Working Cudahy

By Jack Boberg

Back in the good old days my partner and I were working the two man evening car (13) in Cudahy. Early in the evening we received a call regarding indecent exposure and to meet the informant at a specific location.

          We responded and contacted the informant, a woman in her early 30’s. She related that as she walked on the sidewalk near the intersection of Wilcox and one of the east/west streets a car was parked at the curb. As she passed the car a male sitting in the drivers seat pulled a towel off is covered private parts and exposed them to her……. wagging his weenie.

          She continued walking to her nearby home and called the Sheriff’s Dept.

          We obtained the full description of the car and occupant and proceeded to the intersection where he was last seen.

          As luck would have it, there was the car and driver just pulling away from the curb and driving east bound on the E /W Street. We flipped on the REDS and the car continued in a slow speed for one or two blocks, gave a few short blasts of our battery draining siren and the car pulled into a resident’s driveway and drove to the end of it. All the lots in Cudahy were very deep, allowing residents to build two or three more houses in the rear of the main house.

          When the car reached the end of the driveway it stopped and the driver, a white male in his mid 20’s jumped out of the drivers side (dressed in white tee shirt and short pants) turned and faced us, as we exited the radio car, the suspect immediately raised his hand with a silver type badge in it and exclaimed in loud words, “LAPD”.  Yep, he was a member of that department.

          Unknown to us at the time, the informant had got in her own car and was following us. She had pulled into the drive way just as the suspect made his loud identification to us.

          I walked back to admonish her re: following us and coming up behind a ‘car stop’.  Her first words where, “Well, now that he is a policeman, does that mean you aren’t going to do anything about the indecent exposure?” I explained that we would take the proper action in the matter and she would be notified of the outcome. This seemed to console her and she left for home.

          The suspect was transported to the station, with his permission of course. The watch commander notified LAPD internal affairs and they responded and relieved us of the Officer. A report was submitted, but don’t believe any action was taken as LAPD later informed the detective bureau that the officer was fired.

          One moral of the story is, the Badge can do you a lot of good through the years, but weenie wagging to a strange female is a no, no.