Original subtitles

This is the city, Los Angeles California.

I work here. I carry a badge.

The story you're about to see is true.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

It was Wednesday, September 4th.

We were working the day watch out of

Robbery Division. The boss is Captain Perry.

My partner's Bill Gannon.

My name's Friday.

I was just returning from lunch.

It was 1:05 p.m.

I signed you back in. Let's go upstairs.

Upstairs?

- Public Affairs wants to see us. - What about?

Joe, you're the sergeant. You got the rank.

What that's supposed to mean?

Nobody confides in me.

We went upstairs to the 7th floor, Public Information Division.

Sergeant Dan Cooke is the man who wanted to see us.

- Afternoon, gentlemen. - Hi, Dan.

- Cooke, how is it going? - I suppose you're wondering why we asked you here.

That'll do for openers.

Ever hear of this fellow named Chuck Bligh?

No. Not me.

- The guy on TV? - The same.

I have.

We're not asking you to be a television critic, Gannon.

And by his gaze, it would be easy.

True. He's not exactly sympathetic towards the department.

Not sympathetic? He'd sell the whole force for a dime.

His producer called us and wanted to know if we could send over

a couple of working detectives to sit in on his program tonight.

You mean be on it?

That's what they have in mind.

I'm not much good at that kind of thing, Why not send somebody from Command?

Because the captain thinks, and I agree with him,

that it would be better to let him interview two guys in the field level.

Two average policemen. No harm intended.

Now, we're both talking about the same program, "Speak Your Mind"?

That's the name of it.

- You've never seen the show? - No, I haven't.

Well, he's not exactly what we'd call a friend.

Maybe you can change his mind a little.

They expect you at 7:30, Studio B. Here's the address.

- No advice? - Keep your left up.

You've seen this Chuck Bligh, huh?

Yeah, wife watches the show all the time. He's a snag one.

You sit at home and really feel sorry for the people on the panel.

What's Aileen think of the program?

She says it's interesting.

Can I help you, gentlemen?

We're from the Los Angeles Police Department. This is Bill Gannon.

- My name's Friday. - Right.

You're on the panel with Profession Tom Higgins and Jesse Chaplin.

Plenty of time. I'll get you into makeup. Tony!

Makeup? I didn't know we had to wear makeup.

Take care of these gentlemen, will you?

We'll begin taping in about 20 minutes.

Just a little powder and some eyebrow pencil.

Eyebrows? What do you think these are?

They're too light. The cameras won't pick them up. You look okay.

For 45 years, they haven't been too light.

You look great.

- That wasn't so bad, was it? - Not so bad.

He gave me the works, everything but lipstick in a beauty market.

Wait a minute.

There, I feel better.

- Tony, Chuck's cowlick. - I'm on my way.

He didn't hear me, didn't he?

Rarin' to go? Good. Now, we start with our theme

then we go to Chuck's intro then he'll introduce you.

You walk on and take a seat when you hear your name. Got it?

- I think so. - Now, you men understand

we employ a rather loose debate style of presentation.

You men are on the side with the police department.

That's good.

Now, Higgins and Chaplin are on the other side, okay?

There we go. Now, enjoy yourselves. Now, one more thing.

- What's that? - Don't be afraid. Speak your mind.

- Take a look, Joe. - At what?

- My tie, is it straight? - Well, it was.

- You got butterflies? - Have I got what?

- Butterflies in your stomach? - No, I don't.

Helen Hayes still gets 'em. Butterflies.

Fellas, could you hold it down a minute, please?

"Speak Your Mind,"

the show that every week dares to be different, dramatic and daring.

This week's guests will discuss the topic "The Police, Who Needs Them?"

Anything can happen and usually does when Chuck Bligh is around.

And now, here's that number one judge, Chuck Bligh.

Thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

I'm glad to see so many of you here in the studio tonight.

It isn't raining outside, is it?

Well, sir, tonight we're going to get to the nitty-gritty

about your friendly fuzz, your local police officers.

Okay, our first guest needs no introduction.

Professor Tom Higgins, historian, social critic, and political activist,

is one of LA's makers and shakers.

No ivory tower for this egghead.

Our next guest is Jesse Chaplin,

editor-publisher of LA's favorite underground newspaper.

He is the man responsible for "The Free Forum," the thinking man's newspaper.

Jesse!

Now, on the other side, we have invited two of the local fuzz to join us tonight.

Hey, Tom, you're a professor.

Maybe you can tell me, how do you make fuzz plural?

Is it fuzzes or fuzzi?

- Fuzz is plural. - One fuzz is a fizz.

Well, we have two of them with us tonight,

Officer Bill Gannon and Sergeant Joe Friday,

Los Angeles Police Department. Gentlemen.

Jesse, why don't we start with you?

Well, as the topic tonight is "The Fuzz, Who Needs Them?"

