The Onion Field and LAPD K-38s

[CALREB]

LAPD,s approved gun list was/is always changing, mostly dependant on what the Big Chief liked /wanted or what maybe OIC of the firearms unit wanted or could get approved as weapons that were better were developed. I believe it was sometime in mid to late 70s 6" revolvers were again approved, not issued. In 1981/2 the LAPD model 68s came out and a lot of people had them on their firearms card.
When S/W came out with the full lug model 14 many (myself included ) went that direction. I worked with several older guys who had custom model 14s with a 1" or just under bull barrel (no rib) front sight like a Weigand, just not interchangeable. Some were Davis guns or Cheshire Perez. These were approved. Probably grandfathered in when the conversion to 4" happened. My first training officer carried a 5" 38/44 Outdoorsman, that gun stayed on the approved list well into 2000 or so.
No one really paid much attention to who carried a revolver, as long as it was an approved model .This went on until the later 90s when it was discovered that officers who were issued berettas during the Academy and only received minimal BUG training with a 2", were later switching to revolvers , mostly 6", to help their shooting score for the Bonus course or to look older. This later changed and if you came on after 9/89 or whenever LA started issuing berettas you had to carry a semi/auto as a primary duty weapon.All these pictured are approved.

 

[Absalom]

I thought I'd resurrect my own zombie thread with this pertinent question....

How is it that 30 years after Reed and Malloy turned in their Model 14s for 4" Model 15s this stud is still banging away at bank robbers with his 6" gun?

I remember reading just within the last few years that the last NYPD Model 10 HB's and their owners who were grandfathered in during the switch to semi-auto pistols around 1992 have finally left active service.

The officer in that photo doesn't look like a spring chicken. If LAPD had provisions like NYPD, old-timers could well still have carried 6-inchers in 1997, no matter what happened in TV shows

 

[wrkerr]

Back to the Onion Field....

For 27 years I lived 40 miles from Bakersfield (Tehachapi). In 1992, Karl Hettinger was a Kern County Supervisor, running for reelection. The local paper kept printing articles questioning his integrity, which p*ssed me off to no end! It was as if they didn't even know (or care) what he endured that horrible night. I wrote Karl and received this nice response, written in his own hand.

RIP Officers Campbell and Hettinger. I will never forget.