Amending My Previous Two BLOGs

I wrote on Tuesday evening that I wasn't feeling much pain (almost none), and how I had begun to think this surgery was going to be pretty easy to get through. Too soon. Wednesday morning the pain came and got progressively worse. Last night I succumbed to the temptation of taking pain medication and that helped me get a good night's sleep. More pain today, though. I'll treat this by watching March Madness this afternoon and then a little more pain meds tonight.



When I wrote about getting the house ready to sell, I didn't add that Jake has been a big help as well. He came over and trimmed the back wall. Big help and appreciated.

Arthroscopic Surgery Revisited

We got up bright and early this morning to got to Los Alamitos Medical center. Dr. Kanu Patel would perform an arthroscopic procedure on my left knee. We got to the hospital as requested at 0530 and I mentioned to Cathy on the way in that I was a little nervous. The reasons for my anxiety had to do with some unreasonable delays I had experienced in person on two occasions at this place plus on the phone with them yesterday.

Everything went smoothly. The surgery was scheduled for 0730. At about 0615 we were directed to a place called Same Day Surgery. There, we were greeted by very pleasant nurses and staff. I was very impressed by their courtesy and their professionalism. They even wrote "YES" on my left leg just above the knee to guide them to the correct place to cut. Dr. Patel is well-known to the nurses for being on time and not appreciating needless delays and today was no exception. He was there and ready to go. The Anesthesiologist impressed me too.

Fade to black.

At 0810 I woke up in the recovery room. Other than a little throat discomfort that I assume was due to entubation for anesthesia, there was no discomfort. In fact I checked my leg and found it heavily bandaged, so I felt secure that something had been done.

After the surgery, Dr. Patel went and talked to mom and told her that based on his observations during surgery that I really should have had a total knee replacement. He's probably right of course but we wanted to at least try this first.

At 0910 after the required one hour in recovery, I was moved back to Same Day and mom was summoned to my side. I felt great but needed to use the facilities. I got crutches and instruction on how to use them and off I went. Still no pain in the knee so I walked gingerly but kept the crutches at the ready just in case.

Then we headed for home at about 1015. Everyone was great at the hospital and my impression is now very favorable. There was still no pain in my knee but I assumed that I was still under the influence of some form of anesthesia.

Even though there was still no pain, we stopped on the way home and got the prescriptions filled.

When we got home, I obediently went to bed and elevated my leg. At noon there was still no pain and I walked out back to read in the sun. I elevated my leg out there too.

Well, it's now 1730 and still no pain. I mean none. I should shut up because I'm not going to get the sympathy I was anticipating. If this continues, I will probably have to start painting again tomorrow. Now that I think it through, I think maybe there is some pain there after all.

Getting the House Ready to Sell

It actually made me feel a little bad when I typed in the title for this BLOG. I've been here since 1983 when this place was in much worse shape than it is now. We had a chain link fence around the front yard and a metal shed and some lawn in the back. The previous owner had added on and created a really nice master bedroom suite including a sliding aluminum door that went out to a hot tub that he came back and got a few months after we moved in. Unfortunately he chose to put in a basement rather than a second story and the basement flooded several time every winter for a combination of reasons.

The walls were a hodge podge of patched drywall and the floors all had wall to wall shag carpet. But it was our house and we had four sons. We had rented a couple of homes and we tended to fix them up. When the landlords saw how nice we made them, they couldn't resist the temptation to sell them.

Twenty-five years later, we have replaced the chain link with a nice wooden fence that everyone loves. The floors were hardwood and when we took out the carpet and had the floors redone and extended into the master suite, the results were very encouraging. We added crown mouldings in several rooms, unique but tasteful paint colors, and redid most of the base board mouldings.

The kitchen has been remodeled and is now admired by everyone who sees it including mom and me whenever I pause to look at it which is often.

We finally solved the flooding problem by tastefully adding concrete and bricks to cover the back yard, drains were built in to carry rain to the front and rain gutters were installed for the same purpose. It has worked beautifully The basement has been dry for over five years now. This last winter was a very wet one and it held up fine.

The master suite now has a french door assembly that opens to the back patio. It's all so nice now.

