Bird Dog 757

It was a warm September evening in 1973. Rabbit was a twenty-eight-year-old Los Angeles uniformed policeman, on duty working a black and white police car in Westchester, a district of Venice Division near the Los Angeles Airport. He had been assigned there for almost four years.

Although Rabbit’s assignment to this sleepy hollow town was somewhat of a forced retirement for him, it was a peaceful community much like the one he had grown up in, and he liked working there. And that was a good thing, as he had resigned himself to the fact that after five shootings and too many personnel complaints stemming from the time he spent working the streets in East Wilmington and Watts, he would almost certainly work patrol for the rest of his career.

It was a quiet night. His patrol took him along the ocean front road of Dockweiler Beach, where he witnessed another beauti- ful Southern California sunset and the hope of seeing the green flash of the setting sun. It was a beautiful daily routine, very different from the adrenaline rush of the action he had once thrived on in South Central LA, but a whole lot less confrontational. All this was about to change.

His police radio came on and directed him to go to the captain’s office to meet the Officer in Charge of Venice Division Vice, Sergeant Doug Nelson. Dutifully, Rabbit responded per proper police radio proce- dure and acknowledged the call with his unit number, 14A56, and by the book, even broadcasting the FCC sign-off requirement of KMA-367.

The course of his career was about to take him deep down the Rabbit Hole.