The Law Enforcement Officer Thread

Not an insider but the basics is that LAPD police the City of Los Angeles while LASO police Los Angeles County. It just so happens that the city of LA is the only thing of real interest in the county of LA.

The fact that the page you linked has a folder for Batman made me spend a good 30 seconds or so laughing.

Well, being vengeance and the night, Batman fulfills an important role in American Law Enforcement.

"In the Criminal Justice System the people are represented by three separate, yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders. And the goddam Batman. These are their stories."

Doink Doink

LASO has jurisdiction over all of LA County, which is a huge metropolitan area. LASO is the primary means of Law Enforcement in the smaller towns and rural areas on the outskirts, but they also are in charge of the county jails for long term holding of suspects, including for the LAPD. LAPD doesn't have jails, they go to LASO after they are booked and held in temporary containment areas.

LASO is actually a good deal more dangerous work as well, as in the areas they work backup is much more scarce. Their main job is either policing the rural areas in small towns with no police force, or adding an extra layer of police to small municipalities that have their own small police force. Malibu, for instance, has its own actual police force which is small, but there is also a significant LASO force that patrols the area, partly because of all the mountains and isolated areas around Malibu. There is also the highway patrol overlap because of the Pacific Coast Highway, which they run radar on(and do fuck all else).

Think of it this way, LAPD does the most urbanized and populated areas in LA County(not just the city of Los Angeles) When the concrete jungle starts to recede and urbanization goes down a notch, LASO steps in as the primary LE authority.

As for nothing of note being in LA County besides LA, the city of LA sucks, I'll take the outskirts of the county any day where you can find smaller suburbanite cities that aren't filled with junkies, criminals, tourists, and transients.

EDIT: Oh, for the Malibu example, once you go far enough down the PCH through Malibu, you eventually butt right up into Santa Monica, you go from oceanside highway with cliffside homes and scenery, straight into urban metropolitan areas. Soon as you hit the junction between going right towards the Santa Monica Pier from the freeway or the left where the exit for Ocean comes up and you push straight into Venice and Culver City, LAPD is everywhere you look.

edited 17th Dec '13 8:39:52 AM by Barkey

A question for a story I am working on.

The main character can use Sherlock Scan, and use it to figure out that someone he met is a drug addict with a possible gambling habbits and has a lot of debt.

What are some details that might reveal these kinds of information?

edited 28th Dec '13 10:28:53 PM by dRoy

Depends on what kind of drug they were using and how they were taking it.

Tell me what they were taking and their gender and I can help you better.

Crack/heroine, both snorting and intravenous. Gender male.

Drug abuse obviously has some pretty blatant symptoms. Not too sure what you can do to show gambling however. Short of having a lottery ticket sticking out of his shirt pocket.

edited 28th Dec '13 10:40:07 PM by joeyjojo

He could be wearing a T-shirt from a local casino.

Heroin leaves purple track marks near the injection sites after about 1-2 years depending on how vigorous the use and the skin color of the user. Even in very dark skin veining will show. Most chronic functional users inject in the legs, even between the toes if needed to avoid such bruising.

Heroin and crack both will harm your teeth, discolor your gums, and change the concistancy of your fingernails even. Your skin can gain a jondus sorta palor. Your hair can become very stringy. Some men have patches in their beards. They can also have strange bruising that looks like it's coming from under the skin.

Look up pictures of Nikki Sixx for a good idea.

Now for both crack and heroin, if you snort it you can wear out the lining on your nose and insome cases degrade the septum, making your nostrils bigger and for lack of a better word looser. Discoloration is possible, but not always.

Crack can make you lose weight fast or stay boney should you already be thin. It keeps you from wanting to eat. Otherwise, same thing for heroin except red patches instead of bruising.

Depending how long you have been off of it, and how well you heal after, you can hide that you were ever on drugs easy. It would be far easier for your guy to tell he was a user from certain mannerisms instead of physical markings.

Thanks for the detailed information.

Before I go to bed, what kind of mannerism can a drug addict display?

This is going to be very very general because everyone is different and it depends on how bad the addiction is and what other issues this guy has on top of the addiction.

Example: a rich person will have a better time than a poor one.

Functional addicts are more interesting because you can play with how they hide it better.

Nonfunctional: itching, scratching, ticks of the eyes and fingers, spasms of the limbs, inability to maintain balance so walking can be a chore, hollow eyes that cannot maintain contact, speech problems like irregular volume or sudden twist from nice to snarling.

Oh! They may also have blisters from the spoon or holding the lighter too long.

Good movies that show users: Requiem for a Dream, Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, and The Fighter.

Functional addicts normally are so because they take multiple drugs such as barbiturates to stave off the tremors between fixes. Crack is an upper. Heroin is a downer. I can see your guy using both to try and balance each other out.

I would also see about reading the book The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx or Go Ask Alice.

Any good beat cop can spot a user a mile awayso if you want to make this guy really special than you will probably want to lean more towards the functional user route than chronic. This could help with the gambling too because if the average crack head went bad on his debts than he would probably just get killed. If he wasn't just shot outright than the gambling moons could make sure his next hit was laced with draino.

How a user maintains their kit (what they use to heat and injest their drugs) also tells a lot about them. So feel free to play with that too.

For a gambler, he might have a matchbook or something similar from the casino.

...I have most of these symptoms, and the hardest drug I imbibe is caffeine.

edited 29th Dec '13 7:14:57 AM by TobiasDrake

Ooh, thanks for the details.

That cod work. Thanks.

Or the casino has something special about it (say it serves a particular type of food in its VIP lounge or has the air filled with a distinctly smelling perfume) that the character has lingering around him.

So something like having caviare between his teeth and the only place someone like him is gonna get caviare in town is if he's getting it free at the casino for being a regular who spends loads of money there.

edited 29th Dec '13 1:08:39 PM by Silasw

Mostly the previous things about fingernails and teeth, those are the first signs I look for in druggies. It's a sort of universal sign that meth/crack/heroine addicts all have. Cocaine and marijuana don't leave as many traces that you can see, however I've noticed people who are particular to cocaine often have a very gaunt and tired look when they haven't used recently and are in withdrawal/recently came down.

Chronic potheads tend to have a faint odor come out in their sweat / skin oils, but mild users you generally can't tell. But then the stuff is on the same order of magnitude as alcohol, in that most consumers of it keep a fairly moderate level of usage and you really can't distinguish those people.

a matchbook? I thought they stopped doing that in the 50s.

edited 29th Dec '13 4:39:08 PM by joeyjojo

Nah, I collect them, I have one from most of the Casinos on the strip in vegas.(My grandparents live there)

Ooh, thanks for the additional info, folks. Now I have more than enough to work with.

Saw these two on Cracked:

5 things I learned as a cop that the movies won't show you.

5 most embarassing emergency rescue calls.

Huh, fortifying your home, as long as it doesn't involve firearms (like turrets or boobytraps), is not illegal in US?