I can possiblytake it down to but the rest is up toyou you get the crap out of lifeabsolutely nothing wrong with the baldheads good look no that’s a very coolthing to do for your neighbor yeah youknow like this since 2004 I’m very proudand you know I liked it anyway so I keptityeah so yeah looks good so bill can youtake us back to 1984 for your first yearin the job for the the first time youhad a call that you would consider a hotcall that kind of got your blood pumpingyeah yeah the very first night actuallyI was working with a young lady by thename of sharon Michaelson sure and againshe’s a friend of mine yeah I know herand her and her two brothers yeah soyeah I don’t remember the the callsignof the car but we were the first ones toget the call it was a coterie call andit was somewhere south of Washington andit was a shooting call and what happenedwas we went there right then we gotthere another unit had already arrivedand had a suspect in custody and had ashotgun so Sharon says you stay with thesuspect I’m gonna go find out what theyhelped happenshe was the p3 at the time and myinstructor said okay so I startedgetting information on the guy and Istarted getting his story andhistorically was that this gentlemanthat he was involved with that night hadcome over and has stolen a car from himI got stolen a car from you and said howhe says well I have a business ofrepairing crisises and this guy hadbrought the car over had asked me torepair it but I didn’t have time torepair it and a couple of weeks had goneby and he came over to the arguing withme that I hadn’t worked on his car atalland he says well you know if you’re notgonna work on my car yes I just take itand he managed to get it out of theparking lot where it was in his workareaI mean it’s sharp and got it onto thestreet and I was actually pushing thecar down the street he says he took thatcar from me it says so I got my shot andI went over yeah you know tell him tobring it back yeah okay well don’t tellme anymore I said because you need totalk to detectives and sure enoughSharon comes back and he says yeahpeople song you know the song grab theguy put the shotgun to his neck andstarted walking him over back to thething after you know the car was stoppedso I walked in am over to his office andsomehow he had his finger on the triggerhe stumbled and stumbled off he wentthe guy’s head oh my goodness that wasmy very first call and we shot guns manall you gotta do is breathe on thetrigger and that fires yep oh do not hemust have been watching too many actionmovies well you know later on we canfind out – it was he in the right fordoing that absolutely not because themen have been trusted him could his carto be repaired he hadn’t done anythingbut this guy that you know used toshotgun he kept saying it’s my car aslong as the same way property is my carand there is no such thing the owner ofthat car was the guy that came to get ithe had absolutely no right to sayanything about the guard said well atleast pay me some storage fees but if hehad promised to work on the car I don’tthink he could have been get away withthat that’s some crazy logic man giveyour card the mechanic you won’t give itback and Steve just so you know thatthat the the call that Bill’s describinghappened all the time in Wilshire in the80s all the time people’s heads gettingblown up with shotguns or the peoplejust shooting all the time it justmurders all the time this is terrible mygosh I’m not terrible for the cops butthe 80s were really bad in New York – itwas just a lot of shootingsyeah yeah oh that’s a that that is acrazy first call were you did you um youknow did you just hang back mostly andand observe or I mean no you talk tothat one guy but there must have been alittle bit of a shock to your systemoh yeah no that was a shock to my systemcompletely because I had never you knowever been in a situation like that nowin that particular one I didn’t even getto go see the body because I was withwith in custody of the of the shooterand our job then became okay relent takethe shooter over and then we just kindof you know do the paperwork on him andwe could be take those who come in andthen the other unit I don’t remember whoit was so they were the ones that we’rewatching the body there until thecoroner came in and picked it up butthat was a very first call Wow ken justfrom hearing your stories can it seemslike at LAPD at that time they wouldthey they would have made a point tomake you look at it you know yeah thatwas just a bill you’re on probation atthe time yep my dad normally normallythey would have they would have had billgo pick up the body with the coroner andand put them in the van and all thatkind of stuff and make sure you knowbecause that’s part of training is tolook at that stuff but then againthere’s this other thing where you haveto when you’re on a homicide scene therehas to be a homicide log has started andevery single person that enters thatcrime scene area you have to log theirname so there’s so a lot of times it wasthe P ones who were just kind of youknow everybody’s doing all this stuffand you’re standing there with yourclipboard writing people’s names down asthey came in and as they left and so hemight have one oh if you’re doing thator not bill oh no like I said Sharontold me just to stay with the suspectuntil she went over and under what iswhat had happened and then she said okaywe’re taking this guy over Wilshire andwe’re gonna call the detectives becausethis was like maybe one or two o’clockin the morning mm-hmm what year was itwell ‘soon 1994 I mean yeah excuse me1985 I’m sorry II cried you ate it in 1955 I’m sorry I’mwhen you’re early when I’m talkingso you were you were on probation atWilshire yeah oh I see because Sharon Iremember when she rose up was onprobation at Wilshire as well she didher probation in there and so she musthave stayed and became a p3 Steve lateron she actually retired as a captain ohwow I think she was a commander Kennymaybe I’d have to check that captainthat 77th mm-hmm and from there she wentover to commander yeah yeah very nicelytough lady lady her chargeryeah and her brother one brother Lyleretired as a p3 and her other brotherStuart retired as a detective and Sharonand Stuart are twins and I don’t know ifthey came on exactly the same time butyeah they’re all three retired now billdo you know do you know what happened tothat guy did like did you know what hissentencing was or anythingno okay we were never called in to go tocourt or anything I think the detectiveshandled everything neither because hewas already coming up to