Let me begin by saying not me... or is not I?

- It's neither of us. - Right.

As far as I'm concerned,

you might as well ask, who needed the Gestapo?

And my answer to that would be the establishment.

See, it's the establishment in every fascist state that needs the police.

It's not the people.

The establishment needs the goon squads with the mace

and the clubs and the guns and the teargas

to preserve the evils of the status quo.

You ask me who needs them and I say it's not the black people,

it's not the Mexican Americans, and it's not the students.

They're just trying to make a new and better world.

Who needs them are the fascists,

the establishment fat cats who have been rapping on us

and sucking our blood for thousands of years

and are now getting a little uptight because we, the people,

are getting sick and tired of it.

A tough act to follow. Care to try, Sergeant Friday?

Mr. Chaplin, I'm not certain who or what this establishment is

that you keep talking about.

If you're talking about the people who hire us and pay our salaries

or you're talking about yourself

and Professor Higgins there and Mr. Bligh,

you're talking about the taxpayers of Los Angeles.

You really think that when we get a call about a robbery

or a killing, the first thing we do is to check out the victim's bank balance?

Something like that.

And we have a great many wealthy people in LA.

Last year, the department worked on 10,000 robberies,

60,000 burglaries,

1,400 rapes, 281 murders,

26,000 car thefts.

I don't happen to agree entirely with the remarks

of my good friend on my right.

Geographically speaking.

I'm less concerned with the police as a so-called law enforcement agency

than as a social arbiter.

I think if they stick to playing cops and robbers, it would be okay.

Now, if someone swipes my car, sure, I want it back,

and it's your job to find it for me.

But if I'm demonstrating against the president or against some company

that's making blood money from the production of war material,

I don't want some goon whom I as a taxpayer

am supporting to break my head or shoot me.

I've yet to meet a cop who wasn't a reactionary. Whose attitude wasn't,

"I've got mine, buster, and I couldn't care less if you starve."

They like their guns and badges.

They like the power it gives them.

It's people they don't like.

Their idea of social progress is a bigger pension plan

for themselves.

Gentlemen...

Frankly, I wish we could stick to cops and robbers.

It's hard work, but at least the only enemies you make are the criminals,

not the very people you're paid to protect.

We're not supposed to be social arbiters.

We're policemen.

If the president of the United States visits Los Angeles,

it's our job to protect him because he is the president.

Now, if you want a parade, all you need is a permit from the Police Commission.

We'll be there not only to protect his life

but to protect you against people who might violently disagree

with your point of view.

Now as a citizen, you have the right to demonstrate,

but you have no right to break the law and interfere

with the rights of others in so doing, and that includes the president.

Break whose law?

The establishment's.

Property rights are all they're concerned about,

not human rights, and the president now,

if we don't demonstrate, how do you suggest we reach him?

Like most of us, you might try the ballot box.

You can't pick and choose the laws you'll obey

and say this one I will and this one I won't.

A democracy can't exist under those terms and conditions, can it?

The same book of laws that gives you the right to assemble

and demonstrate also gives others protection of life

and property if your demonstrations get out of hand.

It's always in the vested interests of the rich.

Well, then how would you take it if somebody who

didn't like your newspaper started picketing you?

That's their right, my friend.

How would you like it if they started marching through your offices

and laid down in the doorway of your bathroom?

Would you still think that's their right?

I think we'd all agree that you're both exceptions

to the general run of policemen, but then you're detectives.

What about the boys in the black and white patrol cars?

Are they concerned with anything but busting heads?

Aren't they the boys with the nightsticks?

You men are on an entirely different level, a much higher one.

That's not quite true.

Hold that thought, Sergeant.

We'll be right back after this brief word from our benevolent sponsor.

Clear.

You're doing fine, boys.

I'd like to answer that question.

All those boys in the black and whites are hardly made

of the stuff as you and Officer Gannon, right?

Wrong. They're made of exactly the same stuff.

Everybody on the job from the chief on down starts the same way

on those black and whites, and everybody takes civil service exams for promotion.

- I didn't know that. - Here you go, Chuck.

Thank you, Monty. How is it going?

Good, fine. Good show. Stand by.

The good sergeant was just making a point,

but unfortunately, we don't have time to go into it because now,

we come to this section of our program where you the people, the jury

get a chance to speak your mind.

Okay, who wants the first crack at cross-examining our witnesses?

My name' s Harry Wilson and I'd like to direct my question

to one or both of the police officers.

I want to know why we need gun laws.

It's my constitutional right as an American citizen to own a pistol,

and if I got the cash to pay for it, it's nobody's business but mine if I buy one.

Tell me, sir, why do you want to own a gun?

To protect my home and family.

I don't see why I, an American taxpayer and a veteran,

should have to run around registering a gun. Crooks don't.

