Night Shtick : Ex-LAPD Officer Takes to Clubs to Tell Stories Out of Uniform

Grasping the microphone and keeping a very straight face, Kevin Jordan said he quit the Los Angeles Police Department mainly for health reasons.

“I found out I was allergic to doughnuts,” the former officer told a receptive crowd at the L.A. Cabaret Comedy Club in Encino.

A wiry black man, Jordan was launching into a routine that draws on his 3 1/2 years as a police officer. The act has taken him to clubs all over the country in what he hopes is the beginning of a successful career in the tough business of making people laugh.

“I remember my first day at the academy,” the 27-year-old Jordan says frequently as part of his routine. “A sergeant came in and told us, ‘There is no ‘black’ here at LAPD. There is no ‘white’ here at LAPD. Just men in blue. Now I want you to get up here and line up. All the light blue men in the front, all the dark blue men in the back.’ ”

Although he has high hopes for his career as a comedian, Jordan is the first to admit that he wasn’t such a great cop, and his superiors at the Police Department agree that the citizens of Los Angeles are far better off with Jordan as a comic than as a cop.

For one thing, as Jordan told the crowd at the L.A. Cabaret, he hated giving traffic tickets--except to “big, burly macho guys.”

Affecting an effeminate manner, Jordan got a round of laughter as he sashayed up to an imaginary car. His wrist dangling, he said in a mincing voice to the occupant: “Slut!”

More laughter.

Then, teasingly, “Hi, fella.” Shaking a finger, “You were speeding. Going much, much too fast. Now, I need to see your driver’s license and registration.” Pretending to scan the license, “Oh! You’re a Pisces! Just go, go! “

(Jordan swears that he actually pulled this routine on several drivers he stopped while on duty.)

Then Jordan donned mirrored sunglasses and police cap and performed a “police rap” song called “Man in Blue.” Sample lyrics: “Everyone asks do we have a quota. I say, ‘No! Five tickets and we get a toaster.”

At one time, Jordan juggled his police and comedy careers--with mixed results.

Says retired Los Angeles Police Capt. Roy Randolph, Jordan’s former commanding officer: “He would have been a good candidate for the movie ‘Police Academy.’ He exhibited the same lack of common sense. He was called on the carpet more often than anybody else” in the Van Nuys Division.

At one point, Jordan was working nights doing stand-up comedy at the now-defunct Playboy Club in Century City. Afterward, he would report to work as a patrolman on the graveyard shift in the streets of West Los Angeles, the division in which the club is located.

Randolph wasn’t the only one of Jordan’s supervisors to be alarmed by his behavior.

Jordan’s commanding lieutenant thought that his lampooning of the Police Department could undermine his authority.

“What happens if you’re out patrolling and you pull someone over, and he’s just seen your show?” the lieutenant reportedly asked Jordan.

“I told him, ‘If he liked the show, I’d let him go on his way. If he didn’t, I’d give him a ticket,’ ” Jordan said.

One of a crop of shorter-than-average officers allowed on the force when the department lowered its height standards to recruit more women and minorities, Jordan had trouble reaching the gas pedal of his patrol car, one of his ratings reports noted.

Once, when Jordan drove the car without a partner, a citizen called the police station to report that a little kid had stolen a police car, Jordan said.

Smurfs on Duty

Or there’s this story, now part of Jordan’s routine, about working with a woman partner:

“She was 5-foot-1, 110 pounds. I’m 5-foot-4, 125 pounds. You know, we got out of the car, it was like the Smurfs coming at you: ‘OK, put your hands down where I can see them.’ ”

Jordan admits to being a wise guy who deliberately tweaked his LAPD bosses by alternately flouting the rules and following them “to the letter.”

He kept a thesaurus handy to sprinkle his written reports with baffling words that sent his sergeants to the dictionary. Or he deliberately wrote in very small print.

At one point, he was put on notice for wearing a black head scarf and a gold earring with his uniform. Another time, he was called on the carpet for wearing goofy-looking sunglasses.

He was chastised for pulling over a motorist in the middle of summer--the temperature was 95 degrees--while wearing a winter jacket. “Oh, it’s so cold,” he told a baffled matron, as he shivered and blew on his hands.

His sergeant did not think it was funny. Nor was he amused by another stock character in Jordan’s repertoire--the blind officer.

