Author Joseph Wambaugh recently shared some thoughts with POLICE magazine in an interview published in the October 2007 issue. Here, he reveals the inspiration for Spermwhale Whalen, and gives his thoughts about the controversial show, "The Shield."

POLICE: Your affection for the Spermwhale Whalens, Cruz Segovias, and the Oracles of law enforcement is obvious. Are there any mentoring sergeants or training officers that resonated with you?

WAMBAUGH: I think there are composites of different guys. Well, there was one guy that I supervised when I was a rookie sergeant at Newton Street. I took portions of his unbelievable life and I grafted it onto the character that became Spermwhale Whalen in "The Choirboys." Some people who read "The Choirboys" asked, "Isn't this guy over the top? I mean he's an Air Force Reserve pilot, he flies combat missions to Vietnam, I mean c'mon, while he's still a full-time cop at Wilshire Division."

While at Newton Street, I supervised this guy who would string his nine days a month together—the captain allowed this—so he would work 21 days straight and take nine days off together. And then he'd go up to Edwards Air Force Base and he'd fly a huge Globemaster airplane; you could put a tank in the damn thing. He'd fly the Globemaster to Vietnam on combat pay and then come back to Newton Street at the end of the nine days and go to work. He was just a basic police officer rank; he never did make sergeant. He wasn't the type to make sergeant, yet he was a major in the Air Force Reserve. He'd flown in WWII, he flew in Korea, and while he was a cop he flew in Vietnam.

So I grafted all that onto the character of Spermwhale and he'd say stuff at roll call when guys came back from days off and cops would say, "Where'd you go? I took the family to Disneyland or I went to the Colorado River," that sort of thing, and they'd say to him, "Where did you go?" "Oh, Danang is all." People ask me, "Did he have a funny name like Spermwhale Whalen?" I said, "Oh no, he had a very ordinary name. It was Roxie Rupe." When he died, his wife wrote me a letter and said Roxie was always proud to tell everyone that he was Spermwhale Whalen.

I defended him at a trial board. Most of the guys at Newton Street thought I was an easy sergeant. I just wanted to be a detective, so I could get through my patrol probation as a sergeant and then get a job as a detective. So I would never burn anybody and I was pretty easy. So a couple of guys asked me to defend them at a trial board when they got in trouble. This was a famous story at the time. It went all over the CHP teletype system that they had at that time. One night, Roxie Rupe was one his way home from Newton Street and he stopped at one of the local bars and had eight or 10. He was on a freeway and some guy almost sideswipes him—at least that's the way Roxie told it to me. They start flipping each other off and a little road rage ensues.

They pull off the freeway at the center divider, and both jump out of the car. Once again, this is Roxie's story to me, which I presented to the trial board. The guy was advancing on him in a hostile manner and Roxie just let one fly and clipped the guy right in the button, knocked the guy over the center divider and hung him there. The guy was out cold with one punch, out cold. Somebody driving by saw this ruckus going on, pulled off, made a phone call on a public phone, CHP was on it so fast, Roxie said he couldn't believe it. Of course, Roxie was so drunk that time didn't have the same sequential meaning to him.

Two CHP units pull up, both one-man cars. By then the guy over the center barrier is reviving. One Chippie is talking to him, one takes Roxie and is talking to him. The Chippie that is talking to Roxie goes over to the other one—by now the two fighters were back in their cars—and he said, "You ain't gonna believe this, my guy's an LAPD cop." The other Chippie says, "So is mine."

They told this from the Mexican border all the way to Oregon; this was on the teletype the next day everyone is talking about it. The other guy happened to be a patrol sergeant; he was drunk, too. So at the trial board, the whole defense was that the other guy was a sergeant and he should have known better. The trial board could hardly keep a straight face as I was presenting the evidence.

Roxie looked like Popeye; he had big forearms. He's sitting there trying to look innocent at the trial board. It was hysterical. I think I got him off with five days or something like that and the other guy got 30 days.

POLICE: Your cops were flawed human beings, sometimes deeply so, but they do by and large operate by their own code. What do you think about the fact that pretty much most of today's cop cultural reference points are a bunch of amoral, nihilistic, hedonistic individuals?

WAMBAUGH: You're talking about "The Shield," probably. When I first saw The "Shield," I thought, well, it's appropriate that they place the badge on the right side of the chest. At least in the early episodes of "The Shield" that I saw—presumably they're still doing it—they wore the badge on the right unlike any other law enforcement agency on the planet. And I thought that was the producer saying, "Hey, this is our world. This is our police department. We're not saying this is authentic." I took that as a symbolic statement and I thought, OK, all right, that's yours.