Well frankly, sir, I wish I didn't have to carry one, but I do.

It's part of my job.

Protecting my home is my job.

Do you have any children?

You bet I do... Three boys... 5, 7, and 10.

Well, where are you gonna hide a gun and be certain that your boys won't find it?

If you have the time to get to your gun, you

have the time to get to a phone and call us.

All right, look at it this way.

We register all our guns.

A foreign country invades us.

Same thing will happen here as it has in country after country.

The invading army just goes to the files

and then goes around confiscating all the weapons.

We'll be left defenseless.

I want to protect my country.

You really believe that might happen?

You bet I do. Like I said, it's happened before in other parts of the world.

If that ever comes to pass here and there's nuclear age,

I doubt if many of us would be around for any weapon collecting, will we?

In other words, you men are in favor of gun registration?

No, sir, we didn't say that.

It's not our position as civil servants to state any preference.

Gun registration and control, like all other laws and regulations,

is a matter for the people to decide.

And we work for the people. Whatever they decide we'll enforce.

And what's your name?

My name's John Dietz and what I want to know is why smoking pot is illegal

but drinking booze ain't?

And to whom do you address that question, John?

To Jesse Chaplin.

It's because society is corrupt

and because things are run strictly

for the profit of the establishment

and enforced by the hypocrites in uniform. That's why.

Sergeant.

Society puts restrictions on drinking.

Get drunk and you get arrested.

Even bartenders don't want you to go away drunk.

There's too much chance you won't live to come back.

Besides, nobody likes to be around a drunk, not even another drunk.

But with marijuana, the whole purpose is to

get so high you don't know who or what you are.

There's no such thing as a quickie or one to be sociable,

and in pot smoking circles, if you're not flying you're a square,

and flying means you don't know where you are or what you're doing.

Son, no matter how you slice that, that's dangerous.

What about LSD? You police are against that too.

Even Aldous Huxley dug acid.

Aldous Huxley was a great writer who took

LSD and wrote of his psychedelic experiences.

I've read Huxley.

A cop who reads.

That's good, sergeant. Good for you.

Aldous Huxley experimented with LSD under a doctor's supervision

and the total amount of LSD he took in all of his experiments

amounted to less than most kids take for a single trip.

And I've heard an awful lot of propaganda about the way the right kind of sugar cube

can expand your mind.

Propaganda?

Son, if you want to expand your mind, pay a visit to your public library.

If there's a full moon, you might even find a cop there.

You try the library, boy.

You'll discover the place is full of magical cubes.

They call them books.

On that literary note, we'll take time out to pay the light bill.

My name is Charlie Varco.

Before, you were talking about respecting all the laws.

What about the bad laws?

Thoreau said that one man could be a majority if he was in the right.

Does the man of conscience have the obligation to disobey outmoded laws?

Oh, you bet your booties he does.

He has the obligation and the duty to his country.

If he doesn't, every good man from Jesus Christ on has been all wet.

If you break the law, you must stand trial.

Then it's up to your peers to judge your crime.

It's their 12 consciences against yours.

Now, if you don't like a law, you can try to persuade your congressmen

to help change it or you can join together

and demonstrate that your conscience isn't the only one opposed to the law.

In a democracy, the minority has the right to convince the majority

that laws should be changed, but that does not give the minority the right

to ignore the laws that exist and there cannot be a majority of one.

A killer's conscience tells him it's okay to murder.

What happens to your majority of one man?

Without laws and the people to enforce them, you've got anarchy, haven't you?

The law of the jungle.

An awful lot of people have bled and died for an idea called democracy,

an idea that people are better than animals

and that a civilized nation is better than a jungle.

A lot of people are still fighting and dying for that belief.

A lot of them wear badges because they believe in those American ideals.

My name is Mondo Mabamba.

I'm the president of the Black Widow Party

and I'm here to tell you honkies where you can put all that bull about democracy.

You're all a bunch of Nazis, only you don't dress as sharp.

Not nearly as sharp, man.

You boys drive through Watts

and all you want to do is catch one of us alone

so you can work us over or blow our heads off.

You tell us about that, Mr. Charlie, and tell us good 'cause I've been there, man.

I've been there.

I'm not here to say that race relations have always been perfect on either side,

but things are improving.

The chief of police is seeing to that and that's our number one priority.

But as for police brutality, that's another story.

We try to prevent it in the first place by not hiring brutal men.

Only one out of 25 who applies for a job in the department ever makes it.

We have three-man panels composed of one sergeant and two civilians

who pass on every man who wants to go to the academy.

One blackball and that man is out.

Occasionally, a bad apple slips through or a good apple turns bad.

Well, my friend, you don't want him on the job

and the department doesn't want him either.

One trigger-happy cop making headlines

is all it takes to give all police officers a black eye.