the fact thathe shot the man anyway gotcha yeahthat’s a great first call man can youcan you describe to us say strange orbizarre call that you went to yeahstrange of this article yeah the samething with sharon Michaelson again wewere working nighttime you knowMidnight’s and we got a call that agrandmother had received a phone callfrom somebody that her grandson had beenshot and that he was lying deadsomewhere and gave us a street time namethey more or less where the the body wassupposed to be well Sharon and I usedour flashlights looking for this guycouldn’t find him under the carscouldn’t do anything at all except lookat herself where the hell is he yeahwhere the hell is this guy well I thinkwetried it three two times you know wewent looking around for him and we wentback to the grandmother and said man wejust can’t find him she said okay youknow maybe it’s a crank caller we leftand this happened twice on the thirdtime she calls up she goes I gotspecific instructions as to where thebody is weirdand we run you’re kidding no and shesaid they told me that he’s underneaththat red car over there and you know youwill find him right there okay we wentback we located the red car it wasimportant in front of the a bunch ofapartments that looked like a courtyardapartment oh yeah it was a courtyardapartment type situation had like aboutsix apartments and then two on the threeon one side on and three on the otherand then two more on the end of it soanyway we looked underneath this red carand sure enough there he was he couldn’tfind him before because he was small andthey had a crown on that thing and thathid him as well so you know when welooked at him it appeared like he hadtwo or three bullet holes in the back ofhis head hmmso this happened about I would say 3 or4 o’clock in the morning and wecontacted everybody and they came in andyou know the corner came in picked upthe body and all that so now we’rethinking okay there’s got to be someevidence over here with the flashlightswe just couldn’t see anything at alleither they were either too bright ornot bright enoughyou remember those Kenny yep so wewaited until daylight and then westarted finding out like well shellshell casings of 22 caliber bullets allover the place there’s only three ofthem or two of them had gotten into hishead hmmthat’s really bizarre so the the collardid you say was his motherno the collar that initiated the callwas his grandmother grandmother that andshe knew this happened yeahshe knew that he had been killed becausesomebody called her to tell her where hewas but you know when we got to thelocation she had described the firsttime we couldn’t find him so we told herthat she goes okay maybe somebody wasjust cranked only her right then thesecond time she called because they tellme that he’s there but specifically shecouldn’t tell us where so we went anddid the same thing we did before youknow we went to a place two times byourselves just by what she had said andwe couldn’t see the guy and like I saidthe third time somebody called her thisis exactly where he is and this is thethe color of the car and I don’tremember if they even gave us thelicense plate number of the car or notbut you know whoever called it had tohave known somebody and his grandmotherwasn’t telling us who the caller waseither she just says somebody called metold me my grandson was deadand normally murderers don’t call andtell you you know hey grandma herehere’s the body that seems kind of weirdit’s so real that was the only call likethe community didn’t report it besidesthat it sounds like it happened in likeon the street yeah I mean the guy wasrunning for his life and he thought thatif he hid underneath a car he would youknow be spared but no they came in fromthe sidewalk side and shot him in theback ahead do it two times I could seetwo little bullet holes in his head nono word on it on the backstory to thisnothing nothing at all gang-relatedobviously probably we all know I meanthe particular area wasn’t well knownfor having gangs but you know all thewilshire was again place at one time hmmyeah a lot of gangs out there a lot ofshootings drive-bys and all that kind ofstuff but that’s kind of weird that theway this one went down yeah yeah lareally had a huge gang problem huhI got an uber ride when I was in LosFeliz over to Atwater Village and theuber driver was this older guy and hewas talking about how the AtwaterVillage has changed and those police haschanged and he was saying when he was akidgangsters came on in schoolbus and put a gun to the bus drivershead when they smacked around some kidon his bus and he said it just thatstuff happened he said we’d be on ourway to school and gangsters would pullup when guns out the windows and you hitthe deck read run or whatever just toscrew with kids you know and he saidthat’s what it was like yeah just someof some of the things that I didn’t getto seeyeah the gangs in mm-hmm the gangs inthe 80s were we’re really out there andthe murders were just skyrocketing itwas pretty bad and they would shoot eachother up all the time selling dope andjust turf wars and it got so out ofcontrol and chief gates at the time hehad the bail do you remember I think wasoperation hammer is that what it wasyeah where we just hit the streets andthere was just coppers all over theplace they had task forces that weregoing into South Central and just theycalled it operation hammer because wewere dropping the hammer you know andthey and people out in the Inland EmpireSan Bernardino Riverside County theywere the the big word was that all thegangsters were going out to the InlandEmpire because LA was just flushing himout and it was back in the time whenpolice LAPD was very very proactive andvery paramilitary and if you if you looklike he were gonna do I’m sorry lookshady yeah if you look shady you knowyou’re gonna get jacked up and you knowit’s not that way anymore but that’s howyou kept control as much as you could ina city that was out of control withmurders it was just bad I remember inour police academy they we did a littlestudy on LAPD a few different timesactually and in New York the biggeragencies but yeah they said back in theday you guys were like a study showedthat LAPD was like vastly undermannedbut was able to keep control because ofthe paramilitary style the strictnesswhich was because you know la is such ahugearea and I forget the numbers but backin the day you guys had like five toseven thousand cops when a study showedthat you should have had 15 or somethingand yeah just by just by slapping peoplearound on a daily basis you were