But the costs were extensive. we re-financed and the ARM is going to go up in September. So rather than re-finance again, we have decided to try to sell. We have friends and interests in the eastern United States and we believe we'll try that for awhile. Despite the mortgage, we can sell this place and have enough to pay cash for a nice home in many places and the thought of entering retirement with no home loan is irresistible.

So we are fixing up some loose ends.



The living room has been torn up so the shelves and walls can be repainted.



We replaced the crown moulding in the living room, entry and front hall.

A couple of weeks ago, Kevin and Adam came home and completed a couple of really helpful projects for us.






Perhaps enough time has gone by so that these pictures will evoke fond memories. There were challenges, especially with the water heater. I really hadn't planned to replace the water heater but it had been acting up and late on Saturday afternoon, it went kaput for good.

I asked Adam to hook up a hose and drain it while went to get a new one. Shortly after I left, the #!&X* water heater began behaving even worse. Poor Adam did everything I would have done and I'm sure I wouldn't have had any different result, but it wouldn't drain through the hose. It WOULD, however leak all over the floor and tried to do that. Kevin, who had been at Lagune for a couple of hours with Dillan, arrived and he couldn't make it stop leaking either. I hurried home based on several panicked calls from mom and I couldn't stop it either. Between the three of us, we got it out of the house with most of the water still in it. An additional complication was that despite getting the tall and slender model water heater, it was still slightly too wide to get out through the water heater closet door unless we removed a strip of door moulding.

Anyway, we got it done and installing the new one went smoothely.

I've also redone the closets in the front hallway. One used to house the old furnace, and the other was just a mess because we had never done anything to improve it.




Today, I have been painting our closet. It seems to be turning out pretty well too.


And I also re-did the central hallway including adding mouldings and new hardware to the cupboard doors and I replaced the floor under the washer and dryer.




Jake has come over from time to time and been a help as well.

Well, tomorrow is Easter and mom and I and Jake and Meredith will be entertained at Karen Merrill's apartment in Pasadena. She had compassion on our disheveled state. That should be a pleasant break. I want to wrap up the remodeling such as it is for a few days on Monday, because Tuesday is arthroscopic surgery day on my left knee. I will take a few days off from all of my labors and I want to do it in a nice stress-free environment.

Soapbox Law

Reading Adam's blog lately has become a literal exercise in racial exploration. A few years ago the local liberals got the idea that police officers engaged in racial profiling and something should be done to stop it.

I wouldn't even try to begin to deny that officers engage in profiling of many kinds including racial profiling. Sometimes it is proper to do so but certainly there are times when is not (check Adam's latest blog about being the Switzerland of racial bias).

Racial profiling is wrong (and of course unconstitutional when it violates the equal protection aspects of the constitution) when police officers engage in profiling for no genuine law enforcement purpose, such as stopping a black person for being in the "wrong" neighborhood. An interesting aside is that when I first joined LAPD in 1974 and was assigned to 77th Street Area, a predominantly black area at the time, there were several times when white motorists were stopped for being in the "wrong" neighborhood. Sometimes it was to see if they were lost and knew they might be in danger. Other times, there was a suspicion based on race, age, number of people in the car, etc. that the person or persons might be looking to purchase something illegal to smoke or inject or ingest.

Be that as it may, I'm sure that black people have been stopped for no proper reason but I truly haven't seen that in LA though it is certainly alleged often enough.

Back to the point of the story. When I as a Traffic Enforcement (motorcycle) Sergeant picked up on this racial profiling hot topic, I conducted a little audit. I had my squad of motor cops work Western Avenue from the Santa Monica Freeway up to Hollywood Blvd. After three days, I tallied the tickets written by race and found the following approximate results:

35% were written to Caucasians
35% were Hispanic
15% were black
15% were "other" (usually Asian)

These tickets were written primarily between 7:30 AM and 12:30 PM on weekdays.

My thoughts were that this was roughly the racial makeup of the people in that area in general.

I also recall being called to Westwood to talk to a female black driver who had been cited by a male black motorcycle officer. She believed she had been racially profiled even though the officer was black and she admitted that she had committed the violation. She believed that the officer was writing tickets to blacks that he would not have written to whites.

