Quotes from Joseph Wambaugh

Sometimes the boy wished they could sit and that words would flow. But when they sat, eyes would turn shyly away. Father and son usually fell silent. It was ancient inherited shame of fathers and sons.

Burglars and thieves sometimes complained that they only committed crimes against property, not like muggers and rapists. Muggers and rapists never faulted policemen at all, which caused the choirboys to comment that as a rule muggers and rapists were the most appreciative people they contacted.

Of course, the happy shutterbug couldn't have known that his picture of a dildo keel would soon inspire a plot leading to murder and ensnare human beings like dolphins in a gill net. For he was just a San Diego cop who drove a boat, not a true man of the sea. Not one who understands in his soul that the actions of people are like the tides that chase the moon but invariably come crashing back, with all manner of thrashing things roiling in their foamy wake.

Mike Cabral's task force came to believe that John Orr was responsible for the vast majority of all the arsons they were studying, and by way of unverifiable proof, they pointed to the astounding statistic that showed a 90 percent drop in brush-fire activity since his arrest. In the county foothill area, brush fires had averaged sixty-seven a year clear back to 1981. After his arrest the average had dropped to one per year.

You listen to me, Treadwell. You're an office pogue. You never been anything but an office pogue. You don't have the slightest idea what goes on in a working police division. But you keep your mouth shut and do what you're told and I'll see to it that you're a captain someday and you can have your own station to play with. You don't and I'll have you in uniform on the nightwatch in Watts. Understand me, Treadwell?

But Team Policing and the Basic Car Plan had created lots and lots of new jobs for officers of staff rank. Therefore lieutenants made captain, captains made commander and commanders made deputy chief, and everyone had all the time they needed to think up new things for the working cops to do aside from catching crooks, which most of the new captains, commanders and deputy chiefs knew nothing about.

Lawrence of Arabia said old and wise means tired and disappointed. He didn't live long enough to know how right he was.

During his years in Los Angeles, Viktor Chernenko had learned that one similarity between life in the old USSR and life in Los Angeles—life under a command economy and a market economy—was that a tremendous amount of business was transacted by people in subcultures, people whom no one ever sees except the police.

He felt that the job was not particularly hazardous physically but was incredibly hazardous emotionally and too often led to divorce, alcoholism, and suicide. No, policemen were not danger lovers, they were seekers of the awesome, the incredible, even the unspeakable in human experience. Never mind whether they could interpret, never mind if it was potentially hazardous to the soul. To be there was the thing.

Valnikov was momentarily deafened. Natalie was holding her ears. The uniformed cops fired eighteen rounds at the two lights.

The three most overrated things in the world are: home cooking, home pussy and the FBI.

He said to them, "Weird? This ain't weird." And then he uttered the phrase that one heard every night around the station when things seemed too surreal to be true: "Man, this is fucking Hollywood!" After that, there was usually no need for further comment.

It was best not to ask too many questions of the Ferrets and Weasels of this world. There was less to deny when the headhunters put you on a polygraph.

All of them, street cops and supervisors, were now smothered in paperwork designed to prove that they were "reforming" a police force of more than ninety-five hundred souls who ostensibly needed reforming because of the actions of half a dozen convicted cops from both incidents combined.

So I, like, try to live a decent life, bro. What I wanna know is, why does God treat me like a butt crumb?" "Dude," Flotsam said, "sometimes it just seems like God takes a day off to go to the track or something.

The passage was underlined. It simply said: "What is it, Catullus? Why do you not make haste to die?" FOURTEEN

You're right, bro," Jetsam said. "Why should I give a shit if a driver don't have pants on? Sometimes I forget where I'm at." Then he looked at his partner and they said in unison, "This is fucking Hollywood!

Yet few residents of Los Angeles knew that this holy night, Thursday, January 6th, was the eve of Russian Christmas. There was a far holier day to anticipate on Sunday. They all knew about that one. And this year, praise God, it would be celebrated in nearby Pasadena! Super Bowl XI.

This is Hollywood," Flotsam said, "where men are men and so are the women.

As a cop, I dealt with every kind of bum and criminal. They all have more integrity than some Hollywood people.

When I interview people accused of capital offenses, I never even ask if they did it. I would consider that unprofessional.

When I wrote The Onion Field, I realized that my first two novels were just practice.

Today, lawyers are attacking more; they're attacking everything. A good example is the O.J. Simpson case.

The O.J. Simpson case, they had no understanding of that DNA evidence, and didn't want to.