First Aired - December 14th, 1967
Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are working in Robbery Division. Friday is asked to defend Officer Phil Waverly by the officer himself. Officer Waverly is accused of taking a bribe from a bookie and failure to identify a police officer when the bookie, Ted Clover, is arrested.
Waverly goes on internal police trial to defend himself over serious charges that could result in him not only losing his job but have him end up in prison. Friday is tasked to try and get to the bottom of what happened.
Just the Tropes, ma'am:
- Affably Evil: Ted Clover dresses nicely and is friendly to the officers at the trial while admitting he is a bookie. He only starts to break when the officers ask for his ledger.
- Courtroom Episode: While not a court, internal affairs is leading the hearing with senior officers acting as the judges while the chief of police's assistant is recording what is happening in the trial.
- Dirty Cop: Officer Phil Waverly is accused of being one and Ted Clover states that he bribed Waverly. While Waverly admits he didn't identify himself as a police officer to vice cops, he honestly didn't know Ted Clover was a bookie as they were friends in the military and the "bribe" was repaying an old loan.
- Famed In-Story: When Friday demands to know why Waverly picked him as his advocate, Waverly tells him most of the cops in the division know Friday's reputation and that if a cop is clean, Friday will go all the way to prove it.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Ted Clover says he forgot how to decode his ledger. Nobody buys it and an expert is brought in who regularly decodes bookie's ledgers is able to crack it pretty easy.
- Villainous Breakdown: Once Ted Clover's ledger is decrypted, it proves that the money Waverly received was a loan and so he will be brought up on perjury charges. He starts to rant about cops protecting their own and how he should have never provided the cops with his ledger.
