Behind The Badge

A little visit to the Los Angeles Police Historical Society Museum proved to be a worthwhile urban tourist stop.

The building is located in the ol’ Highland Park Station (built in 1925). Yes, because of our stilted imaginations (and love of the Los Angeles of yesteryear) everything reminded us of LA Confidential. The North Hollywood Bank of America Shoot-Out Memorial fixed that (see below).

The museum professional who greeted us was awesome, but we forgot to heed her advice and check out the cop cars. We were agog after seeing the size of the toilets in the jail cells.

The LAPD was one of the first police departments to have female officers. According to MyFoxLA, The first woman to work as a police officer anywhere in the United States was Alice Stebbins Wells who wore her LAPD badge for the first time on September 12, 1910. So in the museum (although most of the policewoman stuff was tucked away on the stairwell between the first and second floors) there are tons of radical photos that feature Betty Draper-looking ladies handling handguns and pommel horses:

 

Click here for a story on the first police woman in THE NATION!

The museum is smallish and doesn’t really address any of the controversial history of the LAPD I’ve read and heard about. But it makes sense in this case because we didn’t have a docent led tour (you can arrange for one if you call ahead) and because the place is meant to be a showcase and memorial for the department.

One of the most ominous family museum exhibits I have (ever) seen was on the upper floor of the museum.  A large corner room is set aside for clippings, artifacts, and life-size models from the North Hollywood Bank of America Shoot-Out.

There are bullet-damaged sections from the bullet-proof glass and a pair of the gunman’s leather gloves, wrinkled from the work of gripping several automatic weapons.

If the life-size mannequins dressed in full bullet-proof body armor and ski masks isn’t enough, you can watch a twenty-minute panic-attack inducing video of the shoot-out (in which the two heavily armed psychotic gunmen nonchalantly take fire at citizens and police at an unbelievably uncomfortable violently slow pace).

After that video, we had to take a long look at the uniform exhibit while exchanging knock-knock jokes just to cleanse our terrified brains.

Some of the other fun things: guns, police calendars, mug shots, bomb squad scooter, and a handwritten confession (that, in my amateur opinion, exhibits NONE of the typical sociopathic tells one would gather from an extensive handwriting analysis) penned by a young kidnapper/murderer.

I order that you check it out the next time you are in Eagle Rock (you can eat at Oinkster after).

By the way – Not sure about any law enforcement superstars, but did you know that George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Carl Jung, and Stanley Kubrick were born on July 26th? What a day!