They’re Comfortable in the Line of Fire

A neighborhood held hostage. Armored men with automatic weapons spraying arcs of deadly bullets, 46 per second, as casually as if watering lawns with garden hoses. Officer after officer hit until 11 were down.

Like the rest of us, police and potential police recruits watched last Friday’s North Hollywood shootout with a mixture of fascination and horror. This was real life. Their own. And at any moment, such an astonishing scenario could happen to them.

What if your job were to recruit new cops? Would the horror show make it tougher?

Hardly. Every Wednesday night at the North Hollywood station, potential recruits take a preliminary test to decide whether they are qualified to start a long series of evaluations that may lead to police academy acceptance. This week, five days after the foiled-bank-robbery-turned-bloodbath, far more applicants than usual showed up--more than the room could hold.

Said Sgt. Tom Smart, in charge of recruitment for the Los Angeles Police Department, “Sure, [the shootout] was horrible, but it showed the reality of the job. It also showed that not a single officer was killed, even under those adverse conditions. And that’s only partly due to luck. The real reason our department’s statistics are so good is that we train officers properly, so they will survive.”

At Hollenbeck division in East L.A., Officer Marcela Arraiga, 22, is on her first assignment. She graduated from the Police Academy three months ago. And what troubled her most about the shootout was her family’s reaction.

“It’s hard enough for them to know I’m in a dangerous job. When they see something like that on TV, it becomes even harder,” she said. “My parents, sisters and brothers--they’re all very supportive. But I worry about them because I know they are worrying so much about me.”

Arraiga said she is not afraid. She decided long ago that the satisfaction of police work would make it worth the risk.

“But something like that makes me realize we’re outgunned and we need to be more aware, more careful, and we always need to prepare for the worst.”

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Officer Titus Tyler, 26, at the Rampart division, said the shootout only cemented his resolve to protect and serve.

“My wife is frightened; it makes her nervous [to see] something like that on TV.” But to both of them the episode was simply a reminder of something they already knew: “It’s a dangerous job. Anything can happen at any time.”

Would he consider changing his job? “No way.”

An officer jogging at the Los Angeles Police Academy, in the hills near downtown L.A., declined to give his name but was eager to give his opinion.

“It definitely upped the ante in terms of acknowledging the dangers we all face. Without having cameras on hand, the public never sees the situations we’re in. For that matter, we never see ourselves either. We just do our jobs.”

A young student at the academy admitted that watching the shootout “did make me worry. Do I really want to get into this field? Do I want to risk losing my family?

“Then I looked at the television film another time and I realized how the officers all worked together as a team. How they cared about one another. And about the people they were trying to protect. I decided to go ahead and pursue my career.”