By Nicholas Stix
“‘It’s the great myth,’ said Kilvinsky to Gus, ignoring the voices [of black whores in the paddy wagon] behind them, ‘the myth whatever it happens to be that breaks civil authority. I wonder if a couple of centurions might’ve sat around like you and me one hot dry evening talking about the myth of Christianity that was defeating them. They would’ve been afraid, I bet, but the new myth was loaded with “don’ts,” so one kind of authority was just being substituted for another. Civilization was never in jeopardy.
“But today the ‘don’ts’ are dying or being murdered in the name of freedom and we policemen can’t save them. Once the people become accustomed to the death of a ‘don’t,’ well then, the other ‘don’ts’ die much easier. Usually all the vice laws die first because people are generally vice-ridden anyway. Then the ordinary misdemeanors and some felonies become unenforceable until freedom prevails. Then later the freed people have to organize an army of their own to find order because they learn that freedom is horrifying and ugly and only small doses of it can be tolerated.”
“Kilvinsky laughed self-consciously, a laugh that ended when he put the battered cigarette holder in his mouth and chewed on it quietly for several seconds. ‘I warned you us old coppers are big bullshitters, didn’t I, Gus?’”
In 1970, Joseph Wambaugh’s rookie novel, The New Centurions, was published. I won’t say it revolutionized cop fiction, because Wambaugh set a standard that no one else could even come close to matching, but it was a sensation.
In its foreground, Centurions focuses on three rookie cops from the LAPD Academy Class of 1960 (Wambaugh’s class), Gus Plebesly, Serge Duran, and Roy Fehler. Gus is a little, skinny White guy who fears he’s a coward. Serge is a big, handsome, broad-shouldered, American-born Mexican, while Roy is a sanctimonious, White liberal.
And yet, the towering figure of the story, who looms in the background, like the star on certain movie posters, behind the other players, is Kilvinsky. No first name.
In the story, Kilvinsky retires, but can’t handle “pulling the pin,” and blows his brains out.
Who was Kilvinsky? His real name was Bill Parker (1905-1966), he was the longest-serving chief in LAPD history (1950-1966), and he was Joe Wambaugh’s muse.
Bill Parker interrupted his tenure on the LAPD (1927/8-1966) to go back to the Marines, and serve in combat for two years in the European Theater of Operations in The War, coming out as a captain. He died at the age of 61, of a massive coronary, at the end of a dinner honoring him by a USMC group.
His most famous phrase was that the police are “the thin blue line” between civilization and anarchy. But he was no poet, so his actual saying, which I couldn’t find online, was dull as dishwater. Something about the law-abiding versus the non-law-abiding.
An argument can be made against Bill Parker’s notion of “the thin blue line.” It’s that the ordinary, law-abiding, patriotic citizen, say George Zimmerman, is the thin blue line. But in a metropolis, ordinary citizens are less guardians of civilization than in a small town, or a neighborhood within a metropolis.
But today, more often than not, law enforcement bosses are the biggest supporters of black and hispanic criminals, and against civilization. And today’s LAPD actively solicits lesbian and homosexual cops, with its “gay and lesbian recruitment drive.” Check out its lewd recruiting photo (I couldn’t download it), which is also the lead photo on the department’s main page, in which a butch, asian police person leans on the shoulder of a femme, White police person, with both in uniform, strongly suggesting that they are lesbian lovers, with the butch asian ready, at any moment, to jump the bones of the White one.
The pretend encyclopedia has a hate page devoted to Parker, as it does with all great White American men.
Bill Parker may have been America’s greatest lawman; he was certainly one of the great, now unsung heroes of American history.
5 comments:
"We don't have a crime problem. We have a people problem."
Very true.
Second paragraph said it all.The "freedom" is what the criminals are receiving--to do as THEY want. No laws,no oversight,no punishment --you have no country.
--GRA
It's more of a "thin,red line"--correct?The blood of Whites--sacrificed both symbolically and literally to allow the blacks,Mex and commies to take over.
Symbolically,you see White America destroyed--view any big city for proof of that.Check out TV for 5 minutes as well--replaced in many instances by blacks.In America,you are what you see on TV.There's no reason for blacks to be 70% of the people on commercials,news shows,game shows etc.
Literally:the murders,drug overdoses and related crimes suffered by Whites--who have been left behind in neighborhoods,where blacks have invaded--are currently feeling the brunt of being "don'ts".blacks are in control--both politically and on the streets.What are they doing with all that power?Causing chaos--which is the goal of blm and their ilk.
--GRA
I did a quick check on youtube---and they have the entire movie--"The New Cenurions".
--GRA
WAMBAUGH INTERVIEW IN 2019--"NO MORE BOOKS."
(San Diego Tribune)
Fall arts 2019 | Books: At 82, Joseph Wambaugh may be done writing, but his influence endures
Joseph Wambaugh laughed at the question.
“Am I done writing?” he said. “Hell, I’m almost done living. I’m 82.”
(GRA:Three years later--still around.)
His last book, “Harbor Nocturne,” came out in 2012. It was the fifth of his Hollywood Station novels, full of the bawdy insider cop talk that first made him famous and populated with memorably quirky characters like the badge-wearing surfers Flotsam and Jetsam. A couple of TV studios are looking at turning the books into a series.
“I’d be thrilled to see that happen before I kick the bucket,” he said.
This is not the first time Wambaugh has seemingly stopped writing. He went six years in between “Floaters,” a 1996 novel set in San Diego during the America’s Cup, and “Fire Lover,” a 2002 non-fiction account of a serial arsonist. And then it was another four years before he published “Hollywood Station.” But then he wrote four more novels, all in a period of six years.
So it seems like a fair question: Maybe some story will come along that moves him to add to his catalog?
“Not this geezer,” he said.
Even if he is done, his influence will continue. Legions of crime novelists in San Diego and elsewhere cite Wambaugh among their earliest influences. That’s because he broke the mold, moved police officers from the “Dragnet” realm of clean-cut heroes into the real world of complicated, flawed human beings.
“All I did was turn things around,” he said. “Instead of writing about how cops worked the job, I wrote about how the job worked on the cops.”
--GRA
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