technique.  It was also brilliant shooting and the epitome of calm under fire displayed by John as the suspect was about to shoot him in the face from less than a foot away.  He has talked of this incident at some of our classes and he is honest in every aspect about what it was that he felt, saw and reacted to.  On that fateful night, LAPD SWAT had to adapt and overcome and constantly shift it’s tactics to address the problem.  The nurses had propped the suspect back up after the first shot so that the rescuing force which they knew was coming, could shoot him again.  It has always amazed me at how the small details can have such profound impact on the outcome of deadly force encounters.  The white cloud and whooshing sound?  It was the discharge of dry chemical fire extinguishers.  The first discharge was to gauge our response and the second discharge was to actually get to the vehicle with the hostages.  Bomar did everything he could to defeat high ground but he neglected to consider a ground approach.  The Bomar incident is a timeless call-up when considering the lessons that current teams and individuals can still garner from it.  It was a classic example of real teamwork from the ground floor on up.  I, remember driving back home in the very first light of the next morning after all the de-brief’s and the OIS investigation.  Most of the city had been oblivious to the drama that had unfolded through the night.  While the city slept two lives had been precariously placed in danger by an individual who could not be bargained or reasoned with.  It had been the years of hard work, training and the collective will of incredibly talented individuals that ultimately carried the day. I was exhausted and yet wide awake…it had been one long night!  

Scott showing who's boss!

Firing into glass in vehicles

B Platoon

Night time shooting techniques.

INSIDE THE LAPD- CIRCA 1976 –Badges
by Scott Reitz

When you’re young and off on the start of a career, you never give a second thought to the fact that some day what you are experiencing at that very moment will someday be history.  If you go up to our Academy Club in Elysian Park and have breakfast or lunch there you will be treated to some real history.  There, plastered and festooned along the walls are dozens and dozens of historic photos of divisions, units, individuals and framed batons and handcuffs and the like from bygone eras.  You can munch on a, ‘Rookie Burger’ under a black and white photo of the famous ‘Hat Squad’ that the Movie, ‘Mulholland Falls’ is based upon.  Turn the corner just outside of the club and you’ll see Jack Webb’s pistol encased in the wall behind a thick glass and steel face.  It’s pretty neat as far as police history goes.  I doubt that any of the men in the photos many of whom are long gone now, ever thought that sixty or seventy or eighty years later, young recruits and visitors alike, would be seeing them on a daily basis.  They also have some old time LAPD badges that we used to look at and discuss as raw recruits between mouthfuls of the ever delicious and ‘soon to come up’ on the three mile cardiac run, the original gut-bomb Rookie Burger.

My academy class in 1976 was the second class to be issued the ‘unisex’ badge.  That is to say that rather than saying Policeman or Police woman on the top of the badge, it said Police Officer.  The badge is curved and thick and has some real weight to it.  It is made of brass and some sort of white metal with blue and white enameled lettering and the only two shows to ever allow actors to wear real LAPD badges were the principal actors on Dragnet and Adam-12.  They actually had a Sergeant who accompanied the badges to and from the set each day.  The badge is made by the Sun badge Company and it is fairly unique for the simple fact that if you have one as a collector, (a real one that is and not a forgery of which there are many) it is either stolen or belonged to your father etc. and has been reported as lost or stolen anyway. Real LAPD badges go for thousands of dollars among collectors.  The Policeman or Policewoman, are especially sought after.  On LAPD when you lose a badge, the number of that badge is retired and then you have to fill out a 15.7 form which is a form that covers anything that all the other department forms don’t cover and you have to explain yourself.  In other words LAPD does not give badges away as other departments might.  I was still a young Officer when I was detailed to guard the folk singer, Emilou Harris for a concert.  She, believe it or not, collects police badges.  She asked if she could have mine and I thought of what she had that she could barter for my badge and just as quickly I figured that that was a definite no-go and I politely told her that I couldn’t give her my badge. “Why?” she responded. “I got a bunch from the New York City guys.” (The New York boys must have known how to phrase a proposition.)

My badge has four digits and the five-digit badge numbers are the only ones they’ve been issuing for the last eighteen years.  So…four digit badge numbers are rare and three digit ones are rarer still, among the Police Officer badges.  In any regard they have actual examples of the Los Angeles Police badge as it has evolved through the department’s history mounted in frames in the
club.  So as raw recruits, we would sit under all the mounted memorabilia and have our magnum malts and rookie burgers never knowing, that the very four digit badges we were issued in 1976 would someday themselves be a very part of the LAPD history.  Up until 2005 the LAPD demanded surrender of the badge, (which was then subsequently destroyed) upon retirement and you were given a 2/3rd sized badge that was flat.  It didn’t look like an LAPD badge, it didn’t taste like an LAPD badge, it didn’t feel like an LAPD badge and it wasn’t the real thing.  As far as most Officers were concerned, a small piece of metal that had been through everything with you during your career belonged to no one else and least of all, the city!  The inevitable and following process had naturally evolved throughout the years.  Hundreds of Officers would file ‘lost reports’ explaining in great pitiful detail as to how it was that they managed to lose their badges on fishing trips in rather deep bodies of water with little or no possibility of recovery.  These reports would be filed usually about six months prior to pulling their pins or retiring.  This time frame allowed for the badge to be replaced, the reports to be filed and the dust to settle.  This process had

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