Screening the LAPD

1 Screening the L.A.P.D.: Cinematic Representations of Policing and Discourses of Law Enforcement in Los Angeles, 1948-2003. by Robert Bevan University College London Ph.D. Thesis 2 Declaration I, Robert Bevan, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 Thesis Abstract This thesis examines cinematic representations of the L.A.P.D. within the context of discourses of law enforcement in Los Angeles and contends that these feature films constitute a significant strand within such discourse. This contention, which is based upon the various identifiable ways in which the films engage with contemporary issues, acknowledges that the nature of such engagement is constrained by the need to produce a commercially viable fictional entertainment. In four main chronological segments, I argue that it is also influenced by the increasing ethnic and gendered diversity of film-makers, by their growing freedom to screen even the most sensitive issues and by the changing racial and spatial politics of Los Angeles. In the 1940s and 1950s, the major studios were prepared to illustrate some disputed matters, such as wire-tapping, but represented L.A.P.D. officers as white paragons of virtue and ignored their fractious relationships with minority communities. In the aftermath of the Watts riot of 1965, racial tensions were more difficult to ignore and, under a more liberal censorship regime, film-makers―led by two independent African American directors―began to depict instances of police racism and brutality. Between the major L.A.P.D. anti-gang initiative of 1988 and the Rodney King beating of 1991, two films were released which tackled the inter-related issues of gang violence and the controversial nature of the police response. In the febrile atmosphere of the time, each found itself at the centre of local discourses of law enforcement. Then, in the wake of the King beating, Los Angeles and its police force endured the 1992 riots, the trial of O.J. Simpson and the Rampart scandal. These highly publicised events, which gave the L.A.P.D. a world-wide reputation for racism, brutality and corruption, also informed several movies in which the misdeeds of filmic policemen outstripped even the worst excesses of their real-life counterparts. 4 Contents Chapter I: Introduction 5 Chapter II: From World War II to Watts 1. Introduction 34 2. He Walked By Night (1948) 48 3. Dragnet (1954) 58 Chapter III: S.W.A.T., C.R.A.S.H. 1. Introduction 74 2. Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) 92 3. Bush Mama (1976) 111 4. The New Centurions (1972) 120 5. The Choirboys (1977) 134 6. The Onion Field (1979) 147 Chapter IV: C.R.A.S.H., Hammer 1. Introduction 159 2. Colors (1988) 175 3. Boyz N the Hood (1991) 201 Chapter V: Bad Cops 1. Introduction 223 2. Strange Days (1995) 240 3. L.A. Confidential (1997) 260 4. Training Day (2001) 280 5. Dark Blue (2003) 297 Chapter VI: Conclusion 312 Appendix 320 References 324 5 I. Introduction Operating in the home of the American moving-picture industry, the L.A.P.D. is one of the most-publicised police forces in the world, with a long history of dramatic representation, initially on radio but more recently, and more famously, on television and in feature films. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the power of these moving images had a significant influence on public perceptions of the force. At the peak of its prestige in the 1950s and early-1960s, a series of favourable portrayals on television and in the cinema gave powerful support to its claim to be ‗one of the finest police departments in the world‘.1 In the 1990s, its reputation was shattered by an apparently unending sequence of real-life scandals which received extensive television coverage and subsequently informed a series of increasingly unflattering cinematic representations. The large number of police movies set in Los Angeles, coupled with the importance of the city as a major urban centre, has led scholars from a range of academic disciplines to make use of these films to illustrate their analyses of subjects such as race, spatiality and masculinity. Taking this body of work as its starting point, the primary aim of this thesis is to provide insights into previously unexplored territory by examining cinematic representations of the L.A.P.D. within the context of local discourses of law enforcement. From detailed analysis of films released over a period of fifty-five years, it contends that those films constitute a significant contributory strand within such discourse. In general, its findings support the assertion of Robert Brent Toplin that feature films have the power to 1 Alisa Sarah Kramer, William H. Parker and the Thin Blue Line: Politics, Public Relations and Policing in Postwar Los Angeles, Ph.D. dissertation, The American University, 2007, p. 172. 6 ‗stir curiosity and prompt viewers to consider significant questions.