Joseph Wambaugh Quotations

I would say morale is already crippled, ... And that means you will have less proactive police work. You'll have cops out there who'll say, 'just keep your eyes down, answer your calls, get your pension and retire,' and that's the worst thing that could happen.

There was a lot going on in LA with the Rodney King riots. I was living in San Diego at that time. It didn't get much coverage there.

The scandal, I can tell you for sure, is much smaller than the press would lead you to believe, ... It's driven by the L.A. Times, which hates the administration of the LAPD and has for many years. Part of the fault of that lies with LAPD, for not cozying up to the Times when it should have. I think a police department must give access to the press, and be open with the press, and the LAPD was not for many years, and they're paying the price for it now.

The O.J. Simpson case, they had no understanding of that DNA evidence, and didn't want to.

As a cop, I dealt with every kind of bum and criminal. They all have more integrity than some Hollywood people.

You've got people who are looking at DNA evidence and other evidence like that and they're ignoring it.

It`s corruption never been systemic, because a fish rots from the head

Civil servants take forever to do anything.

If you take 67 brush fires times 10 years, that's almost 700 right there. Those brush fires are incredibly dangerous, all those homes going down proved that.

I'm sure I took some licks at the system, and at trials and lawyers in general. I've seen enough of them for so many years both as a cop and a defendant in defamation cases.

I certainly believe it's over for the jury system, but we won't admit it for a while.

I hadn't done anything in six years; I was just vegetating.

I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

What is it about the component of fire? People have written about it. People have wondered about it.

Jury selection is strictly an emotional process. They're looking for people they can manipulate. Both sides are.

The Onion Field, that one got pretty close to me because I was a cop when it happened. I saw some of the indifference that my police department showed to the surviving officer.

I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books.

When I wrote The Onion Field, I realized that my first two novels were just practice.

The time has come for professional jurors.

No one I know of has ever had this experience-where you had to sit and wait and wait for a DNA test to come back just so you can write the last page of the book.

The Onion Field made a real writer. And then I knew it was over, I couldn't be a cop anymore.

The serial arsonist is the most difficult to apprehend because the evidence is burned up.

Today, lawyers are attacking more; they're attacking everything. A good example is the O.J. Simpson case.

What I didn't know was that if I didn't stand with my back to the wall, Hollywood people would unscrew my ass and sell it down the river.

When I interview people accused of capital offenses, I never even ask if they did it. I would consider that unprofessional.

I was never a wet-eyed, passionate writer; I was always a policeman.

I write a thousand words a day. Nothing will stop me, I mean nothing, until the book is finished. I'm disciplined in spite of myself.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with sin and everything to do with sociopathy, that most incurable of human disorders because all so afflicted consider themselves blessed rather than cursed.

The O.J. Simpson case, they had no understanding of that DNA evidence, and didn't want to.

Probably 95 percent of the things that are written never get on the screen.