I prefer to watch police stories that are authentic, that do have their basis in truth and fact and authenticity. So I don't think I'm going to be liking this show very much. And sure enough, as I watch "The Shield," it takes place in a generic police force unnamed somewhere in Southern California where not only is there no criminal law that is sanctioning these cops and reigning them in, there's no civil law.

Apparently, there are no lawyers in a community that is being policed by the cops in "The Shield."

As you know, in real life we've got lawyers up our ass. They're like Starbucks cups; they're littering the environment, they're everywhere. So the whole basis of the show is impossible in that respect. There's no civil law in addition to criminal law, so these cops can do anything they want. Nobody ever sues them, sues the department.

But I thought when they put the badge on the right side, they're sort of flipping the bird, saying, "Hey, this is our police force. We'll do what we want."

I'm sure you've heard about this one. It's burning up the Net today. But I just had to comment on it.

Massachusetts State Police arrested a 19-year-old MIT student earlier this morning and charged her with disturbing the peace and possessing a hoax device. Here's what Star Simpson reportedly decided was an artistic masterpiece that she had to share with the world.

According to official reports, she went to Logan Airport—departure point for two of the 9/11 flights—wearing a black hooded sweatshirt accessorized with a flashing circuit board attached by visible wires to some Play-Doh, which probably looked an awful lot like C-4.

State Police Maj. Scott Pare told a gathering of reporters that Simpson saw the bomb rig as art. "She was proud of the art and she wanted to display it," he said.

Simpson was stopped outside Terminal C when her "suicide bomber" rig caught the eye of an information booth staffer who called the cops.

A group of State Police troopers, some armed with subguns, confronted her on a traffic island outside of the terminal.

"She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands, and not to make any movement," Pare said at the press conference. "Had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force."

Major, I'm glad you didn't have to shoot this girl. But um…if she had been a suicide bomber, then your agency's protocol would have just resulted in a lot of severed limbs, shrapnel wounds, flail chests, burning cars, shattered glass, and other really colorful "art."

To be fair, your officers did a good job of stopping her outside of the terminal.

But their actions afterward show how ill prepared we are as a nation to counter the waves of suicide bombers that are sure to be detonating soon at movie theaters, restaurants, grocery stores, and shopping malls near you.

Your protocol begs the question, What would your officers have done if she had made a move? You say they "might" have used deadly force. I hope you really mean that they would have.

And BTW, if she had been a real suicide bomber, commands of "Don't move!" won't work. By the time an officer says "don't," he and everyone nearby will be dead or dying.

Like I said, I'm glad your men didn't have to kill this young woman. It sounds like she did a really stupid thing but did so without malice.

But anyone who thinks that a suicide bomber costume is appropriate apparel for a trip to the airport, should think again. After the first Palestinian-style suicide bomber hits in America, someone wearing "bomb" components for art had better plan on exiting this world as a Jackson Pollock splash of brains and blood on a nearby wall because our nation's cops will have to be strong enough and mean enough to double-tap first, ask questions later.

If that's not enough to darken your dreams, ladies and gentlemen, consider this: Our "artiste" reportedly rode the subway to Logan. It's unknown if she wore her "bomb" on the way. But if she did, that speaks volumes about how vulnerable we are to jihadists who want to meet Allah after being blown to pieces by their own hand.

Have a good weekend.

Before we get started, here’s the disclaimer. The following is a really gross story of cops finding a dead body in Germany. You have been warned. So don't complain to me.

OK, I had to comment on this one. I know it has nothing to do with American law enforcement. But it’s a great story, it does involve police action, and, besides, I do this blog in my spare time—so if a story hooks me, it’s going to be grist for this mill.

Here’s the deal. It seems that the friendly neighborhood Polizei were recently summoned to an apartment in Dortmund. They were summoned by the call that many cops worldwide have come to dread: “Neighbors report foul smell.”

Upon opening the door, they discovered the body of Mark Voegel, 30. And well, Mark had looked better.

You see, Mark collected really deadly critters. His favorite pet was a black widow spider named Bettina. Unfortunately for Mark, Bettina did not feel the same way about him. Or maybe she did. After all, black widows devour their loved ones.

And as near as the German authorities can tell, that’s exactly what Bettina did. Well, at least she got in the first bite. Many people get bitten by black widows and survive the experience, most none the worst for wear. For some reason, Bettina’s venom put Mark down for the count.
Which is when the buffet opened up for his exotic menagerie. Mark had turned his flat (as they say in Europe) into a kind of half-assed zoo exhibit that would only be frequented by people who literally want to come face to face with creepy crawlies. He had spiders, snakes, lizards, insects, etc.—and many of them roamed free in his home.

