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LA RETIRED COPS - In 1981, my father was forced to retire from the LAPD after just 10 years on the job because of on-duty injuries. He tried to stay. He loved the work. But along with the damage to his back from a traffic collision and a head injury from being struck with a brick, he had also suffered serious corneal damage in a separate incident on duty. Even though he wanted to continue serving, the department told him his time was over and put him out on a medical pension.
Nearly forty years later, in 2019, I retired after 23 years with the department. Unlike my father, I wasn’t injured. I was healthy, I still loved the work, and I had more years left in me. But I walked away early — not because of physical injury, but because of politics.
For the last two years of my career, I supervised a plainclothes burglary unit in West Los Angeles. We worked nights, targeting auto thieves and burglary suspects, and we made a lot of arrests. I didn’t expect to enjoy the assignment, but I did. We were effective and we were taking real criminals off the street.
Then, in 2019, after Michel Moore became Chief, I got a call while on vacation: the unit was being disbanded. No call from my captain. No explanation beyond, “the chief wants more uniforms on the street.” My team was done. I was back to patrol.
I could live with patrol — I’d done it for most of my career — but what made me miserable was the body-worn camera. I had no issue with in-car cameras. But the body cam felt like Big Brother watching me every minute. I wasn’t a dirty cop, but I didn’t like the idea that every decision I made could be replayed and second-guessed by people who weren’t there.
Decisions in the field happen in seconds. Reviews happen in slow motion, on pause and rewind. Careers can be destroyed over it. I believe cameras should be reviewed under clear circumstances: use of force, pursuits, police-involved traffic collisions, in-custody deaths, or citizen complaints. If the footage is reviewed during those circumstances and an officer is found not to have activated the camera, then an investigation should be — and would be — warranted. That’s accountability — clear, consistent, and fair.
But to dig through footage just to see if an officer toggled it on quickly enough — that isn’t accountability. That’s a gotcha system, and it makes officers hesitate when hesitation can get you hurt or worse.
By 2019 I was miserable. For years I loved my job, but now I sat alone in a car for hours at night, in the field in a dark, secluded location, ready to respond to supervisor requests and counting down the days. I didn’t have kids. My pension was secure. I could walk away with 56 percent. So I did.
Before making the decision, I called my father. I told him what I was going through — the politics, the second-guessing of field officers, the way leadership seemed more focused on optics than backing their people. His response told me everything: “Mike, that is exactly what I would do. Get out while you can.”
That’s the difference between 1981 and 2019. My father was forced out by injury, but supported by the department. I was forced out by politics, after the department stopped supporting its officers.
This is what Los Angeles is losing: veteran cops — men and women with decades of experience — walking away before their time because the job has been turned into political theater. That doesn’t just hurt the officers. It hurts the city. When you hollow out the middle of a police department, you lose the mentors, the street knowledge, the backbone. What’s left is inexperience, hesitation, and a leadership class more worried about City Hall than public safety.
I loved the LAPD. I loved serving. But I couldn’t keep doing a job where politics mattered more than policing. If nothing changes, more good cops will do what I did — retire early, walk away, and leave Los Angeles with a department stretched thinner and weaker than ever.
Without respect and support for the backbone officers who keep the department running day after day, leadership will soon find themselves in a bind. If the department doesn’t change course, captains and command staff may find themselves back in patrol cars, answering radio calls they no longer have the people to cover.
(Michael Barone is a retired LAPD Sergeant, Serial #33210, with 23 years of service. He writes about public safety, law enforcement history, and civic accountability.)
