Let’s Get It On! (8 page)

She looked at me like I was a kid elbow deep in the cookie jar.

“You’re telling me you never experimented with marijuana? At all? Not even a little puff?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, you realize you’re going to fail the test if you lie.” She shrugged, fed up with the game she thought I was playing.

But I wasn’t playing. Not even close.

Screw this,
I thought, but I collected myself. “Ma’am, I told you how many times, I’ve never used marijuana. I have never taken any drug. Either you believe me or you don’t.”

I passed the test, though I’m sure I got no extra points for congeniality. The woman and her polygraph test irked me so much I told myself I wouldn’t go into the LASD if the LAPD made an offer.

Thankfully, I passed all my tests with the LAPD as well, so the choice was mine.

The thing about this whole interviewing and testing ordeal is that you don’t get paid for it. It’s like one long, maniacal interview from hell where you wade through medicals, background checks, physicals, and other evaluations just to wait to see if you get a job, which could take months or years depending on how many slots need to be filled at any given time. After all this, they give you a hire date and you’re off to the academy for training.

At the time I applied, the LAPD was brimming with about 6,400 officers, which was a relatively robust number. Newspapers today say the LAPD underpays and is understaffed. When I was looking to get hired, the process was slow and arduous because the 1984 Olympic Games were taking place in Los Angeles and eating up the city’s budget, so the department had instituted a hiring freeze.

A year and a half passed from the time I started testing till the day I was hired. In the meantime, I had to stay busy with other work and keep out of trouble. I accomplished one of the two.

A good distraction for me was my upcoming wedding. Since I was twenty-two years old and Elaine was eighteen, you can imagine our parents’ reaction. None of them had a problem with our chosen mates, but they all thought we were way too young to get married. Elaine’s parents pretty much paid for the entire thing, so we planned a Presbyterian church ceremony to make them happy. On the rainy day of November 24, 1984, in Orange, California, we made our vows.

On our way to the reception, the rain leaked into our limousine and Elaine had to navigate the raging river at her feet when she stepped out in her long, frilly dress.

The weather followed us to our honeymoon in Hawaii, which had its worst storm in ten years. No structure could seem to keep out the downpour. After mistakenly sticking us in a bungalow with two twin beds, the hotel manager upgraded us to their presidential suite. By the time the rain stopped, which was pretty much at the end of our trip, we had a couple inches of water on the floor.

When we finally did get outside, I wanted to visit Pearl Harbor. Since we were dirt poor on this trip, we decided to take a public bus. We found a seat behind a little old couple.

At one of the stops, five local teenage girls boarded, not one less than 250 pounds. They sat behind us and started talking loudly enough for the entire bus and probably the drivers outside to hear.

Now, I can handle a lot, but they started talking about their sexual exploits, and it got pretty graphic even for me. The old woman in front of us was even squirming in her seat. While I sat there swearing off public transportation forever, I told myself to mind my own business and keep my mouth shut. This is why I blame Elaine for what happened next.

“Say something on her behalf,” Elaine said. She pointed at that poor old woman, who was all but sliding out of her seat and onto the floor.

I turned around to the group and said, “Listen, if you want to talk your dirty little talk, just please do us a favor. Not everyone on the bus wants to hear what you’re saying. Can you please quiet down?”

“Fuck you, asshole,” one said. “This is our fucking island.”

When the bus made its next stop, Elaine and I stood to exit, but the group followed us and one girl went to hit me. I sort of deflected her right out the door, where she rolled onto the sidewalk on her back like a beached whale. Her friends followed to attack me, and I pushed them out the door in quick succession. They rolled out onto one another in a heap.

Unfortunately, the bus driver called the police on me, but the little old lady spoke up and saved me. We were free to go.

However, my run-ins with the police were far from over.

When I say I got into the LAPD by the skin of my teeth, I couldn’t be more serious. While I waited for my hiring call, I managed a miniature Indy car track in Fountain Valley called the Malibu Grand Prix. Elaine would even come in and volunteer for small tasks because she wanted something to do. It was a great place to ride out the months.

Finally, I got a call from Lt. Mike Hillman. “They’re picking your academy class tomorrow,” he said, “so don’t screw this up. Don’t make an officer even look at you funny. Don’t do anything, and you’ll be in.”

One more night to close the Grand Prix and Elaine was there with me. What could go wrong?

You can probably guess who came prancing in the front door. Yes, my good old friend trouble. Of all nights, two guys in the arcade decided this was the one when they’d ignore closing time. I got a call from the girl working in the store. These two men had racked up another game of pool.

“I’ll go talk to them,” I said. Mistake number one. I should’ve stayed in the office counting the money.

At first I tried the diplomatic approach. “We’re closed, but go ahead and finish your game. Have a good time, but please don’t put any more money in the slot.” Then I went back to the office but was soon interrupted by another call.

