Here on Our American Stories, we often discover that the strength of our nation lies not just in our shared ideals, but in the diverse ways we approach common challenges. Have you ever considered that the very idea of policing might be understood in dramatically different ways from one coast to the other? Today, we hear from former LAPD Sergeant Bob Olinez, a law enforcement veteran whose career put him on the front lines, even famously fingerprinting serial killer Richard Ramirez, the notorious Night Stalker. Sergeant Olinez will unveil a fascinating divide in how police officers operate and protect communities across America, sparking a crucial conversation about public safety.
This isn’t just about different cities; it’s about two distinct policing philosophies that shape our neighborhoods: one that responds to crime after it happens, and another that actively works to prevent it. From the historical roots with Sir Robert Peel’s reactive policing in London to the proactive, frontier justice of Wyatt Earp in the American West, these policing strategies define everything from how suspicious activity is handled to how police protect residents. Bob Olinez shares powerful, firsthand insight into how these fundamental differences impact crime prevention and community well-being, prompting us to consider what kind of law enforcement truly builds a safer future for us all.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
I was working in West L.A., in the Brentwood area, and actually a few blocks from where O.J. actually lived off of Rockingham. That’s right in a very affluent area of L.A. and the pretty large mansions and homes. So, it was around two or three in the morning, and on our radio frequency, the other officers contact us, says, “Hey, come on back and back us up.” We see some suspicious vehicle, and they observed this car was a ’74 for Penzo, and it was pretty much a jalopy at that time. So, Rich Ramirez was driving down the street, and he looked like he was pulling into a driveway. He would look out, it back up, go to another residence. So, here’s case in the homes, and we pulled them over. We order him out of the car. He’s cooperating with us, and he looks a mess. And so, that’s the edge of law enforcement. And that’s where you have to decide what you want police officers to do. Do you want them to wait until a crime has occurred and then apprehend the person, or do you want them to do what we do and be proactive and stop these guys? You guys are asleep at night, and you don’t want to be murdered in the middle of the night. And so, I would expect people would want their police officers in their neighborhood to be proactive and figure out what’s going on: “What is this guy doing in the neighborhood?” And at the very least, if nothing happened, we would chase him out. So, that comes up to the concept of policing. And there’s two concepts. One: When policing started in the 1820s, it was by a guy named Sir Robert Peel (P-E-E-L), and he designed policing in London. Now we’ve become a modern city. How do we regulate and control just a massive amount of people in this little area? So, he came up with this idea of reactive policing. So, you have a police officer that is assigned to a footbeat, and it’s one or two block in distance, and he would walk up and down. He becomes familiar with the neighborhood or with the businesses, and then when a crime occurs, you summon the police officer. He would come over, and he would either stop a crime that’s occurring, or if a did occur, then they would get a hold of the detectives at Scotland Yard, and they would—Scotland Yard would come out—take over the crime scene, and then the police officer would continue walking up and down. This speak. That’s called reactive policing. You react to a crime that just occurred. So, on the East Coast of our country, that is the system that we have. So, in New York, you have an insane number of people. You know, I think right now there’s like forty-six thousand police officers because it’s very labor intensive, and that in the Philadelphia, Boston—all of those guys have that concept. As we started developing our country and going to the West, we started into proactive policing, and that’s where you see Dodge City and Tombstone, and you see the Wide Herbs and all those guys, because we know that we have criminals coming into the town. They’re escaping the East Coast, and so now they’re coming into the West. You got all these bandits coming in. So, we’re not going to wait for them to come in a crime. We know what they’re doing. So now, that’s proactive policing. We’re going to have the Wide RBS out there confront these guys, stop them, kick them out of town, and get rid of them. That’s what it is. And so, Los Angeles was built on proactive policing. And so, the difference is that when I was a police officer in the ’80s, we had sixty-four hundred police officers. And at the time that I made that arrest in 1984, Chicago had seventeen thousand police officers. New York had twenty-six thousand. But when you look at the F.B.I. crime stats, L.P. arrested one hundred thousand people more a year than New York did. So, how do you do that? We have sixty-four hundred officers versus twenty-six thousand. And how does that happen? And that’s because we’re proactive. We’re doing what we did that night with the Knight stuck there. We see something, we’re going to be proactive. We’re going to find out what’s going on there. And in this case, we made an arrest. In New York, they would just let them drive by and just wait until something happened, or they hear a window break and maybe respond. And that—that’s reactive. So, those are the two concepts in law enforcement. And we see a change in law enforcement when Willie Williams was hired from Philadelphia. That was right after Chief draw case. So, our city managers decided that maybe we should start doing the reactive policing, and since then, it’s been this long struggle. To actually, today, I’m reading in the paper where the city council is looking into removing the pretext stops. Pretext means: I see that broken taillight, I’m going to use that as a reason to stop investigating and find out what’s going on. And I think that the proactive policing is the where to go, especially now we’ve got all these illegals that have come through that we have no idea who they are, but they’re coming from countries—third world countries—that hate us, and so I think that reactive policing is not going to work. Proactive policing. Well, so, that’s the whole thing about Rich Ramirez, and you know, for me, it’s a lesson on policing. And you know, what do you want the police officers to do? And when they do do something like we did, are they going to be vilified? And that’s where the officers are today: They’re not doing productive policing because now they’re accused of being racist, like this judge. You know, he’s accusing us of basically pulling over because he’s—Oh, that was the other thing he said. If Rich Ramirez got into an argument with his wife or girlfriend and he decided to get in the car and blow off steam, and he should be able to drive anywhere in the city, and that gets stuffed by the police just because he’s in a white neighborhood. That was his scenario that he gave us at that time. Theoretically, yeah, you’re right, but you’re going to pull into a neighborhood, and you’re going to drive around and stop and pull into driver, get out. So, that’s where you’re going to rely on professional guys like me and my partners to determine the difference between somebody that’s desponding and blowing off steam, and somebody that looks like he’s break into a house, and we should have that ability to make that investigative stop. Otherwise, you would have killed somebody in Brentwood.
And a terrific job on the editing and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to LAPD Sergeant Bob Alinas—the story of two different styles of policing: East and West Coast. Here on Our American Stories. Here are Our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith, and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told. But we can’t do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love Our American Stories in America like we do, please go to Our American Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s Our American Stories dot com.
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