By: Scott Reitz

You know you’re getting long in the tooth when the son of your former partner shows up with a few years on the job. The accompanying photo is of Mike Coblenz who I went through the Academy with and served in Van Nuys SPU with. He’s the guy with white hair. The young man in uniform is his son Mike who is a training Officer in Foothill Division. Now that is a passage in time. Hard to imagine all those years ago in 1976 that we would one day take such a photograph. Who would know?

I have trained many of the sons and daughters of former partners through the years. This is always a challenge as the question most posed is, “Do you have any great stories about my dad?” Now this places me in a real quandary. There are the really great funny stories which can’t be told in mixed company and then there are the good ones that can be broached in a nunnery. The good ones are good but the funny ones are absolutely hysterical.

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By Scott Reitz

If you are involved in a shooting any and everything you have ever said, done, written or posted via the internet is subject to disclosure. This is far from an insignificant fact. One of the very first questions posed in a deposition is the disclosure of your Facebook, Twitter or other personal website accounts. Anything which you have ever posted either be it written, videotaped or still photographed can and will be produced in court especially if it is to the benefit of the opposition to do so. What you may consider to be ‘cute’ or funny or hysterically amusing at the time can very quickly be turned around to be used against you.

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By Scott Reitz

Time changes everything. This can be both a good and bad thing. Joining the LAPD in 1976 was not an easy proposition. There were lines stretching for blocks at the various high schools throughout L.A. for prospective applicants. I myself had broken off from mid-terms from UNM to drive across country to be there as well. By some estimates some 20,000 plus applied. As I understand it 2,500 applicants were actively processed and less than 100 gained admittance split between two classes. Those classmates of mine in the Academy viewed the force as a career as opposed to a temporary job. Not all of us, but by far most of us felt this way. The department did a great job making sure that we understood and appreciated what had transpired before us in terms of LAPD history.

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By Scott Reitz

In SWAT not everything goes as planned. “The best laid plans of mice and men” is more than an appropriate concept in this story. We had just started to use the Kerie cutting cable which consisted of a hollow flexible metal burning element (exothermic Clucas Thermic-Arc System if you want to get a tad fancy) through which pure oxygen was fed at high pressure. The user had to wear a compressed oxygen cylinder on his back which is not altogether a totally safe proposition if hot lead starts to fly about. This baby burned hot… and I mean hot. You could burn through just about any steel out there in a New York minute and at the same time cook up about six thousand hot dogs in ten seconds. It was really, really hot and really, really bright. All this heat and brightness meant that the operator had to wear a huge heavy welder’s helmet with face shield and large, heavy gloves so that the hands/fingers were not instantaneously burned off with one simple misstep. So that sets the scene so to speak.

Here’s a photo of just a small breach in the early 90s.

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