TWNMM: Where is Joe Friday..

Where is Joe Friday.. ..when you need him most?
Created: May 7, 2002

Where is old Joe Friday when you need him?

As a kid, I remember watching reruns of Dragnet on my old black and white TV set in my bedroom. One of the things I remember most about it was the feeling that while cops weren't perfect, they were first and foremost there to protect honest and decent citizens from those in society that don't like to play by the rules.

And mostly, I remember having some respect for police officers as a result.

Growing up in suburban Orange County, I had few interactions with the police. I generally stayed out of trouble. Just about all of my adventures in law enforcement revolved around the corner convenience store, which was sort-of an informal substation for the Anaheim Police Department. Usually one or two uniformed officers would be hanging around drinking coffee and/or having a donut from the shop across the street.. but even in their absence there was an old Realistic crystal-based scanner that was eternally tuned to the local dispatch frequency, barfing out MODAT tones and scratchy dispatches of the kinds of crime that happened in a city like Anaheim circa 1979. A shoplifting call at Gemco, a couple of kids trespassing over on the north side in an industrial yard, and the seemingly ever-present "kid lost at Disneyland" reports. On a bad day it might be a bad traffic accident over by the Stadium or maybe even a large fire where the PD was needed to redirect traffic around the fire zone.

And somehow, even as I grew into a teenager and began to take up radio as a hobby, I still maintained this ideal that the police were all deep down a lot like Joe Friday. Clean cut, matter-of-fact, somewhat hard cops who took great pride at busting some crook and made an effort to do so. The Anaheim Police Department still dispatched officers to help get cats out of trees: the all-white sedans that bore only the city's seal and the word "POLICE" in blue, friendly letters underneath streaking through the marine fog towards crime scenes big and small. I spent countless hours in the mid-80's listening to all of them on my Radio Shack scanner.

It was in their tone of voice on the radio, and in their posture and demeanor at the store. Just the facts, ma'am. We'll get right on it, Captain.

As the 80's drooled into the 90's, things started to change. And I'm not talking about the liquor store finally getting rid of the old scanner, nor the lack of obnoxious MODAT tones on 460.050 MHz in Anaheim.

What started to change was the police themselves. As Anaheim began to melt into the greater suburban sprawl that is the Los Angeles Metropolitain Area, I noticed that the kinds of calls that cops had to handle were increasingly depressing. More murders, more rapes, more hard crime. As the 90's wore on, fewer and fewer officers could be found at the corner store.

And it wasn't just the people that had changed. Gone were the sleek white cars with pseudo-European markings. The new Anaheim Police Department had black-and-white cars, with gold official looking "ANAHEIM POLICE DEPT." decals. The city seal was relegated to a minor position on the rear.

And the cops I did meet on a daily basis seemed increasingly sour. Not hard, like Joe Friday.. but emotionally spent. It apparently now really sucks to be a cop.

On May 7, I found out first hand how far we've come. Sometime early that morning, my car had been broken into and some personal property stolen. I called the Police Department here in Phoenix to report it. They took some basic information, and said that they'd have an officer call me back to take the report.

No problem, I think. So, I patiently wait for a callback.

Within a few minutes, I get my callback. The guy on the other end sounded like a lifer: somebody who had already spent 30 years way to long on the force. He was cordial, but you could tell that this was his fifth auto-burglary call this morning, and it was only 30 minutes into his shift.

So, I gave him all the basics, and hung up.

Five minutes later, I started driving. I at this point noticed that the hood of my car was unlatched. Upon further inspection, I noticed that there were clear, easily identifiable finger and hand prints in the thin dirt around the hood. I actually got kinda excited at this point.. visions of Encyclopedia Brown and those old grumpy detectives like Joe Friday danced in my head. Oooh, maybe they can lift some prints.. maybe they can get some kind of idea who the SOB was that decided they had to have my Geocaching backpack was.

So, I called the officer back and informed him of my discovery.

The best I could get out of him at this point was a disgruntled huff, that there wasn't much they could do because even if they were able to get prints the chance of being able to match them up seemed slim. And even then, there was this great built-in defense that just because the prints were there dosen't mean that they were involved in the burglary, just that at some point they touched my car.

And at this point, Joe Friday himself whispered in my ear: "That's not how we did things downtown."

And it suddenly dawned on me. This cop is not doing his job. The job of the police is to investigate any victimized citizen to the best of their ability. To leave no stone unturned. To protect and to serve.

Perhaps this officer is right. There is so much crime in a city like Phoenix that the police don't have the time and resources to investigate them all.

Joe Friday? He says rubbish. He would say that any unsolved crime is a slap in the face to all the decent citizens of our fine city. Joe Friday would obsess over every detail, regardless of how small. And cases were never closed until we saw the criminal (who's name was changed to protect the innocent) nervously standing in front of text showing he's now pounding rocks in San Quentin.

Have the police in a matter of 30 years forgotten their job? Yes, times have changed.. but I have to wonder. Is it possible that instead of finding the butthead who broke my car window (causing actual monetary loss), the Phoenix Police were able to bust some 17-year-old kid with 1/2 ounce of pot, who's only real crime might be riding his bicycle into a stop sign while he was high? His only real victim is himself (and perhaps his little sister, if he happens to be riding her bike at the time).

I wonder. I wonder if all the resources our police are currently using to put up red-light cameras at intersections and running DUI checkpoints could be put to better use busting REAL CRIMINALS rather than normally decent, honest folk who happened to make a one-time poor decision.

With all the talk of "community oriented policing" and the like, it seems like they're forgetting the "community" part. They couldn't dust my car for fingerprints, but I bet the next time I screw up and dwell in the intersection of 7th and Camelback one second too long they'll take a picture of my car, broken window and all, and mail me a $200 ticket.

Say it ain't so, Joe. Say it ain't so.

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