Imagine walking in on this scene as described by the British newspaper The Sun:

A police spokesman said: “It was like a horror movie. His corpse was over the sofa.

“Giant webs draped him, spiders were all over him. They were coming out of his nose and his mouth.

“There was everything there one could imagine in the world of reptiles.

“Larger pieces of flesh torn off by the lizards were scooped up and taken back to the webs of tarantulas and other bird-eating spiders.”

Police described Voegel’s home as a cross between a botanical garden and the butterfly breeding ground in the serial killer movie “The Silence Of The Lambs.”

One tarantula had built a nest the size of a swallow’s in a corner of the ceiling.

Voegel also had a boa constrictor and several poisonous frogs from South America.

Spider expert and animal cruelty officer Gabi Bayer said he kept creatures “that should never be allowed in a private home”.

She said: “He had spiders so aggressive they are the equivalent of a pit-bull in the animal world.”

Voegel is thought to have been dead for between seven and 14 days.

A post-mortem will be carried out in the next few days. But authorities believe Bettina alone was responsible for Voegel’s death.

Two thoughts on this:

Our buddy Mark deserves a Darwin Award for letting deadly creatures roam free in his home. What you want to bet he belonged to PETA. Only somebody who truly believed there is no such thing as a bad animal would live like this.

The second thought—and let’s get serious for a moment. It is often your job to go in some weirdo’s house and check on his welfare. This story illustrates why you need to know what said weirdo has in his house before going through the door. Talk to the neighbors who called you out before you enter said weirdo’s home because worldwide the weirdos are getting weirder.

Veteran police officer, police trainer, and combat physiology researcher Bruce Siddle delivered a powerful keynote address at TREXPO East Wednesday.

Siddle, author of "Sharpening the Warrior's Edge, argued that many warriors fail in their mission and suffer calamity because they do not understand how combat stress and fear affect their performance. He also said that police trainers who do not have a grasp of the human element of combat and the physiological stress that it places on the body often set up their officers for failure.

One of the least understood aspects of combat, according to Siddle, is the nutrition required for optimal performance. He said it’s important for officers to understand that what they put into their bodies before going on duty and during their shifts can determine the outcome of a fight.
Siddle explained the need for both protein and carbohydrates in an officer’s diet. He also discussed the role of both slow-burning carbs (fruits and grains) and fast-burning carbs (chocolate and other sweets) in officer performance. He said that officers who were part of a raid team or other unit anticipating immediate combat would be well advised to consume energy bars or even Snickers candy bars to give themselves a 10- to 20-minute spike of energy.

Dehydration can also affect officer performance under fire. “Even at one-percent dehydration, you lose much of your fine and complex motor skills,” Siddle said, urging officers to drink water throughout the day.

Maintaining proper nutrition and hydration can help reduce the influence of fear on the body, Siddle says. “Fatigue leads to fear, and fear leads to the triggering of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS),” he explained. 

The SNS—often called the “fight or flight” circuit—causes the heart to race, blood pressure to rise, and other physiological reactions intended to make a person fast, quick, and strong. However, these reactions are not always beneficial to a warrior and the body cannot maintain this state for very long.

Siddle explained the SNS response as the way you would feel if you were “walking through the woods, turned a corner, and came face to face with a grizzly bear. The SNS is the startle reflex that you experience in a life and death situation,” he explained.

The SNS has a variety of effects on a police officer in combat. For example, an officer experiencing an SNS response cannot focus on the front sights of his or her pistol. This is why Siddle recommends that officers train to respond with aimed fire and with combat point shooting. “If you have time and distance, then there is no SNS response and no startle,” Siddle said, explaining that both aimed fire and point shooting have their place.

Siddle also explained that the SNS loop is the reason that some warriors become hypervigilant to the point of not being able to function in combat. He used two examples to explain what he meant. In one, a police officer under fire performed three tactical reloads of his magazines without firing a shot. In the other, Civil War soldiers loaded multiple rounds down the barrels of their muzzle-loaders and the rifles were found on the ground after the battle unfired. One rifle recovered at Gettysburg was still loaded with more than 20 rounds.

