One Good Cop

This started out to be the story of a good cop, an undercover guy who risks his life every day in the worst part of the city, but then those clowns did a number on a black man in Lake View Terrace and that changed things.

Nothing detracts from a positive like a dozen negatives.

You know the clowns I’m talking about. They’re the cops who were videotaped beating hell out of guy lying on the ground, like Ku Klux Klanners in a feeding frenzy.

Twelve patrolmen took turns kicking and whacking him with nightsticks, and later claimed he’d resisted arrest, an allegation the videotape somehow failed to show and witnesses failed to see.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates viewed the tape and said he was shocked and was looking into it.

Looking into it?

Well, you see, the guy on the ground might have said something the cops didn’t like, which, among some of the dumber ones, constitutes the crime of sass when it comes to a black dude. Gates didn’t want to jump to conclusions.

You get the point.

Anyhow, the tape was made public the night before my appointment with the undercover narc. I can’t identify him because he’s on the street every day buying dope to put away dealers. Call him Dominic.

He’d written me about how cheap a cop’s life was in a city growing meaner by the minute. It was a letter with an honest point of view so we met to talk about it.

But by then word was out that L.A. cops were mindless, racist animals, and Dominic was feeling low.

He talked about the beaters as we rode through a neighborhood west of downtown, saying that they ought to have a certain piece of their anatomy cut off.

“Now everyone’s thinking we’re all like that. I say to people, ‘Hey, man, it’s them, not me.’ But we’re in the same house, so who’s going to believe we’re not the same kind of cop? It’s an embarrassment.”

Dominic’s a good-looking guy of 37, born in the south of France, with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nice.

He’s got a wife and a son he loves dearly, barbecues in the back yard and struggles to pay the rent, even as you and I.

He likes what he’s doing, doesn’t steal dope money and wishes an eternity in hell for cops who do.

Dominic operates out of Central Narcotics, alternating with others in the Rampart, Newton, Northeast and Hollenbeck divisions.

Long-haired and bearded, wearing jeans, a black leather jacket and amber flight glasses, he’s the guy who makes the buy and then helps make the bust.

Crack, weed, speed, horse, you name it, they got it. We got hustled at every other street corner.

“It’s like an open-air market out here,” Dominic says. Then he hollers to the dealers, “I’ll be back!”

He’s been on the street for a year and just the day before had made his 158th buy, which resulted in arrest No. 290.

As I said, he’s a good cop doing his job, notwithstanding its obvious peril. Peril is what he wrote me about, the cost of a cop’s life on the street.

There’s a dealer named Crazy Lisa, who hangs around Wilshire and Bonnie Brae. She’s wired most of the time, which is probably her safer mode. When she comes down and can’t find rock, she gets unpredictable and dangerous.

Dominic discovered that while trying to make a buy. A dealer pointed at him and shouted, “You’re a cop, you (expletive), get your cop ass out of here!”

Lisa was nearby. Dominic’s partner across the street saw her pull a hunting knife with a six-inch blade. She moved up behind Dominic and raised the knife.

The backup cop yelled and ran after her. Dominic turned in time and Lisa dropped the knife. Without the warning, it could have been buried in his back.

She was booked for assault with a deadly weapon, but charged with exhibiting a knife in public, a misdemeanor. She got 30 days and was out in 10.

“That’s what I mean about how cheap a cop’s life is out here,” Dominic is saying. We are stopped at the corner where the near-knifing occurred. Lisa is there, wired and doing a jittery kind of boogie.

“If she’d sold me a joint that day, she’d have done three months,” he says, watching her. “But she only tried to kill a cop. Ten days.”

He’s right, of course. It’s a lopsided system, and cops don’t get a lot of standing ovations.

This was to have been a work of modest praise for one good cop as a symbol of many others, but the actions of a dirty dozen mock the effort. Tribute is faint light in the face of calamity.

“It was a lousy thing to do,” Dominic says of the cops who beat the guy on the ground. “It was really lousy.”

But don’t worry, Dom. The Chief’s looking into it.