I've been on the job 12 years,

and in that time I've drawn my gun eight times

and I've fired it twice, and that's about average.

There are great many officers who have never fired their revolver.

The only place I've ever fired mine is on the police pistol range.

I wonder how many of you know there's a shooting board.

It's made up of division chiefs.

Now, if any police officer fires his gun even if he misses,

he has to make a report to that board.

And if he doesn't have a good reason for dropping the hammer, he's in big trouble.

What about that 15-year-old boy who was shot down last week

by one of you brave boys in blue?

Tell us about him. Will you do that, man?

That 15-year-old was sniping at passersby from a rooftop.

He wounded six people, one of them seriously before the officer got there.

The officer was a better shot.

You can be shot just as dead by a 15-year-old as by his grandfather.

Oh, yeah?

Men, answer me this.

Now, one of you blue cats catch it and you get all excited.

You really drop everything to go after a cop killer, don't you?

You bet we do, but not just because he killed a friend of ours.

Now, you figure it. If a man shoots down an armed officer,

do you think he'd hesitate to shoot down an unarmed citizen?

Okay, answer me this.

Why is it you guys always in patrol cars or sitting on cycles?

Why don't you boys walk a beat like the force back East?

You don't mind protecting us.

You just don't want to have to mingle with us, is that the idea?

This is a city on wheels

so we have a police department on wheels.

We have to cover 254 square miles,

and we've got only 5,700 men to cover them, 5,700.

New York has 28,000 policemen.

Chicago has 12,000.

As it is, the department is trying to arrange for more officers to walk a beat.

But as Bill pointed out,

it's not always practical in an area as large as Los Angeles.

We have to offer as much protection to as many as we can.

I want to know why the Los Angeles Police Department

is prejudiced against Mexican Americans.

How do you figure?

I applied for a job on the force and I was turned down.

Well, I can assure you it wasn't because you're a Mexican American.

Just offhand, I'd guess you were rejected because of the height requirements.

Our department requires a 5'8" minimum.

Listen, fella. I can take care of myself.

I know judo. What's height got to do with it?

It's the department's experience that a taller man

is less likely to have to take care of himself as you put it.

Studies have proven that the injury rate is much greater for shorter policemen.

There is now a policy change being discussed

that would drop the minimum height requirement to 5'7".

What good does that do me? I'm 5'4".

What can I do?

Be happy you never grew those three inches.

My name's Diane Newcombe.

I just want to say that I'm all for our police department.

I think they do a good job.

And how long has your husband been on the force, ma'am?

My husband works at a supermarket and the police have prevented two holdups

at his store in the past three weeks.

Very commendable.

Well, I for one am all for them.

Where do you think we'd be without a police force?

Better off, my dear.

As you may have noticed, Sergeant, our audience is somewhat partial.

Is that so? It doesn't show.

It's good to see you boys have a sense of humor.

All right, we're reaching the end of our time, gentlemen.

Tom, why don't you sum up your thoughts in about 15 seconds?

Well, I think the officers have made some good points.

They've defended the system about as well as they could,

but the system is actually indefensible.

The system promises equal justice for all.

But for the poor, the black people,

the Mexican American, that promise is a lie.

For the rich, the police are a protective agency,

and for the poor, they're professional harassers.

I don't like the system and I don't like the sort of people

who wear guns and badges

and who enforce that system's rules like so many machines.

Cops are all right,

but I wouldn't want my sister to marry one.

Sergeant, 15 seconds.

We're not machines.

If we were, maybe we'd never make mistakes.

We'd never overreact, never make errors in judgment.

Unfortunately, we're human beings, not computers.

Now, the book tells us to use the force necessary to apprehend the suspect.

How much force is necessary?

No computer can make that decision when you're

chasing an armed suspect down a dark alley.

A man has to make that decision and he has to make it fast.

Sometimes he doesn't use enough and he gets himself killed.

I usually try to stay in the middle on this

show, but I can't resist this one, Sergeant.

A man with a gun has no business making mistakes.

- Amen. - Amen.

We try not to, but we all make mistakes.

Maybe it's only a matter of putting the carbon paper in backwards in the typewriter

or burning the toast or missing a business appointment.

You make that kind of a mistake and you say,

"Well, nobody's perfect. I'm only human."

But a police officer's mistakes are a matter of life and death

and his decisions are made in a split second.

Give him some credit for having the guts to make those decisions.

His job and his life are riding on each one of them.

And keep in mind, he is not asking for your applause.

He knows you reserve that for ball players and movie stars.

He's only a guy doing his job,

and all he'd really like is a little common courtesy and some respect.

Respect?

That's right.

We know that you respect those American boys

who go across the world to protect us from enemies 8,000 miles away.

Is a police officer less entitled because he's risking his neck

to protect you from enemies in your own hometown?

I respect them just about as much.

Wouldn't it be nice if that were the alternative?