When I was in my mid-teens, a teacher asked me if I wanted to become a police officer.
I’ve had mostly positive experiences with law enforcement during my 63 years.
Before I became a full-time, employed journalist, most of what I knew about the police came from “Dragnet” reruns and the 87th Precinct books by Ed McBain and Joseph Wambaugh.
I also learned a little about police officers from my father’s business clients.
From age 14 onward, I wanted to be the World’s Greatest Mystery Writer up until I graduated journalism school in (cough, cough). I read books by and about the police. (I still recommend “Target Blue,” written by a deputy NYPD commissioner in the early 1970s.) I read crime statistics at Long Beach City College. I photocopied the section of the Business and Professions Code that regulates private investigators at the main branch of the Long Beach Public Library.
I read books about juvenile delinquency at my neighborhood branch. (I’m still not sure how “The Cross and the Switchblade” ended up in the same section as text books about sociology and sex.) Some of those books were supposed to be off-limits to kids, yet no one thought to put the forbidden books out of our reach. And no one noticed the kid seated on the floor between seldom-visited book stacks, turning pages of books about criminal investigations. (Silly grown ups.)
I liked almost every real-life policeman I ever encountered—even the guys I probably shouldn’t have liked, such as the Long Beach officer who slept in the front of his black-and-white while my high school classmates and I drank illegal beers. (I’m only admitting to this because the statute of limitations must have expired by now.)
Or the officers who caught our graduating class (all five of us) drinking after hours on a state beach on the night of our high school graduation. The officers poured the beer onto the sand and let us go. A drunk friend drove us home and each time the car lurched I wondered if being arrested would have been so bad. I’m not sure I ever forgave them for failing to arrest us.
I do wish the Compton Police Department (which no longer exists) had shown up sooner when I was 8. Vandals spent a week messing up our Compton home while we were at a church camp.
The neighbors called the Compton PD and were informed our neighborhood was the responsibility of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. The neighbors called the LASD and were informed that our neighborhood was the responsibility of the Compton PD. Fortunately, the vandals left before we returned.
I don’t like to think about it because my adult imagination can take me to the worst possible version of what would have happened if we had returned home while the vandals were there.
I remember thinking it was cool to have the fingerprint man show me how he dusted for prints. My parents were upset about the damage done to our home.
When I was 14 or 15, Jack Prohaska—one of my best teachers who became one of my oldest friend—asked me if I wanted to become a cop.
I pondered the question for a few heartbeats. I realized:
• I had anger management issues.
• I couldn’t handle stress.
• I held grudges.
• I froze at the sight of blood.
I said I didn’t think police work was right for me. (Somewhere, a police officer and an ACLU lawyer are nodding in agreement.)
When I enrolled at CSU Long Beach, I didn’t plan on a journalism career. I choose that major because I thought I would get more experience writing for a college newspaper than for an English composition or English literature class.
In 1986, the guy covering the campus police had a shift change at work. I replaced him because I was the only alternative available. At first, I couldn’t get any stories because the only person allowed to speak to the press was Lt. Kamm and he was never available. My student editor at the time dismissed information from police reports as “gossip” and insisted my stories would only run if I spoke with a police official. But one day Lt. Kamm was available and I asked, “What’s the best time to reach you?”
He laughed. “If you want to be here at 7:30 in the morning, Charles.”
For the rest of the semester, I was there around 6:30 a.m. That marked the start of my journalism career. (Don’t. Laugh. At. Reporters.)
When I started freelancing for the Sun in 2005, the editor assigned the Crime Log beat to me. The Seal Beach PD has been stuck with me every since.
Charles M. Kelly is associate editor of the Sun and has been writing the Crime Log off and on since 2005.
