You know what, stupid? At least this guy Ken Hiebert has made an effort to go back through all his old photographs and share them with the world. He could just as well have said "screw it, I'll keep them to myself" and avoid a$$bites like you from just throwing out a derogatory comment.

This picture is pretty old. How do you know it's not faded or damaged? Consider too that this was long before digital cameras. You took a picture and it was much later that you discovered it was out of focus. By then, it was too late and you are stuck with what you got in the first place.

My advice to you, if you can do better than everybody else, open up your own site. Until then, don't start leaving ignorant comments.

Duhhhhhhhhhhhhh! was your lens out of focus or your brain???

Yah, I can see that these cars would be hard to see at night, especially since they have no reflectors, no reflective graphics, no parking or head lights, no emergency equipment at all. In fact, NHTSA has just mandated that NO car can ever be manufactured with anything darker than a medium shade of color just so we can always see them at night.

Do some of you people just sit around making this stuff up?

It had no bearing on safety. The blue cars were the current governor's / LSP admin's choice. When the powers that be changed, the new governor mandated a shift back to white. That is according to some cops who were there at the time.

I have read somewhere that they did not keep this color scheme very long because the cars were hard to see at night. They could have decided they wanted to stick with their tradition also. After all the public is used to seeing LSP drive the white cars with red and blue lettering.

I think the idea was that the dark blue cars were harder to see at night or in poor weather. We await tater's next smarta** comment!

"safety reasons"? That's interesting. I'd love to hear your spin on that. Should we be sending warnings to other police departments with dark blue cars? Do they explode? Melt? Freeze? Where is the danger? What about black cars? Please, tell me more...

It was ababdoned for safety reasons.

It's too bad the LSP abandoned this marking scheme. It looked much classier than the current red lettering on white scheme.

That's what cruisers looked like when I started out. Boy am I getting old!

Just to clarify. They are not BOTH US Army. The Land Rover (the one with the spare on the hood) is British Royal Military Police. Both are parked by the inspection area at Checkpoint Charlie in W.Berlin (where Allied Forces vehicles leaving E. Berlin were searched-for people, and we did catch some).
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Yup, Ken, you are right. I forgot to mention the British unit sitting here.

Dave

thank you for finally answering my question, whoever you are.

First, LAPD went through a very tough budget problem where they didn't get new cars for years. The commission who studied the problems that led up to the King incident recommended that the city start properly funding their police once again. Prime examples were cars that were so old and raggedy that the window frames were barely attached to the doors. Or doors would just fall off when opened. And these were front line units. I seem to remember hearing that at the time, LAPD had not bought new cars in 10 years.

After the recommendations, the city bought nearly a whole new fleet of Caprices.

As for why you didn't see the new cars in the riots, I'm sure they took the ratty cars to the front line, since the order of the day was burn the cop cars.

finest police agency in the land

That's a 1982 you can tell by the front bumper and the emblems on the front fenders for the overdrive which was new.

Actually, somebody did answer the question about the Diplomat, I checked. Besides, I barely discovered the site this weekend which I will call a great site even though the people who run it aren't too friendly. You could have just said you didn't know but instead you basically indirectly called me stupid, which seems to be a hobby for you to do to people on this site.
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What I said was that this must be stupid question week again. If you took that to mean that you are stupid, then that's your opinion. Don't look to me to disagree. I told you where to go to get the answer to your questions yet you still come back here looking for more.

Is this how I deal with people on the street? What difference does it make to you whether I work at a PD, Taco Bell or Chase-Manhattan Bank? I have my opinions. Deal with it.

Greg
copcar dot com

All you could have said was that you didn't know. Boy, I wonder if this is how you respond to people on the job.

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Just the ones who ask stupid questions.

And this was not the first time you asked about it. You left a similar comment on a photo of an NYPD Diplomat asking the same thing. No one answered then either. I'm guessing you're the same guy who left the comment last week chastising the LAPD's Toyota pick-up truck and said it couldn't take the pounding that an American truck could. Take your burning questions about LAPD cars of 20yrs ago and ask them directly and see if you get an answer. Then come back and tell us. That way you'll be adding content to this site ...

Greg
copcar dot com

I'm looking at this picture and seeing that all of the patrol cars were new chevys, for the time of course. Yet I remember the LA riots and remember that the LAPD still drove old vehicles and did not have these cars. Was it that it did not meet their standards or they just did not have the money?
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How in the hell are we supposed to know that? Jeez. Why don't you direct your question to the LAPD as to why they didn't buy a particular model of car? Do you think there was some standardized law enforcement mandate that required PDs to buy Diplomats and Gran Furys in the 80s? Chrysler Corp would have loved that, huh?

This must be stupid question week again. Boy, it sure seems to come often around here....

Greg
copcar dot com

Guess this kind of dispels that old saying "one riot - one ranger".

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Except that these aren't Texas Rangers......

Greg
copcar dot com

pimp!=really cool