As Siddle explained, however, the SNS response is only one part of being startled in combat. The body at rest experiences a balance of influences from the SNS and the PNS, the parasympathetic nervous system. This balance is called homeostasis. Once the individual is no longer in abject fear of death or major injury, or is wounded, or just aerobically exhausted, the SNS reaction leads to what’s called a PNS backlash. A warrior experiencing this reaction may feel dizzy as his or her blood pressure drops rapidly and he or she will have a hard time functioning. This reaction is also one of the factors in critical incident malfunction.

Siddle recommends that if an officer experiences a PNS backlash that he or she should lay horizontal, eat some candy or other fast-acting carbs, and follow it up with some protein. Officers in this state should not be questioned or asked to write reports until they have had some proper nutrition, Siddle says. “Without the proper fuel, they will only know part of the facts not all of the facts,” he explained, adding that critical incident amnesia caused by the release of cortisol in the brain may prevent the officer from ever remembering all of the details of what happened.

According to Siddle, the best way to reduce the chance of being startled in combat and experiencing an SNS response is to have the mindset of a predator, meaning a natural predator like a tiger. “The tiger is mission-driven, it exhibits quiet confidence, it is highly aware of its situation at all times, and it acts with controlled aggression.” He went on to explain that these attributes can make a warrior less likely to be startled by sudden combat. For example, being situationally aware increases the time and distance between you and the threat, making it easier for you to effectively respond and minimizing fear.

Closing his presentation, Siddle said it was critical for police trainers to take a more holistic approach to combat training. “We need to look at all of the intangibles of human response and bring them together in our training.” He also argued for combining fitness, use-of-force training, close-quarter combat training, and defensive tactics training into one discipline that is based on research into the physiological reaction of warriors to combat. “We need to avoid the flavor of the month,” he added. “The flavor of the month kills and advanced techniques are really just the basics mastered.”

He also had a final message for the TREXPO East audience: “I encourage you to take your profession seriously and to study combat human factors. Little things make a big difference in combat,” he said as he left the stage to enthusiastic applause.

The conference portion of the TREXPO East (www.TREXPO.com) conference and trade show kicked off yesterday in Chantilly, Va., with an exciting schedule of hands-on classes and informative seminars.

Tac Med
Continuing a program that was inaugurated at TREXPO West back in March, this year’s TREXPO East included a Tactical Medical conference track. As at TREXPO West, the Tac Med program was a huge success, attracting standing room only crowds.

One of the highlights of the Tac Med conference was a two-hour-long presentation on wound ballistics by trauma surgeon Dr. Sydney Vail. Using data that he has gathered from autopsies and from his experience with gunshot patients who survived, Vail revealed the limitations of traditional handgun and rifle ammo. He also argued that autopsy data is the only accurate measure of bullet performance for police duty ammo. Vail says that police should consider carrying extreme high-velocity ammo such as LeMas http://www.lemasltd.com/ pistol rounds in their duty weapons.

Hands On
Attendees who signed up for the Close-Quarter Combatives class taught by the Police Combative Training Academy were probably a little disappointed when they learned that master instructor Hans Marrero was unable to make it to TREXPO East. They soon learned that they didn’t need to be. The class was in good hands, as Marrero’s long-time training partner and veteran SWAT officer Louis Marquez and newcomer David James took over.

TREXPO attendees may have been unfamiliar with James, but they were clearly impressed once the class began. Ranked 20th in “street self-defense” by Black Belt magazine, James is a 10th-degree black belt in Vee-Arnis-Jitsu and a master of edged-weapon offense and defense. Students at the TREXPO class were impressed with the fact that James’ techniques are easily recalled in combat situations and can be learned by officers who are not in tip-top athletic shape. One told me that the techniques are “great for an older officer like me because they don’t require any fine motor skills.”

Applied Technology
If you’re confused at all about how to evaluate night vision equipment or how such equipment may be of use to you in your day-to-day law enforcement operations, then you should have been at TREXPO East today for David Narkevicius’ night vision class. The four-hour class was an excellent introductory course on night vision equipment and each attendee got some hands-on time with products from ITT, Night Optics, NVS, and Sensor Tech.

Prison Gangs on the Streets
PoliceMag.com columnist Richard Valdemar once again brought his encyclopedic knowledge of Southern California gangs to TREXPO East. In a captivating four-hour class, Valdemar, a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sergeant and a world-renown expert on Hispanic gang culture, traced the roots of growing Hispanic gangs nationwide, including the notorious Mara Salvatrucha 13, to the Mexican Mafia. The class also included valuable information on Nuestra Familia-affiliated gangs, African American gangs affiliated with the Black Guerilla Family such as the Crips and Bloods, and white gangs affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood. Valdemar explained how the four primary California prison gangs control street and prison gang activity nationwide.