keepingthem in line it’s yeah and that’s all itwas bill knows that you had to go andyou had to let them know you were thereand now they call it racial profilingwhatever they want to call it but youcan’t have it both ways you can’t youcan either keep your keep your hand onthe situation and and keep the criminalelement as suppressed as you can or youcan cuddle them and say hey you have allthese rights and hey you know go can wetalk to you no okay fine you know whatyou can you can’t have it both ways andcrime is gonna you know you’re gonna payfor it if you if you just let criminalsrun amok and it looks like we’re stilldoing thisyeah it wasn’t quite a different timeback in the 80soh yeah well yeah when men were men andcups were cups okay you know when wewere in the Academy we were a class of alarge number of people I think westarted with about sixty some odd peoplesome of them what we eat it out ofcourse because they couldn’t handle thestress of the physical activity and allthat and of course also the academicsthat went with itbut it was strange that our class that Iknow of was with the only one that waspicked one time by the instructors toget on buses in the middle of class geton buses just with our you know PTuniforms that we had in thoseasian-american e oh yes it’s mm-hmm andour batons and I think whistle andhandcuffs that was all that we wererequired to take with us and if we werebused over to the 101 freeway where itintersects with turns into the ten on aleft turn and then it goes into the onethe father I think the other fights itJustin to the far I’ve right there byalmost you still ad but anyway we weretold to go there and to disembark fromthe buses and go to the Ivy that wasright there and start searching forweapons any kind of weapons it could beguns it could be knives it could beanything but you know everything had tobe searched for in that IV and we had tocall somebody we found anything so westarted going at that the whole classand of course we had several people areas acting as traffic guides for thepeople on the freeway mind you okay sohere’s a couple of guys just as askingthe people to slow down on the freewaywell they’re on one lane and the peopleare trying to be wrong and trying to getonto the 101 or to the four to the tenor ten even to the five because we weresearching both sides of that thing sothey didn’t tell us what we were lookingfor just said look for anything you canfindokay we’re looking for anything we canfind now we had just had two days forthree days prior to that we had had aclass on how to differentiate bloodpattern as to how a droplet goes and ittells you the direction that the personis traveling you go through that Kenny Idon’t recall that yeah well we did wehad somebody come in and tell us okay ifyou see a blood droplet on the groundand you just drop it straight down itjust goes around but it starts to if itstarts to move you can tell the patternbecause you can see that it’s got alittle line you know where it drops andit it it it it tells you the directionmore or less it looks like I can’treally describe it but it lookselongatedlook has a little tail tail this wherefirst lands and then the biggest part ofit drops so I was in a group offor guys that we actually started seeingblood pattern leaving the item so wemanaged to contact one of theinstructors and said can we follow theblood pattern because you know it looksas relevant it comes from the IV and youknow we go from there he said okay goahead just you know be careful take aradio make sure you choose that let usknow exactly where you are at all timesand you know if you need to cross thestreet make sure two guys go one sideand two other guys go on the other sideso that’s what we did I don’t rememberwhat church it was but there’s a churchof a Sunset Boulevard it used to beSunset Boulevard at the time firstchanged to chalice and that’s what thedrop was led to an ad read it leddirectly to the sacristy so we took theaddress and contacted our supervisorsand they came over and said okay we gotthe thing they asked for a photosomebody came over took photographs ofit from Parker center at the time Iguess and started really going throughwhat we had already observed from bothsides of the street the droplets andthey were correct and then afterwards wewent back to the Academy heardabsolutely nothing about it 25 yearslater it was all over the news that whatwe had actually gone through and Irecognized the pattern of this was thatI think we were told that a sheriff’sdeputy had been driving a van afterHinda watch going home and had crashedhis van at the embodiment where thefreeway divided into the five and thengoing into the 10 from the 101 and hehad that at the scene but that’s whatthey told us so 25 years later I startedreading this thing somewhere in whichthey said yeah they finally found outthat that particular deputy was asergeant for the Sheriff’s Departmentand that he had just gotten off dutyfrom the twin towers or whatever theplace was that they were at and was onhis way homeand unbeknownst to himsomebody was in his van and had beendrinking a six-pack of beer and had shothim in the back of the headmm that caused him to collide onto thefreeway apartment so the perpetrator theshooter also did that hurt and but hemanaged to get out but he was bleedingthat goes for the blood droplets that wefound so every and 25 years later whenDNA became prevalent in checking backcases and stuff like that they went backand they found out that it was actuallya sheriff’s deputy that was actually aco-worker of this Sheriff surgeon andthey determined that it had been a loveaffair between the deceased and thedeceased wife I should say and theshooter and of course they you know putit all together and I said well you knowwhen it came to find out they talked tothe widow and they found out that aftereverything was said and done that deputyhad actually quit the department andwere retired and went through themsomewhere else and she had absolutely noidea of how that had happened but italso came to light that on sheriff’sdeputy sergeant that went to the scenewith the deputies that arrived therefound the six-pack of empty beer beercans in the back of that van mm-hmm andthought oh this guy just got blood allright and he crashed and killed him sowell when the deputy coroner were overthere and started looking around it nowit smells dead because he’s got twobullet holes or whatever in the back ofhis head but at that time guess what hadhappened to the beer king yeah he hadtaken those those beer cans cause hethought you know the guy helps just youknow had been