Ramesh Nyberg
A Salute to the King
No, not Elvis. The “king” I want to write about is a man named Joseph Wambaugh. As I sat down to start this column, I had two other ideas battling for first place as the topic for this issue, but then I saw a post about Wambaugh’s passing and I sat there reflecting on his work and how much it meant to me.
I didn’t discover Wambaugh until my third year in law enforcement (1982), when I read The Choirboys (published in 1975), a compelling, often hilarious journey which followed a uniform squad of officers in the LAPD. His characters were remarkably colorful, from the goofy “Whaddaya Mean” Dean, to the nasty Roscoe Rules and a host of others, including one sensitive cop who took his own life after his fellow cops found out about his kinky sexual lifestyle. The stories were raw and real and the characters unforgettable. Unlike most police novels and TV dramas, Wambaugh’s work portrayed police officers as people, unveiling the emotions, vulnerability and human frailties which define what it is to be human. These weren’t Reed and Malloy (no offense to “Adam-12,” a great show in its own right) – these were people you knew in your squads. Every police officer who read his books could find a real-life colleague who resembled one of Wambaugh’s creations. It’s not often that life imitates art, but “choir practice” – those afterhours drinking sprees when squad members blow off steam and de-stress – came directly from this great novel. Little did I know that, when I first picked up The Choirboys, this was his third novel, and that four others – The New Centurions (1971), The Blue Knight (1972), The Black Marble (1978), and The Glitter Dome (1981) – had already enjoyed much success, spawning TV shows and movies.
After The Choirboys, my bookshelf began to fill with Wambaugh titles. Like so many of his fans, I got to know characters like the iconic Bumper Morgan (played by George Kennedy in the 1973 movie The Blue Knight), and many others, all of whom were a part of every cop I worked with, and indeed, a part of me. Of all the books I have read – Wambaugh’s and those of other authors – none affected me as much as The Black Marble. I found myself laughing until my stomach hurt on one page and weeping on another. Any writer who can evoke these kinds of emotional responses from black- and-white letters on a page has achieved success and Wambaugh did it over and over again. What was the key to his storytelling prowess?
“All I did was turn things around,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2019. “Instead of writing about how cops worked the job, I wrote about how the job worked on the cops.”
Wambaugh’s stories generated the fertile ground for more explorative police dramas in the entertainment media. Almost all of his novels ended up on the silver screen, with The Glitter Dome, starring James Garner and John Lithgow, being the most recognizable. Joseph Wambaugh loved to turn his razor-sharp wit to Southern California’s wealthy elite, even after he had become a celebrity himself. His series of Hollywood Station novels, written from 2006 to 2012, encompassed five more titles, all satirical treatments of police encounters with the ultra-rich and their lavish, entitled lifestyles. On the other side of the spectrum, Wambaugh wrote about the gritty, dark corners of LA’s worst neighborhoods and gave the reader a stark tour of the pimps, hustlers and addicts who roamed its streets. The Onion Field was perhaps his most somber work, telling the true story of the kidnapping and murder of LAPD Officer Ian Campbell in 1973. This was his first foray into nonfiction and it is a hard-hitting one indeed. Another highly acclaimed nonfiction work is The Blooding (1989), a riveting account of the world’s first-ever use of DNA to convict a suspect after two young girls were murdered in Leicester, England.
Being a cop and a big reader, Wambaugh launched my interest in other police novelists like William Caunitz and a couple of others, some (like Caunitz) former cops as well. None of them, however, measured up to Wambaugh’s storytelling abilities. Most of the novelists without police backgrounds had so many procedural errors in their stories that I never finished the books. Only one non-police novelist hit the mark and that was Nelson DeMille. His NYPD detective, John Corey, was, and still is, one of my favorite fictional characters in police novels. DeMille is a remarkable author, but Wambaugh must be credited with being a groundbreaker in the way he peeled back the uniform to reveal the human side of policing and the toll it often takes on its practitioners. He left behind in his wake the stiff, stoic stereotypes of Sgt. Joe Friday, Reed and Malloy, and Lt. Mike Stone (TV’s “The Streets of San Francisco”) and paved the way for deeper, more intricate and personal Hollywood treatments of police work such as “Hill Street Blues”and “NYPD Blue.”
Joseph Wambaugh’s books were like a comfort, a confirmation of the realities we all face on the job. When I read them, I felt like I was at “choir practice” with my buddies, or maybe confessing my hidden emotions to some silent therapist. At one time or another, we have all felt bitter about the human race because we’ve seen the absolute worst it can do. In one scene of The Choirboys, the squad is at a park, commiserating and drinking as one of their squad members hangs onto life in the hospital after being shot that night.
“It’s too bad he ran into such an asshole,” says the youngest member of the squad.
His mentor and longtime street veteran replies glumly, “They’re all assholes, rookie.”
Other times, we find ourselves breathless with laughter at some of the crazy people we encounter on patrol or even one of our own: the clumsy, bumbling character who is always messing something up (you know the one). Regardless, there is familiarity and I find it poignant, funny and somehow comforting. It’s always good to know there are others like us, that we have an understanding. The effects of Wambaugh’s books had a profound impact on me even later in my life; there is little doubt in my mind now that his writing opened the door for me to realize that I, too, can – and should – write stories about police work as well. In Los Angeles; Miami; or Hobbs, New Mexico, policing is essentially the same everywhere. We all experience similar arrays of human suffering, drama, hilarity, and danger. We all could be characters in one of his books and that’s why his great works matter.
RIP Joseph Wambaugh, 01/22/1937 – 02/28/2025
Ramesh Nyberg retired from law enforcement in November 2006 after 27 years of police work. He lives in Miami and teaches criminal justice at a local high school. He also teaches regional law enforcement courses through Training Force, USA. He enjoys getting feedback from readers and can be reached at ramesh.nyberg@gmail.com. Also, Ram has written a new book, Badge, Tie and Gun: Life and Death Journeys of a Miami Detective, which is available on Amazon in both Kindle eBook and paperback. You can find it by visiting amazon.com/dp/B0CTQQKQTV