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No.207 SIM音読用英文

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Museum Highlights Los Angeles Police History, Hollywood Connections
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The Los Angeles Police Museum is housed

in an old station house,

and it tells the story of a lawless western town

that slowly developed into a modern city.

Los Angeles got its first paid police force in 1869,

and part of the department's early history is shown

in an exhibit of handcuffs, locks and other restraints.

Glynn Martin, executive director of the Los Angeles Police Historical
Society,

points to three exhibit cases,

opposite a row of empty jail cells.

"Some great stuff, and it dates back well into the 1800s

at the start of handcuffs.

We've got things like balls and chains.

And we've got foreign and domestic handcuffs, and different types of
restraints

used throughout more than a century

of the history of handcuffs."

Martin, a retired LAPD watch commander, points

to a police radio from the 1950s, and a modern vehicle-mounted
computer.

Further on are the lights from a police patrol car

and, upstairs, old uniforms.

One from the 1890s features a helmet

like those still worn by some British police patrolmen.

The exhibits also show the interplay

of the LAPD and Hollywood.

There are two wallet badges

with the picture-identifications of two fictional detectives

from the radio and television show Dragnet.

Martin says a spin-off series called Adam-12

would bring the department

into the homes of Americans.

"For us, what it meant was

the LAPD came into the living room

of folks that had TV sets.

The trials and tribulations of a day-to-day detective

and all the trappings that went along with that

were now in the living room,

and that could definitely increase the understanding

of what it meant to be a police officer

here in Los Angeles during that time."

The department has been featured in many movies,

including L.A. Confidential and the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon series.

The museum also tells the story

of a real-life incident in 1997,

when two heavily armed bank robbers battled police

for 44 minutes in the North Hollywood section of the city.

As police radioed for reinforcements,

the bank robbers fired some 1,200 rounds ammunition

in a ferocious shootout

caught by television news cameras.

The LAPD story has more than its share of heroism,

but it also has its dark side,

from corruption in the department's early days

to the scandals and racial incidents of the 1990s.

The police beating

of a black motorist named Rodney King

would spark citywide riots in 1992,

after a jury acquitted four accused officers.

The LAPD story,

says retired officer Glynn Martin,

is well worth the telling。
    
By Mike O'Sullivan Los Angeles (23 August 2007)
(Material is provided courtesy of voanews.com.)
by danueno | 2007-08-29 16:01 | SIM音読用英文


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