drunk driving and all thatso he dumped him somewhere and by thattime of course he he would have been youknow in a big heap of trouble he didn’twanna lose hisso he kept mum about it mm it okay MAand you know it in the deal afterwardsbut it took 25 years for them to findall this out how interesting did theyever um was the guy ever prosecuted theguy that got the DNA from well actuallythey contacted him in the state that hewas living and I can’t remember where itwas why she turned I said yes okay Idon’t knowwell anyway the thing was that they didcontact him and they said that they weregonna send a couple of detectives to gotalk to him he said okay fine you knowand he was there when they came over andthey told him why they were there andthat they were actually going to go overto the local authorities to get theextradition papers and whatnot becausethey would have come back the next dayfor him so I said oh okay you know hewas married to somebody and children andall that of course by this time 25 yearslater his children are grown andeverything else is a grandpa now so thenext day they called to let him know hesaid okay I’ll be waiting for you talitawell you know we better be carefulcoming up to this guy United him to warnhim yeah and you know he he wasn’t therewhen they arrivedso they went over and talked to his wifeand his wife said oh well you know hesaid he was gonna go shoot somepheasants in today’s chat like no wherewhere did he go and they had a fieldwent back to their farmhouse or whateverit was and is it that way so you knowthey were searching they found him thatin the way that they wanted to but theyfrom the place of the pheasant yeahexcept yeah it’s interesting it’sinteresting cuz I’m reading up on thisstory right now where the guy goes outmm-hmm any he kills himself but the thenews story says that the police saidthat that the body was fairly decomposedand so I’m thinking the wife you knowthe guy had to come back in a long timemaybe somebody should look for him butthey went out and found him yeah he wasshe was gone for quite a long timeoh yeah Oh 99 yeah number on there wellthat’s interesting you have quite aquite a handle on that story well we hadparty in my class anyway the fact thatwe started in April 1st 1985 andgraduated September Friday the 13th Iremember that story – yeah you knowthere was somebody lying in wait forthis sheriff sergeant and killed him inthe back of it you know that was that’sscary for cops you know that someone’shiding in the back always used to checkour cars make sure nobody was you knowin the back seat I think I still do thattoday oh it’s scary for anybody nobodywill I took granted shower curtains whenI take a dump I’m an open book baby ohyeah that’s that’s I did not know youhad that connection bill with that withthat story big big story even when theywere talking about it years later whenthey were saying no they found out whodid it and everything I forget that Iforgot that they sometimes pulledAcademy classes out and just had them dogrid searches looking for stuff I neverI never did that it doesn’t happen allthat often but but that’s quite a bit ofhistory there’s their bill yes you knowI hadn’t never heard of any other placedoing it either so I thought hey we’respecial that’s that’s something um Iwent to a regional Academy like thebigger agencies have they kind of ownedthe cadets the recruits because it’syour agency but um I went to a regionalagency with 15 other departments wererecruits and cadets with me and theycan’t do stuff like that because theChiefs all chime in like they used tobring us all to the morgue and all thisstuff but one kid got sick and yeah whenwhen you’re not um when you’re not onesolid group they really can’t utilizeyou like this oh that’s interesting thatthey would they would just take recruitsand do that Wow yeah but you know theydidn’t do the morgue with us we were notthey into the morgueto see a post or to even take a look ata dead body right there oh wow yeah theyused to do that out here but thensomeone in mass but someone passed outand knocked their head on the floor andthey said to us yeah we’re not gonna dothis anymore oh my goshsomeone got brain damage from it so backto your previous job I remember one ofthe classes we had bill in the Academywas it was just because Steve we wouldjust get these out of his I think it wasweekly you’d get your class schedulesyou know be you have to be here in thisclass and one of them was it was at theend of the day and it just said reporthere to the Red Cross because one ofyour classes you’re gonna give bloodthat was we weren’t asked if we wantedto get blood they’re just the claytaking your blood today yeah yeah nobodyquestioned it did what you’re toldman you’re nobody well it sounds a lotmore like you guys were like like youknow how the military you’re theirproperty when you’re in boot camp soundslike yeah that’s what it was like foryou guys yeah pretty much except wecould go home every day well that’s coolovernight academies are terrible we gohome and cry yeah I still traumatized byall that this good stuff bad but exactmemories so bill yeah can you uh can youhit us with one of your most intense orterrifying calls Oh dancing terrifyingcallswell Nathan see humanity do menparticularly the children it’s one ofthe most terrifying things you’ll eversee and to me it you know it was verysad again this was a Wilshire and I wasalready a p3 at the time I had a youngman with me as a p1 we received a callof child abuse and it was anafrican-american familywas just a grandmother and had threechildren in the in the house with herand her so we went no didn’t know whatthe call was about no not the young boycomes over and opens the door and hemust have been about seven and I askedhim is someone here taking care of youhe says yes my grandma can we talk toher so yeah he called her out grandmacame out and says what are you himbefore and so we got a call of childabuse investigation she goes that musthave been my daughter and I said yourdaughter she goes yeah she’s the motherof this little boy here his sisterMikayla and a baby and then I proceededto ask okay so what might have causedher to call and put you in thispredicament because well she’s the onethat abuses the kids she and herboyfriend and she told the boy to takehis t-shirt off and then just justremembering that little boy’s back wesaw the pictures in the academy of childabuse this little boy was the pilgrimunit his whole back was card withwhippings with electric cords to stuff Ihad to hold my tears and my partnerdidn’t because we just felt ashamed tobe called