“They’re racking up another game,” the girl said.

I walked back into the arcade. Mistake number two.

The two guys eyed me, pool cues in their hands. I’d bounced enough to recognize that there were different species of idiot and that this particular species didn’t understand verbal commands.

They hadn’t been drinking, but I figured they’d been smoking something. I removed the cues from their hands, placed them behind the counter carefully, and stacked their quarters for the last game on the edge of the pool table. We’d been closed for twenty-five minutes, and I was giving them a refund. Apparently, that wasn’t enough.

“What’s your fucking problem?” one of them asked.

Now, I was about 265 pounds at the time. One of the guys was about my size. The other moron was about 190, not a small guy.

“I don’t have a problem,” I said, but there are only so many times I will tell somebody to move. I finally gave them the ultimatum: “Either you leave or I’m calling the cops.” I went behind the counter and got on the phone with the police dispatcher, but these guys kept mouthing off.

Then one of them did the unthinkable. He spit on me.

There are certain things I can’t accept, and being spit on is one of them. I stopped long enough to think,
I’m going to spend the rest of my life buckling bratty kids and their parents into miniature race cars,
and a split second later my hand was putting down the phone and my body was vaulting over the counter in one succinct motion.

I hit the big guy first, which left the smaller guy on his own. Divide and conquer at its best. The big guy went reeling across the room, slamming into a magazine rack, which sent periodicals flying everywhere. He landed on an arcade game, shattering the screen.

I grabbed the other guy next and leveled him before doing what I’d done for so many years. I started stomping and pounding the piss out of him. He was out, but I just didn’t care.

By the time I was done, my customers were a heap of blood and bruises on the floor and the police were on their way. I grabbed both guys by their shirts and dragged them toward the door.

Elaine, who’d watched the whole thing play out, was in shock. “Why are they bleeding so badly when you didn’t hit them hard?” she said. “Your punches didn’t make that much noise.”

Little did my young, naive wife know she would later watch fight after bloody fight when we’d both get involved with the UFC.

A few minutes later, justice’s black-and-white sedan pulled into the parking lot. I told the officers what had transpired, trying to keep my cool as sweat dripped down my forehead.

When a man walked toward us and said he’d witnessed the entire thing, I almost lost it. He was an off-duty Orange County sheriff out with his kids. After explaining everything, he turned to me. “Son,” he said, “that was the bitchinest thing I’ve ever seen.” Then he walked away.

Without another word, the officers jotted something in their notepads, handcuffed the men, escorted them to the car, and drove off.

As soon as I was alone, I called Mike Hillman and forced the words out. “I’m in trouble.”

Mike told me not to say a word to anybody. He would call the police department and make sure nothing came of it.

Elaine and I didn’t sleep a wink that night as we waited for my lifelong career at the Malibu Grand Prix to be green-lit come morning. But the only call that came was from the LAPD. My delinquent butt was expected to report to the academy in a month.

The only sunny day of our honeymoon in Hawaii until the last

Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever.

—Mahatma Gandhi

Even at twenty-two years old, I knew I never wanted to spend my life behind a desk. I wasn’t built that way physically or mentally, and I knew from watching my dad that police work would present a fresh challenge each new day. I never imagined some of my greatest challenges would come from inside me.

I thought there was nobility in the act of protecting people who couldn’t protect themselves. In my mind, there were three kinds of people in the world—wolves, sheep, and a sheepdog that protected them—and the police officer was the last kind. I wasn’t altogether right or wrong on the matter, but I learned later that there were some things I could change and other things I would never be able to. That was something I had to learn to live with over time.

Honestly, though, one of the immediate allures of crime fighting for me was a steady paycheck and health insurance for my family. When I reported to the training academy in July of 1985, I was hired for $2,204 a month. It was a big step up from what I’d made at the Malibu Grand Prix and allowed us certain luxuries, like being able to go grocery shopping. (Elaine and I had become quite the hot dog and nacho connoisseurs at the Grand Prix.) And the great thing about the academy was that I got paid the moment I stepped onto the training grounds.

I spent the next six months at the Los Angeles Police Academy in the twenty-one-acre Elysian Park complex, located outside the cluster of skyscrapers and government buildings of downtown Los Angeles. The academy is actually quite a beautiful place, with buildings atop a sprawling hill, surrounded by fountains, waterfalls, and streams. It wasn’t what you’d expect from a police academy at all, and you might mistake it for a well-kept private college.

Elysian Park was the location of the 1932 Olympic Games pistol and rifle competitions and has been immortalized in countless films and TV shows, including
Dragnet,
which portrayed officers in a dignified light. In fact, creator and lead actor Jack Webb often visited the park in the 1950s and ‘60s to observe the training and boost the authenticity of his show. When he passed away in 1982, his character Sgt. Joe Friday’s badge number 714 was permanently retired by the department.