‘2 In particular, its researches have identified the various ways in which each film engages with contemporary issues. The nature and extent of such engagement is often brief, sometimes nuanced and always constrained by the need to produce a fictional entertainment which is commercially viable. In four main chronological segments, this thesis argues that it is also influenced by the increasing ethnic and gendered diversity of film-makers, by their growing freedom to engage with the issues of the day and by the changing racial and spatial politics of Los Angeles. The films considered in this thesis contribute to a broad spectrum of discourses of law enforcement through their representations of issues as wide-ranging as police corruption, constitutional safeguards of privacy, L.A.P.D. shooting policy, the psychological health of police officers and the complexity of the California justice system. However, throughout the period studied, recurring tensions between a predominantly white police force and the minority communities of Los Angeles have also ensured a prominent position in local discourses of law enforcement for racial issues, especially in 1965 and 1992 when these tensions erupted in major civil disturbances. African American and Latino residents have consistently accused the police of racism and brutality, while the markedly higher rates of crime in inner-city areas have led more than one L.A.P.D. Chief to associate race with criminality. The police presence in minority areas has often been condemned as heavy-handed but occasionally criticised for its inadequacy, accompanied by the allegation that crime is only taken seriously when white residents are its victims. Although absent 2 Robert Brent Toplin, Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), p.1. 7 from cinema screens until the 1970s, the prominence of these racial issues in real life has been matched by their subsequent influence upon cinematic representations of policing. Nothing illustrates the changing relationship between cinematic representation and contemporary discourses of law enforcement more clearly than the very different responses of the film industry to two infamous examples of police brutality, separated in time by almost forty years. In 1991, the video-taped beating of Rodney King was screened repeatedly on local and national television and provided shocking images which validated the long-standing accusations of police brutality made by the minority communities of Los Angeles. The incident was also the catalyst for a chain of events which included condemnation of the L.A.P.D. as brutal racists by an independent commission, the loss of the political independence which successive Chiefs had cherished for many years and, immediately after the officers involved were found not guilty of criminal charges, four days of the most destructive civil disturbances in American history. Less than two years later, Spike Lee set the original video-tape of the King beating against the background of a burning Stars and Stripes in the opening sequence of Malcolm X (1992).3 Verbal or visual references to this watershed event subsequently appeared in a number of other films, including Natural Born Killers (1994), Virtuosity (1995), Strange Days (1995), American History X (1998), Three Kings (1999), Training Day (2001) and Dark Blue (2002). Just like the King beating, the Bloody Christmas incident of 1951, in which seven Mexican American suspects were brutally beaten by a large number of L.A.P.D. officers, 3 Within this thesis, initial reference to a film always comprises title (year of United States release). Subsequent references are normally title only. Although the title of a film is often accompanied by the name of its director, the collaborative nature of film production is recognised and, where appropriate, the contribution of script-writer or producer is acknowledged. Full details of each film mentioned can be found in References, Filmography, pp. 325-29. 8 resulted in a torrent of adverse publicity and in criminal trials for several of the officers involved. However, as Edward Escobar has pointed out, in the early 1950s, the white power-brokers of Los Angeles, a group including both political leaders and ‗non- governmental elites‘, favoured an aggressive approach to policing as the most likely route to a crime-free city. Their support for L.A.P.D. Chief William H. Parker (1950-1966) ensured that the investigations of Bloody Christmas were limited to the incident itself and to its narrow disciplinary consequences. Parker subsequently devoted substantial public relations resources to reinforce the image of his force as ‗the thin blue line‘ which stood between white home-owners and the twin evils of organised crime and criminally-inclined racial minorities.4 Part of this effort was directed towards both supporting and controlling Jack Webb‘s Dragnet franchise, a series of favourable portrayals of the L.A.P.D.

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