Photos give a glimpse into LAPD history
An archive of images spanning from the Prohibition era to Woodstock -- which was once slated for destruction -- exhibits the evolution of the city and policing.
A man lies on the tiled floor illuminated by the afternoon sun as blood streams from a head wound, out an open door and onto the sidewalk.
The grisly incident, immortalized by one of the Los Angeles Police Department's crime scene photographers, was shot inside a dark hallway in July 1932, after a deadly shooting at a Vermont Avenue jewelry store.
Another vintage black-and-white image, circa 1955, shows several detectives in fedoras and overcoats standing over a dead body in the rain-swollen Los Angeles River.
Still another offers a tight shot of a sofa and bloodstained newspaper, leaving the clear impression that an unseen victim met an untimely end.
The prints are part of an immense photographic archive discovered earlier this decade that was tucked away in a corner of the LAPD's downtown evidence storage facility.
Once slated for destruction, the collection of nearly a million pieces -- the majority of them film negatives -- span from the Prohibition era to Woodstock, a period of prolific growth in Los Angeles.
Besides violent crime scenes, LAPD cameras captured the mundane: A police officer directing traffic along Broadway; a vehicle mangled in an accident; mug shots; close-ups of evidence such as spent bullets and, in later years, commemorative and promotional shots of a department that, through television shows like "Dragnet," was gaining worldwide attention.
Those who have worked with the collection, including selecting prints for shows and a coffee table book published several years ago, say that beyond the aesthetics, the photos speak volumes about the evolution of the city and changes to policing.
Early crime scene photos have a more artistic quality even in the most gratuitous scenes, said Tim B. Wride, who has curated an exhibit of the photos.
"The photographers enlisted by the Police Department to document situations were photographers first," Wride said. "They became police who were photographers, and then police who were photographers and knew forensics. As you professionalized the department, you professionalized the pictures."
Eventually, the photos appeared "more sterile," said Wride, as the photographer's eye became secondary to how the photograph fit into an investigation and prosecution.
What's captured by the camera was also changing, according to Merrick Morton and his wife, Robin Blackman, archivists for the LAPD collection.