part of the human race if thiswas where I was so she said he’s not theonly one she called Michaela Missy goeswatch what I asked Jesus Michaelagrandma got a dickMichaela said no grandma got no dickgrandma got how the hell does sheknow she’s just because she’s beenabused as well indicate I was like maybefour five years old and she goesMichaelawhat does mama do with your littlebrother she says oh she suck his dickthat was the babylike hell she does and she you know tookus over to where the baby was in hisbassinet and he was fine but luckily hehad not been you know molested otherthan that babyMichaela length we were and she alreadyknows his but she’s already been abusedby her mother’s boyfriend I’m like holyokay I asked the grandmother so yougot custody of his childrenshe knows yes so you have custody andshe showed us the paperwork has thethank you ma’am and said and I told alittle boy whatever happens in your lifebecause it you are not to blame for whathappened before this was just fall thenI tell you we were wiping our tears Iwalked away from that consciousness thatwas the worst I have ever seen and wewere prepared to see some that wasthe worst as far as I was concernedafter that everything was just easy Wowhow do you keep your composure youryou’re diving into that you’re in thecall it must just hit you in the headlike a sledgehammer when there whenthose words are coming out of theirmouth telling you this stuff it’s likesurreal it is original but you know mymom asked me when I talked her and I was34 or when I went into the Academy andshe had asked me before she just whatare you gonna do why are you doing thisyou know you could be killed any day andso well I could walk out the door and bekilled by a whatever but you know I havea plan I said you know because shementioned all the gore and stuff thatyou may see as a police officer and Isaid well mom I said you know I’ve madeup my mind that I am a movie star andthat I’m in a movie set and whatever Isee out there with a gourd or not I saidI’m going to act appropriately because Ihave to do a job and this is a movie andbelieve me that’s the only thing thatkept my sanity it was precious thatI wouldn’t you know wouldn’t see that inat any other place Wow yeah that some Ioften thought that too funny you saythat about it being a movie sometimesyou just feelwhen presented with something withtrauma like that or just horrible humaninjury or whatever you kind of it’s sosurreal you feel like you’re witnessingHollywood gory electronics it’s like sounreal I saw some newsreels from WorldWar two but you know GIS are kickinghelmets will that helmets not only thehelmet has got a head attached to itit’s just rolling like a bowling ballyou can see that I’m like what the hellwas thatit kind of grabs you back when you’re akid no son of a bitch what is this thenyou go that was a head attached tothat thing yeah that’s nothing anywaythat I can actually say I kept my sanitybecause we did see a lot of stuff thatotherwise she would not have seen yeahit’s one of those you know it’s it’s thelittle kids and it’s the senior citizenswhether they’re preyed uponI remember one one one time in Wilshirewhere this this little old lady was washolding onto her purse because someonewas trying to steal it and they jumpedin the car and she was holding on theirperson they just dragged her down thestreet and the crime scene was very longbecause you know she had been scrapedyou know it’s like she’s grating andthey dragged this little lady for apurse and it was pretty bad but it’sit’s a little kids man we were talkingbill we were talking in another podcastSteve and I and it’s the when you go inthere and and you just see these littlekids like the little kid that you sawand you see the the circular marks fromthe extension cords and you just want tokill these people for doing this to achild and you just have to hold backyeah yeah you got to do a job you knowyou’re there to treat everybody equallywith respect and dignity even if they’veshown nothing to anybody else yeah it’sjust so sad these children are just soinnocent and thereit pisses me off thinking about what yousawbrutal yeah yeah well you knoweverybody’s got a story to tell and youknow this is one of the ones that youknow I I went through with the you knowhappily I had good people working withme as well yeah had good supervisionthat you know I understood when we wrotethe reports and everything else and theywere there also yeah and and Steve youknow for the listeners who haven’t whowho want to be police officers are justthey’re just the law enforcementsupporters this is a perfect example ofyou know bill still feels what he feltthis is back in the 80s and he stillfeels the pain that he felt back thenand police officers carry this thisstuff with them for decades and this isjust one incident you you combined withthe hundreds of crime scenes and thethings that police officers see over theyears and it’s a wonder that you knowretired cops are still functioningadults you know they’re not just whackout of their mind because that’s thethat’s the strength that it takes to doa job and survive it after yeah like youmentioned before it’s like poison likeyou said at roll call when they would weneed hear of a cop that lived to 62everybody would clap you know yeahremember remember Bill and roll callwhen they would read the the rotator andthere was cops and if they went pastfive years in retirement how everybody’slike dude you did it alright five yearswas the mark yeah Wow yeah because a lotof people after five years they foundthemselves that they couldn’t cope andthey would eat there done yes that was Iwas very pregnant back in the 80s andearly 90s too yeah yeah everybody hasknown someone that’s taken their ownlife and police work active and retiredpeople yeahso bill you wouldn’t yeah I’m sorry Ididn’t mean to cut you off go aheadbring up that just left I was uh I wasgonna transition to the next questionhere trying to see if you can lift us uphere do you have a you have a positivesituation you’d like to talk about fromyour careerLassiter’s situation well you know yougo out there and do your joboh yeah okay I tell you what I had goneafter working so many years in Wilshireus of p3 and well actually I did myprobation at Wilshire and then I wentover to 77th and I did my little stintat 77th went back two wheels recipethree but not before I went to centraltraffic division alright and in centraltraffic division of course you learn howto investigate traffic collisions andyou become less and less scared about ohmy god his CPI a city properly involvedbecause that’s