[Doctor Stochastic]

The LAPD was once known as "the world's greatest police department,"..

This is news. A reading of almost any history of Hollywood or any biography of people from Los Angeles (Erle Stanley Gardner or Raymond Chandler) or reading some history of crime in the US would seem to indicate that the LAPD was always one of the most corrupt police in the US.

[RebelBanker]

I believe any big city police department is likely to accumulate a certain number of crooked cops just because of the nature of the scumbags they deal with every day. The NYPD and LAPD are both very closely watched due to their proximity to media types, so any misdeeds by officers from those departments tend to be blown out of proportion.

I know the Baltimore City Police Department has a history with as much corruption and incompetence as any, but outside of Barry Levinson's fictional "Homicide: Life on the Street" you generally do not hear about it outside of Maryland.

[G.Mason]

The LA police department in the early sixties was regarded by the N. Eastern police agencies as the one to emulate. Rightly, or wrongly.

[Grut]

This is news. A reading of almost any history...would seem to indicate that the LAPD was always one of the most corrupt police in the US.

Check out:
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/42/cops-domanick2.php
for evidence of this.

[karnage]

LAPD was a cesspool of corruption in the '40's and '50's, but was cleaned up considerably under Chief Parker in the early '60's. For the next 20 or so years it was a model department. And then... well, you know the rest.

[jjmcgo]

People should deal with the reality of the history of the LAPD and not an idealized version of what they think it was. The LAPD had been out of control for at least 20 years prior to King. They were rude, racist and acted outside the law for a long, long time. They had KKK newsletters among themselves, for God sakes.
The LAPD is not an organization brought down by PC. It was brought down by Gates, his unions and their predecessors.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

This is news. A reading of almost any history of Hollywood or any biography of people from Los Angeles (Erle Stanley Gardner or Raymond Chandler) or reading some history of crime in the US would seem to indicate that the LAPD was always one of the most corrupt police in the US.

You're partially correct. But from about the early 50's to the 70's it was a very clean department. Police Chief Parker cleaned house 50 years ago and Chief Daryl Gates tried to continue in Parkers tradition. Albeit with limited success. The TV program Dragnet starring Jack Webb attempts to capture the LAPD culture during the clean times.

On the other hand, the movie LA Confidential was set in a time of corruption during the 30's and 40's, before the Parker era, and reflects that era's immorality and corruption.

[Warrior Nurse]

Anybody Remember Bloody Christmas at the hands of the LAPD in the 1950's?

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Corruption was prior to about 1943 under the Shaw administration. In came Fletcher Bowren, he cleaned it up.