Looking Back: The Police Academy of Days Past – By Scott Reitz

The other day I was remembering my application process to get onto the LAPD. One of the things they had you do was the ‘stylus’. This was a metal ring on a pedestal which was connected to a battery. If a piece of metal touched the stylus in any way the damned thing would buzz. They had you run a bunch of laps around the academy track and then they handed you a 6 inch unloaded revolver, placed the barrel through the stylus ring and press the trigger 6 times double action only. If memory serves me the diameter of the ring was about 4 inches. Should the barrel touch the ring the electric connection was completed, the damned thing buzzed and you were packed off to look for a new career. I remember a number of applicants trudging down the hill to their cars never to be seen again.

I suppose the theory was that you needed to be able to run after bad guys and hold the pistol relatively still when they had to be shot. This is all very simplistic on the surface as there is much more to shooting than holding a barrel stationary through a metal electrified ring. Or perhaps it was another theory altogether… they anticipated your partner blasting a 4 inch hole through a door with a 12 gauge shotgun and then you, with a 6 inch revolver, would place the barrel through the entrance hole and polish off the bad guy. Regardless of which one, someone came up with the idea, someone (probably more than one) bought off on it remarkably enough and someone made the thing! I’m sure this artifact is somewhere around the academy grounds gathering dust in some obscure corner. The whole idea is from an era long gone. They wanted officers who chased down bad guys to shoot them when appropriate. The LAPD back then didn’t want to know about your personal issues or that you possessed a soft and sensitive nurturing soul. Apparently they wanted runners and shooters.

At one point, the LAPD would not hire anyone under 6 feet. The stylus went the way of the dinosaur just as the height requirement did. There is a video tape out there that documents returning WWII vets who had joined the LAPD, throwing big medicine balls back and forth during academy training. Some moron came up with the idea that big balls thrown back and forth equated to forward thinking police training. This practice also has long ago been discarded. All of this kind of makes you wonder just who comes up with the training and requirements in the first place. Waaay back…women had to wear skirts on the LAPD. Slacks were considered offensive so skirts it was.

During my academy days they also had a very dilapidated series of facades and buildings on the upper grounds of the Elysian Park facility. Simmunitions and paintballs were not yet invented so we used .38 blanks instead. Now when the instructors shot you, or you shot them, it was assumed that the instructors never missed and all the recruits of course missed. It really didn’t matter what the scenario was…you were always going to die and there were no two ways about it! I would wonder if I would have hit the instructor or if he would have hit me during these ‘sit-simms’ (situational simulation for the curious among you) but we will never know.

The one thing they couldn’t fake (and neither could you) is when your partner choked you all the way out! You’d see a tunnel and then it was ‘lights out’. The instructor was invariably standing above you when you ‘came to’ letting you know that you were at 1880 North Academy Drive. We heard that a lot.

We used impact bags for baton training which your partner held. Now this is flawed from the start. Everyone had a partner who would miss the bag and hit you instead. Some guys are just not coordinated and when one swings a baton as if they had two left feet, the results are inevitable. Your partner would swing with carefree abandonment and strike about two feet off the mark right into your shins. One guy took a direct hit to his ‘goodies’ and yes…the rest of us cracked up laughing until we couldn’t stand. Again, I suppose that the academy wanted you to know what the bad guys would experience when properly struck with a straight stick, second growth, hickory baton. They also handcuffed you tightly so that you would fully comprehend circulation cut-off – lots of fun.

There are a lot of things in my academy days which upon reflection were fairly silly in the grand scheme of things, but there was also something else about the guys (and gals) from that time. We did not have the unqualified among us. We had experienced life to a great degree before we entered the academy. There was a strong ethos of honor and pride on being one of the LAPD. There was a history which you were expected to live up to. Almost all of us came on for the career and to make a difference as opposed to a ‘welfare with a gun’ mentality. You took your lumps and kept marching on. There was absolutely, positively, no crying in police work – especially on the LAPD. I don’t know what history the LAPD will write in the future, but I do know that I feel very fortunate to have served when I did and with the men and women that I served with.