what used to geteverybody scared whenever they didn’tknow what the hell they were doing on atraffic cone so and that was one of thereasons why I got to be pretty spot atWilshire I think but anyway that’s a p3I was working an L car one day and itjust so happens to be Mother’s Day wellI wanted to be a motor cop so bad that Iwas out there early in the morning and Ihad the opportunity to stop 12 youngladies and everyone that I stopped wastelling me I’m a mom how dare you stopI’m on my way to another state party andyou know you’re making me late well myanswer to all of them was well I’ll tellyou what if I didn’t stop you and giveyou this reminder of this stop said ifyou continue to do this you may not be amother for too long because you’ll bedead you have violated so many trafficpal rules and regulations like failureto stop or relyspeeding and not wearing your seatbeltyou know a whole slew of things and theyactually signed their ticket and I neverwent to court on any one so I can saythat I had the dubious notoriety ofhaving stopped 12 women and saved ourlives maybe you know because they wererushing to Mother’s Day events that theyprobably would have never made but yourguests the funniest traffic stop that Ihad if you don’t mind my continuing ofcourse it is and I was some buttercupand we were working nights and mypartner and I had already done you knowour share of traffic sites and all thatand impounds one of the things was youknow you can come in a little early tofinish the paperwork when you’re in townso you can go home on time so I’mdriving back towards central traffic onthe motor and I happen to go by thislittle BMW roadster and as I pass Inoticed that the roaster had not onlyits high beams on but also its fog lampsit’s brightened in the hell out of meand then just ahead of them I can sayyou know I can think of how that wouldbe looked upon by a traffic coming theopposite way from this guy so I justslowed down they don’t pass me and Ipull him over and my intention was justto ask him sir would you please turndown your lights from high beam to lowbeam and turn off your fog lamps andthat’s exactly what I did right the guytells me I don’t know how to turn themoff I don’t know how to turn them downthat’s it you what is this your car hesays yes it is but to make matters worsehe had a seven-year-old kid and a thatwas his son and he starts giving me aration of right away and he sayswell I asked him can I see he says noyou may notand you cannot seeyou know lower your beams down turn offthe damn fog lamps because you don’tneed them and there’s no fog and youdon’t really need that light you know hesays give me a ticketgive me a ticket now and takeyou to court anyway okay I don’t want togive you a ticket all I wanted to do isto be courteous to your fellow motoristand just blow with the high beams youknow through your own opposition I toldyou I don’t know how to do that sogive me the damn key you remember thecheater cords oh yeah okay so I saidfine I got you know his driver’s licenseinsurance information registration I goback to the motor I start looking at thecheater and I’m looking ohand it said CHP can only do this readingfinally from one obscure light sectionin there and they wrote him for it Iwent all had him sign it he tells hissonyou watch me boy I’m gonna take thisto court and I’m gonna win andoff he goes back man it usually takesabout a month or so before you get asubpoena right well something like thatand sure enough I got it so I was a veryprolific writer what can I say so I hadsubpoenas up there were so anyway so Iget over there you remember Lasher Kingwas the first name I don’t remember hisfirst name but his last name was Lasherhe was a commissioner on 45 could makeyou believe yeah I remember yeah thetraffic court anyway this guy was theone that got paid to do all of the stuffon this he was on vacation and theywould have attorneys come in and take aspot at it anyway I did all my stuffwith him and he he knew about this oneparticular when it says bill says you’regonna have to go up to the eighth floorhe said because this guy has an attorneyand don’t forget to get yourself anattorney from the crew in the pool downthere I said okay thanks you’re on hesays oh by the way he says sir come andtell me about thisokay so I when I met my my attorney fromthe air from the officer Nisa so how arewe going to proceed I said like thiswe’re gonna go up there and with thejudge says how will be proceeding we’rejust gonna say Your Honor we would liketo dismiss the citation for and sojustice look at abuse is what said yeahI said you know all I wanted this guy todo was lower his high-beamsand turn off his foglamps he insistedupon getting a ticketafter so much try and not to give himone I complied us so you know what doyou think he’s got an attorney you thinkhe’s gonna feel happy about you knowtake me to court and getting his ticketdismissed and goes but yeah but I saidthink about who wins who was actuallywon in this thingdid he win yeah you had to pay the moneyto bring an attorney ha ha but he’staking time off to be in court and sowho is and all because he didn’t want tobe courteous little you know I wentupstairs judge comes in just how weplead him on this further answer justiceah he gets up you know he starts shakinghands with his attorney he says see Itold you he’s too damn scared to even gothrough with ithe’s a 13 yeah he was yeah see what mymy CA and I were like yeah okay so I goback down and they tell Lasher he saysgot them they bill only you what peoplethink they’re making a big deal but theydon’t realize the cops getting paidprobably over time and no you know it’snot like you’re you’re taking a temperthey’re still on the clock there that’swhat they do for a living so so whatyeah exactlyyeah but you know this guy all he had todo was just complydid he courteous enough to his fellowmotorist and I would have been it wouldhave been grateful I would affect themthat a parsley unfit a couple of hundreddollars or more you know because thethirties are expensive mm-hmm especiallywhen show up somewhere yeah not manypeople take an attorney to traffic courtbut hey knock yourself out yeah yeahexactly if you really believe that theofficer did you wrong by all means youknow take it to court go with anattorney if that’s how you feel yeahyeah so bill Kevin oh go againno good as you see traffic courts aninteresting place it’s an angry placeyeah bill I was gonna ask you you haveany advice for new police officers orpeople were looking into get into lawenforcementwell first of all be in shape also ifyou have predator I would