By Ron Erickson
This is about a group of Peace Officers, L.A. County
Deputy Sheriff’s, who had the distinct honor of working at the late Firestone
Station, which has passed into history. Maybe the group I worked with as well
as the station outlived our usefulness in today’s antiseptic aura of law
enforcement.
Very few of the aforementioned deputies are still on
the department, myself included. Ours was camaraderie, the likes of which I
have never experienced. Some of us, not I, served in the military in Vietnam
prior to coming on the department. For the most part, Firestone Station was their
first taste of patrol. It was my third tour at Firestone. The time period that
the bulk of us worked was 1969-1974. The climate then was still unsettled. The
Watts Riots of 1965 was still fresh in most people’s memories, plus the East
L.A. Riots of 1970-71 and the countrywide protest against the war in Vietnam
filtered down to all levels. A yearly event, which seemed to bond us, was the
Watts Festival. This event was held in Will Rogers Park, 103 street and Central
Ave. Between 1969 and 1974 nearly all of us volunteered to work this detail.
There were fifty deputies working this detail inside the park, an area less
than a mile square. The nightly crowds averaged 10,000. Our back up was the
Special Enforcement Bureau who circled the park like Indians around a wagon
train. We managed to maintain control while averaging 1500 arrests per night.
It was something “we” looked forward to every year.
In “those days” we knew what had to be done to maintain order, handle our calls, and most important look after our fellow deputies. The relationships between line deputies and supervisors were more secure due to the fast that the majority of them faced the same problems we did before making rank. They kept that in mind during their contacts with the troops.
As I said before, this was a good time to be
“working the streets,” without having to constantly look over your shoulder
while trying to do a job. Our group which I have titled “the Wild Bunch” truly
enjoyed our jobs. We worked hard and sometimes “played even harder. This was,
in a way, a release mechanism, which many of us found necessary to maintain our
sanity. All the times weren’t good. Firestone Station lost three deputies in
less than two years.
Everyone expresses their grief in different ways
after the loss of a good friend or fellow cop. For some reasons peace officers
seem to dull their grief by talking it out or with the temporary numbing
effects of alcohol. One distinct personal memory was what happened after the on
duty murder of a close personal friend. I distinctly remember sitting in a bar
with two other deputies before the funeral. We played one song on the jukebox
continuously for two hours before the funeral. Strangely enough, none of us
consumed more than two drinks before for leaving.
It was after the murder of another deputy less than
six months later that we were hit even harder. This blow was pompous directive
from the office of the Sheriff. It seemed that too many “citizens” complained
about the number of radio cars in the funeral procession in the previous
funeral. Several of us exploded and did the only thing open to us outside of
downright rebellion. We composed a letter of protest and left is open for
anyone who chose to sign it before the letter went to the Sheriff. Almost every
deputy and numerous detectives and even supervisors signed it, along with the
members of the Special Enforcement Bureau was patrolled the station area during
the funeral. This amounted to over two hundred signatures. A copy of the letter
was late returned to us without comment. Needless to say nothing was said about
the number of radio cars in the procession.
In closing, I can only hope that those of our group
who have gone their own ways, felt the same as I did about our time together,
the camaraderie we shared, and hope the survivors have found closure. It will
never be the same, but unfortunately time goes on. I was never prouder to be a
Peace Officer.