They Were Together as Rookies. . .and Stayed Together as Old Pros : Police in Academy’s Class of ’37 Return to Scene of Their Prime

Area residents were not happy. Police response time to the San Fernando Valley was lousy. In fact, it was so bad that after one local gas station was robbed, no one showed up to take a report until the next day.

But those Valley residents don’t care anymore, said Dean Ward, a 26-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department’s communications and dispatch division. After all, that was back in 1950.

As the old saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

In the world of police work, few know this better than the 35 surviving members of the Magna Club, the Police Academy’s graduating class of 1937. They reunited Wednesday, as they have been doing for 51 years.

Only 19 ex-officers showed up at Nikola’s, the dark, wood-paneled Echo Park-area restaurant that served for years as an unofficial cop hangout. But the back room rumbled with din of old friends greeting each other again.

Al Shambra and Tom Lynch hooked up again at a back corner table, recalling their rookie year.

“We worked from eight in the morning until 10 at night,” Shambra said. “And we only got four days a month off.”

“But we didn’t even want to take those,” Lynch added, nodding to his wife, who knew that fact just as well. “We were so hopped up about the job, we didn’t want to take any time off.”

The average salary for the rookie cops of the Class of ’37 was a whopping $170 a month.

“And we thought we were rich,” Lynch said.

The salaries have gotten bigger. Academy graduates can now expect to take in $31,000 a year.

But once on the streets, they may find the work they do now is surprisingly similar to that done by their predecessors.

Ken McCauley, the retired commander of detectives who spent 38 years on the job, said it may be commonplace today, but he was surprised how many “sexually crazy” people there were on the streets. He said he once had to answer a call from a man who claimed someone was “sending radio beams through the wall--right at his genitals.

“We said ‘OK, we’ll get him.’ and we’d get another call saying, ‘They’re still doing it.’ ”

McCauley said he and his partner finally resolved the problem by hanging a mirror in the apartment to reflect the beams and there were no more problems.

“He called back and said it worked great,” the retired commander said.

That happened back in 1939.

But some elements of police work have changed.

Retired Lt. Lou Wycoff said there is a lot more shooting going on now than he ever saw.

“There were a lot of arrests. But no one ever shot at you,” he said. “I took out my gun a couple of times, but I never once had to shoot anyone . . . or got shot at.”

Wycoff said officers in his time considered the Fire Department a more dangerous place to work.

“Police work is not just making arrests. It never has been,” McCauley said. “It’s about helping people.”

So the “crazies” are still out there, people are still yelling about police response time and the boys of the Magna Club are still meeting, and will until there are no more.

“This group just really liked each other,” said retired Sgt. Bill Regan, who organizes the reunion every year. “I don’t know, they just meshed and that’s why we have this every year.”