Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh Page B

career. Perhaps for the rest of her days. The little girl opened her eyes and looked directly into the straining face of Bix Ramstead, who had at last raised the chunk of wreckage high enough for Ronnie to pull her free.
    Just before Ronnie grabbed her, the child said to Bix, “Are you my angel?”
    Controlling his labored breathing, Bix managed to say, “Yes, darling, I am your angel.”
     
     
    When they got back to Hollywood Station, Bix changed out of his uniform much faster than Ronnie did. When she left the women’s locker room she saw him sprinting across the parking lot to his minivan, and she was pretty sure she knew where he was going.
    After Ronnie arrived at work the next morning, she learned that the child had survived the ambulance ride to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center but died in the ER moments before her angel came running to her side.
     

SIX
     
    O NCE A MONTH every patrol division of the LAPD was required to hold a CPAB meeting, pronounced
see-pab
, for Community Police Advisory Board. Hollywood Division held its CPAB meeting on the last Tuesday, the idea being to bring together community leaders, neighborhood watch captains, the City Attorney’s Office, the Department of Transportation, the L.A. Fire Department, and others, all to discuss crime and quality-of-life issues in the respective police divisions. The meeting was run by the division captain along with the CPAB president, whoever that might be.
    The problems began almost immediately for the Hollywood Division CRO because, according to unofficial reports to the office of the chief of police, Hollywood was not like anywhere else. In fact, the unofficial report referred to Hollywood as “America’s kook capital.” Because it was a community meeting, residents of Hollywood could not be segregated or excluded due to irrational behavior, unless the behavior turned dangerous. Many of the same people showed up regularly at the meetings for free coffee and donuts. And, more often than not, havoc ensued.
    Special arrangements had to be made to accommodate the Hollywood Division CPAB meetings, and it was decided that a second meeting would be held the day after the official CPAB meeting. The names and addresses of the more peculiar and troublesome residents were culled from sign-in sheets at the CPAB meetings, and letters were sent telling them that their meetings would now be held on the last Wednesday of the month. The Wednesday gathering was officially renamed the “Hollywood Community Meeting.” But the cops unofficially referred to it as the “Cuckoo’s Nest.”
    Crows would say to one another, “Are you going to CPAB or Cuckoo’s Nest?”
    The Cuckoo’s Nest meeting was not run by the captain or any member of the command staff. Sometimes even the CRO sergeant wasn’t in charge, preferring to leave it to one of the senior lead officers. The Crow would try to arrange for interesting guest speakers, such as a narcotics detective or a gang officer or a vice cop. In order to entice speakers, the Crow told them that this was a very low-key community meeting that the speakers would find enjoyable. Once the speakers discovered the truth, they never came back.
    Ronnie Sinclair was tasked to assist at her first Cuckoo’s Nest meeting the day after Jetsam became convinced that he might have stumbled onto an al Qaeda cell operating in Hollywood. Jetsam had phoned the auto theft team the moment he woke up that morning, but they were in court or otherwise occupied and away from the station. When one of them finally returned his call, the detective, whom Jetsam didn’t know personally, was less than enthusiastic.
    After hearing Jetsam’s terrorist theory based upon spotting one Arabic newspaper at a body shop that worked on expensive SUVs, the detective said to him, “Do you know Arabic from Farsi?”
    “Well, no,” Jetsam had to admit.
    “The newspaper could have been left there by an Iranian,” the detective suggested.
    “All the