Gregory Powell was denied parole for the 11th time a few weeks ago.
That name doesn’t ring a bell, does it?
In 1963, Powell and his buddy Jimmy Lee Smith kidnapped LAPD Officers Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger, and murdered Officer Campbell. Officer Hettinger died in 1994. Smith died a few years ago.
Sound a little more familiar now? Maybe you’ve read Joseph Wambaugh’s The Onion Field
At some point in the not-too-distant future, I want to write a longer post about Wambaugh’s book and what it means to me. I’ll say for now that, at the time I read it, I was deeply moved; I still think that it is Wambaugh’s best work of non-fiction to date.
There’s a section of the book that takes place after Officer Campbell’s murder that I want to call out here. The background is that, after the murder, LAPD issued a new set of policies; among other things, cops were told never to surrender their weapons under any circumstances. Wambaugh tells us (in the third person) how he reacted to these policies. Then he cuts away to another roll call in Central Division, where
a twenty-five year policeman who preferred the one-man beat, a virtuosic beat cop, one of those who fades into police myth and legend, who rules his beat, and is frequently the very best or very worst police work has to offer
stands up and says one word:
(Language after the jump.)