say a jobentanglement with the public in otherwords you’re working even if you’reworking at McDonald’s but you deal withthe public every day and you are socialyou see these people come in and youtreat them the way that you would wantto be treated yourself expediently ifyou’re doing a McDonald’s job anywherewhere people come over and ask youquestionsbe polite eat yourself be polite berespectful know that that’s gonna go along way in your career if you do makeit in police businessbecause people do realize that policeofficers are human and that they’rethere to help and then of course thereare those that aren’t but you knowthat’s a different breed of personaltogether but keep yourself clean keepyourself in shape and learn as much asyou can about the makeup of the areathat you’re going to be patrollingbecause there are all races out thereand you have to be aware of whatconstitutes an insult and whatnot youknowand you can do this just by watching thepeople in fact I think on ride-alongs myone of my classmatesyou remember Curtis little yeah okay bigguy rightwe went over to Hollenbeck the daybefore we were supposed to report toWilshire I was supposed to report toWilshire he went somewhere else I thinkhe went to Newton we were running alongwith people from Hollenbeck and theHollenbeck officer and his partner thattook me on the run along decided theywanted to go to this particular shop andsure enough we went in there and I couldactually hear the lady on talked to herhusband says okay in Spanish she said ahhere come this bunch of thieves and Iactually didn’t understand why she saidthat but I didn’t ask her in Spanishwhat did you say that and then sheactually was taken aback because Iactually spoke the language and she saidwell not you particularly she says butthere have been some other couples thatcome in here and they just take stuffand don’t pay and I said well no we payand she doesn’t know oh no I’m don’tknow said you sit in the blue uniformlike this and she goes well someonewearing blue uniform is somewhere in thegreen and khaki oh okay all right okayso when I went back to the station Imade up with Curtis again I said hey didyou uh do you ever have any situationlike that and says that means this but Ithink another one of our classmates didin exactly the same scenario it was fromSingapore and he said that he was Indianby descent but he was actually raised inSingapore and he said he went to anIndian storein their dialect they spoke to eachother and he understood that and it wasthe same thing Thank You Candace thievesso some people in business saw usesteems some people in business servicessomeone that was there to protect themthey don’t depending on who that personwas and who will who it was relief youknow is how you behave mm-hmm absolutelyill interesting can I test out a newquestion on you never asked of any TPSguests before your ghostI’m honored fuel special guests so I’mgonna try it out can you tell us about atime that you were involved with thepolice before you were a cop like maybetime you got in trouble with the copsyou know I was very fortunate in my lifethat all I got was tickets just trafficstuff just traffic stopyeah and I was I was barely 14 and ahalf when my mom bought me my first carWow it was age lower back then fordriving no it had never changed that tobe 15 at least but yeah she bought methe car when I was almost 15 and thereason she bought it for me was becausemy sister who was 10 years older than Iwas pregnant and my mom said that weneed to have a car so that if anythinghappens and she needs to get to thehospital you will be able to do it in Iwas very fortunate enough that I hadfriends that had taken me to parks andhad taught me how to drive a car so shebought me this whole 59 4 Fairlanehardtop convertible with uber so if youneeded to park somewhere you knew youhad to be uphill because the gravity wasthe only thing that moved at the inputback but yeah58 59 Ford Fairlanes haha yeah guysfrogs but in those days it really didn’tmatter because it was 25 cents a gallonis it there uh isn’t there a law inCalifornia that if you get a note fromsomething and you can in your yourparents need medical care you can get alicense at fifteen or says that’s is ita law I believe you canand it’s mostly in rural areas also thatyou can get a driver’s license so thatyou can drive yourself to school unlikeBill and I had to walk to schoolten miles well in the snow even thoughin California pill both ways no hillsand no snow but we still had to do ityeah this is long time ago bill I thinkyou’re a little older than me but Istill we still are in the same you knowage brackets so we have a lot of sittingmemories well I’m 68 going on 69 yeahyeah you areno I’m I’m gonna be 62 in March so wejust gave ourselves away here Steve youYoung Buck you yep forty baby I’m just aI’m just a baby it’s all over 40 I stillwiping does not off your nose right Idon’t know I don’t feel that young I’vethrown the ball for my dog yesterday andI threw my arm out and I used to bequite a good well I used to have a goodarm he’s played baseball and now I feellike quite the nancy-boy hurts to raisemy arm above my head so I think fortiesofficially hit stop being such a nancynancy boy well bill those are those areawesome stories man yeah you have verygood very good stories I had actuallystarted writing a book and I havecopious notes about the stuff thathappened but if you guys need somethingelse that you know I know look it up andsee if I have itexcellent we’re not opposed to repeatguests that’s for sure oh okay then youknow by all means just let me know whenand don’t forget that I will go forsurgery on the 27th of the month it’salright but they didn’t for a while yeahyep bill has the surgery coming up hereSteve similar to what I actually exactlywhat I went through so good luck to youon that I know God’s with you butand everything’s gonna be great okaythank youand I’m glad that you finally came outof the closet and said hey I had thatKen’s gay what’s happening you know andkind of tend to be a little bit quietabout stuff that happens to us you knowand it’s not really a good idea becauseeven our own family members would liketo know what’s going on so that if ithappens to them at least I have acertain idea and you know for thelongest time I thought I didn’t haveanything wrong with me until a fewmonths ago last year that by purecoincidence I went to the doctor becauseI was having a pain on my belly and thedoctor says I think you have thevertical itis and I need you to have aCT scan and it has to be done now sothat we know how to treat it and