Joseph Wambaugh Quotes (26 Quotes)

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

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

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Civil servants take forever to do anything.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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