Month: January 2013

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. The LAPD has been copiously fictionalized in numerous movies, novels and television shows throughout its history. The department has also been associated with a number of controversies, mainly concerned with racial animosity, police brutality and police corruption. The radio show Calling All Cars hired LAPD radio dispacher Jesse Rosenquist to be the voice of the dispatcher. Rosenquist was already famous because home radios could tune into early police radio frequencies. As the first police radio dispatcher presented to the public ear, his was the voice that actors went to when called upon for a radio dispatcher role. The iconic television series Dragnet, with LAPD Detective Joe Friday as the primary character, was the first major media representation of the department. Real LAPD operations inspired Jack Webb to create the series and close cooperation with department officers let him make it as realistic as possible, including authentic police equipment and sound recording on-site at the police station. Due to Dragnet’s popularity, LAPD Chief Parker “became, after J. Edgar Hoover, the most well known and respected law enforcement official in the nation”. In the 1960s, when the LAPD under Chief Thomas Reddin expanded its community relations division and began efforts to reach out to the African-American community, Dragnet followed suit with more emphasis on internal …