On July 27, Phoenix police officer George Cortez, Jr. was shot in the eye and killed after being distracted while handcuffing a suspect. 

On August 13, Broward County Sheriff's detective Maury Hernandez was also shot in the head. His shooter explained the assault by saying that he wanted to avoid going to jail so that he could see the birth of his child—the next in a doubtless line of rewarding progeny.

Then while Hernandez was fighting for his life on a ventilator, a fellow Broward County deputy, Sgt. Chris Reyka, was shot in the head and killed while running vehicle tags in a parking lot. His killer remains at large as of this writing.

Take note, the bad guys have realized that shooting us center mass is likely to have little effect because of our body armor. Accordingly, they are head hunting.

In the Hernandez case, the suspect, David Maldonado, was particularly known for his head shot proficiency, establishing tight patterns on paper targets at a local firing range.

As San Francisco Prosecutor Harold Jewett noted during the trial of yet another cop killer earlier this month, "When you shoot at someone's head, you're intending to kill them."

What can you and your agencies do to deal with this growing threat?

The first thing is to recognize that while cops are not getting killed with the frequency that they were in the early 1970s, it's not been for lack of effort. Suspects have continued to take the fight to us, attacking officers in every manner ranging from spontaneous acts of violence, to deliberate and calculated ambushes.

But the succeeding three decades have seen three big changes that have made it more likely for us to survive an attack: The first is the practice of employing improved tactics (some of which have been taught to a broader audience via television shows such as "COPS"); the second is the emergence of the bulletproof vest, and the third is improved emergency medical treatment.

Body armor and advanced medical treatment has saved the lives of thousands of assaulted officers.

The body armor saves have also led to publicity, which has two results: It has convinced cops to wear their vests and it has informed the violent criminal community that cops are wearing vests. Criminals are adaptive, so their aim has veered north from center mass.

And just as they have adapted, perhaps we should further adapt, as well.

What are our options?

Well, it's worth noting that each of the officers shot were working alone at the time of their shooting. While two-man cars have incurred similar losses, it isn't exactly counter-intuitive to consider the possibility that two-man cars are inherently safer. At least they offer a better chance for officers to get the upper hand on suspects. It'd be nice if more agencies deployed two-man patrol cars.

But even if more agencies were able to pony up the money for two-man patrols, the fact remains that one-man cars are and will continue to be a part of policing. And within them are cops who know full-well the risk of such solitary endeavor, but nonetheless engage in proactive police work.

Sgt. Reyka was such a man, having been recently honored as Officer of the Month for making a GTA arrest and for identifying and arresting burglary suspects in separate incidents.

Simply put, there are some cops who go above and beyond, and routinely place themselves in harm's way, however officer safety conscious they might otherwise be.

It's not as though law enforcement is particularly apathetic for its officers' safety. We send them to training, have them fire numerous rounds down range, and familiarize them with a variety of shooting drills.

But while it's great for officers to practice double-tapping at the range, it may prove for naught if the suspect gets a lucky first shot at the officer's head.

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of solutions to this problem. Because officers must react to the violent action or perceived violent intent of a subject before firing, the bad guys have ample opportunity to make the first move.

One possible solution might be to equip patrol officers with ballistic helmets. But I'm not sure that this would have much benefit.

Most ballistic helmets I've seen offer low caliber protection against a rear assault or side assault, but the officer's face is open and vulnerable.

Law enforcement officials might consider consulting with private industry as well as the scientific community (e.g., MIT, Cal Tech, and other engineering institutions) and ask them to create protection for the heads of officers. Given evolving technology and chemical compositions, I'm sure that some user-friendly ballistic head gear is not only viable, but at least for some cops—given the areas they're working in—necessary.

True, even if some company developed excellent head protection for patrol officers, some officers would abstain from wearing it, just as some cops refuse to this day to wear ballistic vests. But shouldn't they at least be able to make that decision on their own, as opposed to having their heads relegated to target duty in the meantime?

Before our streets increasingly come to resemble outtakes from "The Departed," it's time for administrators to wrap their minds around something that can wrap around the minds of their officers.

Of course, the resulting design of such helmets may end up looking intimidating. But personally, I think an intimidating helmet might be just what we need. Maybe it'll cause some trigger-happy bastard to think twice before taking a shot at a cop.

Unfortunately, the same bureaucrats that would install rainbow stickers in patrol car windows and offer up pastel colors on their frames would probably shoot down the idea because it makes the cops look too much like the military. Of course, these folks would not even consider the threat that cops face from head shots before they reject the helmets. You see, they've never worked patrol.