To Protect and to Serve: The LAPD's Century of War in the City of Dreams

The opening scene is a doozy: Tom Bradley, the black mayor of Los Angeles, faces an angry crowd just after the acquittals in the Rodney King beating trial. "Say what you gonna do," a fat woman bellows. "It's your police department. Say what you gonna do!" Little does the crowd realize the power of the LAPD. Joe Domanick goes back to the 1930s to find the roots of that power, and takes readers through the history of what he calls "a quasi-military organization ... outside of the democratic system of checks and balances." Domanick has a brisk, energetic prose style. In his hands these stories of antilabor squads and Red baiting, dragnets and "robocops," generate so much suspense, reading To Protect and to Serve is almost like watching a movie. And, as the Los Angeles Times writes, "While Domanick unearths much dirt about the LAPD leaders, To Protect and to Serve excels at drawing fair, empathic, multidimensional portraits of their lives." This book was the winner of the 1995 Edgar Award for best fact crime.