It was announced today that Joseph Wambaugh had died. He was a Los Angeles Police Officer for over a decade. He was also an author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. I’m not belittling his writing accomplishments. In an interview he stated that he saw himself as a cop then as an author. I’m just following his wishes.
Wambaugh didn’t invent the police procedural genre. Ed McBain plows the same ground beginning in 1956. That’s fifteen years before Wambaugh’s The New Centurions was first published. McBain’s 87th Precinct series has a gritty plausibility. McBain did his research. What made Wambaugh characters different was the things that made them wake up screaming at 2 am were part of Wambaugh’s own experience. He wasn’t relating something that he heard about. Like they say he had, ‘been there, done that, got the t-shirt’.
I’ve read everything that Wambaugh wrote. I didn’t always agree with his superficial premise, that the job takes a psychological toll, out of proportion to other occupations. I say superficial because he explored a variety of issues. Many weren’t obvious to non-cops. They certainly weren’t as touchy feely as “I’m butt hurt because my sergeant was mean to me.” I was a cop for thirty years. My friends pre-cop sometimes called me an asshole. Post cop, still an asshole only more accomplished at it.
As a rookie cop in 1976 my academy training was sadly lacking. The last time the lead instructor had actually sat behind the wheel of a patrol car was in the 1950’s. Tactics was a term that wasn’t in his vocabulary. Needless to say, tactics weren’t included in the curriculum. Fortunately for cops of my generation there was Jack Webb, with “Adam-12” and Joseph Wambaugh with “Police Story”. My peers and I called them training films. Sure, we had to take them with a grain of salt, but it beat what we got in the academy.
Writing this has forced me to think about his body of work. I have always been partial to his first four books, The New Centurions, The Blue Knight, The Onion Field and The Choirboys. I like all of his work but those four stand out. I think I know why, now. With those four books he was still a cop writing about cops. In his later books, he used to be a cop, writing about cops. Like Thomas Wolfe wrote, You Can Never Go Home Again. When you’re out you’re out.
Wambaugh apparently sponsored some dinners and drinking sessions with LAPD cops to gather stories and attitudes reflective of a new generation of cops. Keep in mind the cops whose bar tab Wambaugh was paying during Hollywood series probably hadn’t been born when he left LAPD. Wambaugh has a good ear and an able pen. What he lacks in these later stories is the old ability to inspire night terrors, like back in the good old days.
I’ve written three novels about Texas cops assigned to a narcotics task force in the 1990’s. Somebody once said write what you know. I was assigned to just such a task force for fifteen years. Got that part down. I didn’t set out to copy Joseph Wambaugh. I will admit to walking the same path. We share some of the same cop traits, cynicism, a tribal disdain for those not of the same tribe, and a boyish cops and robbers’ attitude inherent in the game. It some areas we diverge. I hold to Ed McBain’s view of the 87th Precinct. Players come and go but the monolith of the 87th Precinct or the UNIT endures. Joseph Wambaugh has exited but his writing is the monolith that will endure.
I tried to find a reaction from LAPD but apparently it is too early. Here is a reaction from LAPD regarding Martin Milner’s passing.
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