After talking to her for a few minutes I found that her belief was based on the well-known "fact" as reported by the media that officers engage in racial profiling. Without any advance research, I took a chance and asked the officer for his traffic ticket book and the violator and I went through the previous tickets written by the officer. When we found that very few had been written to blacks, she finally accepted that we were trying to be fair and she dropped her complaint.

I also had a black partner once who was stopped (while off-duty) and really treated badly by a Deputy Orange County Sheriff. I believed my partner's account of what happened (he's that kind of guy who just tells the truth) and so I know it happens.

I have no idea what it is like to be black. I have no desire to know. I have my own problems and challenges. But I really try to look at the man or the woman as a human being first and not as a member of some racial group. I may not always succeed but I know this: No black man has ever had any reason to be afraid of me as a police officer solely because he's black.

Traffic Stop

This has been going around for awhile, but it's kind of fun. Notice that when the officer first positions his vehicle after stopping the violator, he does so in a very unusual manner that makes it impossible for the camera to see him during the stop... except for what happens next. The language is a little coarse, but it sort of goes with the situation.

Parking Scofflaws

Back in 1982, I was working as a Staff Researcher in the Research and Projects Unit of Traffic Coordination Section. Then Commander Bill Rathburn, later to become Deputy Chief Rathburn, was the Department Traffic Coordinator. I got a call to report to Commander Rathburn. When I got to his office he showed me a copy of an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about how SFPD was implementing a program based on a new state law that allowed them to impound vehicles that had received five or more parking tickets that hadn't been properly dealt with (paid). He wanted to know if we had a problem in L.A. with people not paying their parking tickets.

I made an inquiry from the Traffic Court building requesting that they give me list of unpaid parking tickets for the last year. They told me it would take a few days. A few days later, I got a call from my contact at the traffic court building who said that my list was ready. He also suggested that I bring a furniture dolly to move my "list" since it contained over thirty thousand entries. The list was computer-generated. Each line on the printout represented one ticket and there were about fifty lines on each page. The list was contained in two expandable loose leaf notebooks that were each about 7-8 inches thick.

I reported back to Commander Rathburn that we did, indeed, have something to work with and he directed that I begin coming up with a plan to deal with this.

First, the law. There were two applicable new impound sections that had been added to the vehicle code. The first had to do with vehicles registered in California or any other state. If any such vehicle had been issued five or more parking tickets that had not been paid, the police could impound the car and hold it until the tickets were paid. The second said that any vehicle whose registration had expired more than a year earlier could be impounded and held until the registration issues were cleared up.

We came up with a plan and got it approved. We looked through the "list" of parking tickets and found a license number that had been issued 105 tickets, most of which were near a particular intersection in downtown Los Angeles. The plate was a California plate.

So we checked out a black and white car, put on our uniforms (I got another officer from my unit to go with me), and drove to the area in question. It took about five minutes to find the car and it was parked illegally and had been cited. We impounded the car and went back to the office. Approximately three days later, we got a call from the court liaison unit at the traffic court building saying there was a woman there asking about her car. It was our baby.

So we drove to the court building and I talked to this woman. She wanted to know why her car was impounded. I told here it was for not paying for parking tickets. She said "I'm confused..." Which meant she wasn't confused at all, of course. She was trying to shift the blame away from herself. Finally she asked the $2,900.00 question. Then she said, "you have to be kidding." Another happy ending for the forces of justice.

A few days later, we were in the field looking for other violators when a parking officer asked us about a car that he had written a bunch of tickets to. This car was an out of state car and, if I didn't mention it earlier, my long "list" was only California plates. I asked the officer if he could get copies of past tickets, and he said he would. I gave him my card and just as I did, the car drives up to a red zone and this saucy little female gets out and starts walking away. The parking officer said to her, "hey, you can't park there." She said, "write it up if you want. I'm not going to pay it." Then she walked into the building. I was in plain clothes but this kind of offended my sense of justice. I asked the parking officer how many tickets for that vehicle he can provide me copies of. He had seven copies with him and said he could probably come up with ten more. I took the seven with me, drove down to the court liaison unit and determined that these had not been paid. I drove back and the car was still there, so bingo. Another victory for the good guys. Boy was she surprised.