“My superiors said they didn’t know whether it was part of my comedy routine or I was trying to go for a phony psycho pension,” Jordan said.

Parking Ticket Problem

The department’s irritation with Jordan was brought to a head when it was discovered that he had several thousand dollars’ worth of unpaid parking tickets.

That was “the--shall we say-- climactic occurrence that caused him to be removed from the department,” Randolph said.

Police officials further discovered that Jordan had not registered his car, and that Jordan’s failure to pay the tickets had resulted in 30 to 40 warrants being issued for his arrest, Randolph said.

Asked about this, Jordan said sheepishly: “I procrastinated.”

But, by that point, in 1985, “I had more comedy bookings than I had time off,” Jordan said.

A native of Queens, N.Y., Jordan came to Los Angeles in 1981 with a modest amount of amateur comic experience, a communications degree and dreams of becoming a professional comedian.

Several months of living at the Hotel Frontier on Skid Row while struggling to land paid comedy jobs prompted Jordan to answer an ad for a well-paying job as a Beverly Hills police officer. The department rejected him, but the Los Angeles police were hiring.

“Isn’t that just the perfect jump, from cop to comedian?” Jordan asked as he waited to go on stage recently. “You spend all day telling people what they can’t do and giving them tickets, and then at night you’re entertaining them. It’s like squaring it with yourself.”

Jordan now spends much of the year touring, playing clubs in such cities as Richmond, Va., Houston, Indianapolis, San Jose, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., and even New York. Usually he is billed as the middle act; occasionally he headlines with his own 40-minute show.

Almost Making a Living

Acting as his own agent, he has booked himself into clubs every week except three until next March. Consequently he is seldom home, which is just as well because he hasn’t bothered to buy furniture. The tiny house in Altadena that he bought two years ago is barren except for a stereo, TV, bed and a dinette set purchased by his girlfriend.

When he is in town, Jordan performs at such clubs as the Ice House in Pasadena, Hornblower’s in Ventura, the Laff Stop in Newport Beach and the Variety Arts Center in downtown Los Angeles.

Although he hasn’t hit what comics consider the big time--regular bookings at clubs like the Comedy Store and the Improv in West Hollywood--he has achieved success on a scale that would make many a young comic envious: Last year, he earned $14,000 doing comedy. Maybe, if things keep going like this, his parents won’t have to help support him next year, he said.

Jordan has hopes--although no current prospects--of recording his police rap song. The tune has been played on the “Dr. Demento Show,” a nationally syndicated radio program. Jordan sometimes performs it with a backup group dubbed the Winchellettes--three fellow comedians wearing doughnut-shop hats.

Bob Fisher, owner of the Ice House in Pasadena, said: “Kevin has the potential to be one of the best comics around. He has an outstanding personality and energy on stage, unpredictability and just a tinge of wackiness.”

Fisher said he has come to expect the unorthodox from Jordan. For example, if a member of the audience comes in late, Jordan has been known to march them around the room, make them stand on stage holding a sign that says “I’m late. I’m sorry,” and then take their picture with a Polaroid camera.

Patricia Harris, entertainment coordinator at the Variety Arts Center, where Jordan used to be a regular before he began traveling so much, said that, when he performed there, “nobody wanted to follow Kevin. It was considered the worst spot of the night because he would get an audience to practically give a standing ovation.”

Untangling Jordan’s non-comic persona is tough. He has always been shy, he said. In high school, he had few friends.

Easier to Talk to 200

Even now, he said, he finds that “it’s easier to talk to 200 people and say things in general than have to talk to one person and say something specific to them.”

In 1980, he signed up to audition for a talent night at a New York comedy club but chickened out. Jordan’s friends signed him up and made him go. He wasn’t great, but he didn’t bomb and he got a few laughs, he said.

“From then on,” Jordan said, “I was hooked.” He appeared during talent night every week until he was good enough to become a club regular, which meant going on stage for no money at 2, 3 or 4 a.m.

Today, Jordan is starting to branch out and drop some of the police-oriented routines, but often audiences clamor for them. He said he sometimes misses the camaraderie of police work--and the steady paycheck--but he firmly believes he is bound for stardom.

Success, he says, in a quiet manner that contrasts with his brassy stage personality, “sure would be nice.”