Los Angeles Police Department

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With 9,925 officers and 2,879 civilian staff, covering an area of 498 square miles (1,290 km2) with a population of 3,792,621 million people as of the 2010 Census, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in the United States, after the New York City Police Department and the Chicago Police Department.

The LAPD has been copiously fictionalized in numerous movies, novels and television shows throughout its history. The department has also been associated with a number of controversies, mainly concerned with racial animosity, police brutality and police corruption.

Read more about Los Angeles Police Department:  History, Organization, Rank Structure and Insignia, Chiefs of Police, Work Environment, LAPD Awards, Commendations, Citations and Medals, Fallen Officers, In Popular Culture

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    Joan Didion (b. 1935)

    The freeway experience ... is the only secular communion Los Angeles has.... Actual participation requires a total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over.
    Joan Didion (b. 1935)

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    Janet Wood Reno (b. 1938)