boomI’m in the hospital they’re takingvarium and then two hours later I’m inthe CT scan with dye or contrast is whatthey call it and then eventually I am onmy way home and the doctor calls memissus disregard the medication iprescribed for you do not take it but doread the message that is on your emailfor you through our website my wife andI looked at each other and we’re notpetitions going on so I came home readthe message and all he said was go tothe urologist immediately like what sookay so I set up an appointment I wentover and the guy shows me the CT scanand he says is your prostate it’s justyou have a lump in your prostatealthough the prostate itself isnormal-sized not enlarged but thislittle lump up here is of concern to meand so what we do is we need a biopsyokay so the biopsy was finally done andthe results were that yes it was cancerbut then I said you know I had readin facebook that some of my ex coworkersmy retired ex co-workers had that butthey came out and said you know thankGod I’m free of cancer but they didn’tsay from what didn’t see anything aboutwhat the procedures were or anythinglike thatso I thought okay I am going to go onestep further because I know that if Iwas unaware of this as I think everybodyelse might be I’m gonna post it to myfriends on Facebook and you know whatKenny came out and said well I was theredah dah dahbut I didn’t know what your circumstanceof working I was the same thing it wasthe just doing the PSA test the yearlyblood test a heavy prostate infectionand the number the PSA kept going upover gradually over over a few weeks andthey did a biopsy came out that I hadprostate cancer is’s in September 2017yeah and you were a 20-18 had radiationseeds 160 something radiation seeds wereimplanted in the prostate to kill thecancer and that was two years ago thismonth and so I just recently came backfrom the doctor the the PSA went downsignificantly over the last few monthsand looks like I beat it so you know youare you are going the surgery route butyeah definitely for men they need tocheck their PSA every month and it’sjust police officers are some of theworst people to go see the doctors butdo oh boy oh yeah here’s the other one -your PSA does not have to be high inorder for to be a danger zone becausemine was below normal completely belownormallike I said if it hadn’t been for thefact that I had something else going onand a CT scan was taken I would havenever known neither would my doctorgives everything or so far as that wasconcerned I was in perfect healthnothing wrong I had no obstructions Ihad no pain nothing so this was justlike one of those flukes right butimagine that some of these flukes couldactually be happening to a whole bunchof other men that are out there thatdon’t know about itface it once you get after 45 or 40 youshould start you know being a little bitcareful about stuff like that eventhough your PSA may not be high have thedoctor do other checks you know and ifdigital rectal exam is not your thingwell you know what the only way they cancheck it because we don’t have anythingelse that we can do to check that yeahyou’re gonna get over that and it’s justgonna happen yeah I mean you know afterI had the biopsy my wife says how do youfeel I said I’m not a virgin anymoreno what is your um surgery is it thismonth yeah the 27th of this month thanksEvanOh pray for you brother and you’re gonnabe in the hospital for a day absolutelythat’s what I was toldyeah we had the date we don’t have thetime yet because they have to scheduleit but I’ve seen my I’ve seen myurologist and yesterday I saw myanesthesiologist once at the dome wasjust a matter of you know what time yeahand Steve I keep up with Bill onFacebook so he’s real good about postingthis information for men for for youknow cancer awareness so it’s there’s nosecrets it’s it’s got to be done andBill’s a real good proponent of givingthis getting the story out there and hisjourney is means a lot to a lot of menbecause I remember when I when I had itwe work in backgrounds and I was I Isaid I’m gonna I’m gonna let men knowabout this at what’s going on and therewere five men that came up to me and youknow all of them Steve they all came upand said I remember my prostate checkedmy prostate my PSA checked because ofwhat you said and they all came backgood but the fact that they did that wasimportant to me and Bill’s doing thesame thing so I just want to I’ll be inprayer for you bill for your surgerysurgeries are just surgeries orsurgeries or surgeryyeah so it’s just one it’s actually theentire removal of the prostate yeah yeahbut I’m saying surgeries are there’s nosurgeries are are dangerous proceduresit’s a full-on surgery it’s not yeahit’s a full-on surgery yeah yeahthat’s what we discussed yesterday withthe anesthesiologist yeah good good weyou’ll be in our prayers for sure thankyou thank you so much for coming on billit’s been an honor to hear your yourstories from LAPD okay thank you thankyou for having meanytime you want to have me again pleasedo so I would be more than happy to talkto youexcellent yeah it’s been good catchingup with Bill I haven’t heard that silkythat silky lepton voice in Laieexit the conversation or good hang outwith you here thank you thank you samehere all right thanks guys hey guys Ihope you enjoyed the episode if you’dlike to support the show go over tothings police see calm when you get onthe website there’s a few different waysyou can show some support you can donatedirectly you can do a one-time donationor a monthly donation even a buck helpsus keep the lights on over here pays ourexpenses for the month is greatlyappreciated you can also just use ourAmazon affiliate link if you just wantto buy something on Amazon like younormally do just do it through our linkand we’ll get a little kickback for thatso you can go to the website and do thator in the show notes I’ll put a link youcan just click right through that linkand the third way is you can buy somecan buy some merch so we have coffeemugs we have t-shirts men’s and women’sand we also have hoodie sweatshirts nowso go over two things please see calmand check it out you can also justlisten to the podcast there or you canapply to be a guest to scroll down toand click on be a guest and what youwant to do is just give us a briefsynopsis of your of your service howmany years you were on the job and justa very brief idea of the stories you’dlike to share and I will get right backto you so thank you for listening andwe’ll catch you next time[Music]youEnglish (auto-generated)
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