The bottom line is we created a Frequent Parking Violators Unit in the Department of Transportation that began their existence by bringing in over $3,000,000 during their first full year of operation. I understand they are doing far better than that now.

My Start in Special Events

Spring time, 1988. I was working as a motorcycle officer assigned to South Traffic Division. There was a series of disturbances at Fremont High School in south Los Angeles. I can't remember what the issue was but the teachers are always encouraging students to get involved in various screwy projects. Anyway, all of the STD motor officers were sent to Fremont because of one of these disturbances and, as usual, we all just sat around because most Department commanders don't know what motor officers can do so they don't use them.

The Commanding Officer of South Bureau was Deputy Chief Bill Rathburn at the time. I had worked for him on a particularly interesting project earlier when I was a Police Officer assigned to Projects at Traffic Coordination Section, and he was the Department Traffic Coordinator (future blog if I remember). Chief Rathburn was at Fremont HS that day and he noticed me because I was wiping down (cleaning) my motorcycle while the other officers were just sitting around playing cards. Let me assure you that this was completely accidental. I goof off as much or more as anyone, but the Chief was moderately impressed and he stopped to say hi.

A few minutes later his car stopped and backed up toward me again and he said he needed some help in his Special Events unit to help coordinate special events that occur in South Bureau. Apparently the Academy Awards had returned to the Shrine Auditorium after having been at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the previous few years and it was a disaster from the Department's perspective. Traffic was horrible (the Mayor had to walk several blocks to get to the show on time) and there were ridiculous problems with uncontrolled fans, demonstrators, etc. Anyway. He remembered me and wondered if I might be interested in being loaned to his staff for awhile to help out. I said sure and he departed. Bill Rugh, my partner, was there and said "wouldn't that be something if you had to go work Bureau for awhile." I actually didn't think about it again - for awhile.

Later that afternoon at EOW (end of watch), I happened to be at STD (at Harbor Station at the time) and the Watch Commander told me Captain Medina wanted to see me. I went up to his office - he was the Commanding Officer of South Traffic Division - thinking I might be in trouble because that was the normal reason for a motor officer to be called to the Captain's office. Captain Medina said that he had just received a call from Commander Curtsinger (Ernie Curtsinger - very good guy) who was the Bureau Assistant Commanding Officer requesting to know if I'd like to be loaned to South Bureau. I was a little stunned and managed to find out that the loan would begin the next day, I could dress in a suit and drive my own car, or I could dress in a uniform and drive my City motorcycle (no-brainer even back then and even for a motor cop). So one of the most interesting phases in my professional life began the next day.


I began planning for the next Academy Awards and realized that there were other significant events going on at the Shrine Auditorium (American Music Awards, Soul Train Music Awards, Frank Sinatra's birthday concert, Sammy Davis Junior's birthday, Russian Army Choir (lots of protesters), Ballets (Bolshoi and others). And I seem to have a knack for creating plans. We developed a new plan that could be scaled up or down and tried it out on some of the events mentioned. The next Academy Awards was a huge success and Rathburn loved me more (a good thing). Then I turned my attention to the Coliseum and the LA Raiders and USC football. We had some success there as well and of course the Spots Arena became a hot topic when the mighty LA Clippers finally started playing there. I was deeply involved in the visit of the Pope and Nelson Mandela's visit to the Coliseum. Helped with the LA Marathon and similar events. And, I finally got the Chief and members of the Command Staff to see the value of motor officers in policing events of significant magnitude.



I also became friendly with key people at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which led to me being a part of their security management team for the next thirteen years. And THAT was really fun.

So that's how this old horse got involved in the Academy Awards. I stopped doing it for a variety of reasons when the show moved to the Kodak Theater in Hollywood and I don't miss it at all. I now do the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards show every January at the Shrine Auditorium and I love it. It's a better event (not nearly as much money, but better) and it's still fun. I have been told this year that after I retire, I will be paid to return to LA every January to manage the security for that show and I am planning to do just that.