Patricia "Patty" Fogerson

Birthplace: Los Angeles, California Career: 1969 - 1994 

Serial No: 14946 

Rank at Retirement: Detective Ill 

Divisions: Wilshire Division, Jail Division, Juvenile Division, Highland Park Division, Internal Affairs Division, 77th Street Division, Public Affairs Division, Personnel Division, Devonshire Division, Training Division, North Hollywood Division, Hollywood Division, Bunco-Forgery Division. 

I started out as a telephone operator right out of high school. One day on the way to work, I saw this little kid, about three years, old, walking down the street by himself. I stopped and I was able to find out where he lived. I get to work and I said, "I was late because this kid was walking down the street." "Well, that's mildly interesting. We're going to dock your pay." Another day, I'm driving to work in my little Volkswagen and I saw smoke up on this hill. I drove up into this hilly area to find the source of the smoke and it was just roofers. My pay was docked that day, too. I was always doing things like that, which really wasn't any of my business, but I felt compelled to get involved. 

So, I gave the telephone company two weeks' notice, and I resigned. A lady that I worked with said, "Why don't you be a policewoman?" She said, "They pay $715 a month." I was making $315 a month. "Okay, I'll be a policewoman." It wasn't the first time I had thoughts of being involved in police work. During the Watts riots in 1965, I just couldn't believe that people would treat other people that way, and I had wanted to help. My husband at the time said that I couldn't join the Department and I accepted his decision. Now I was divorced and my son was three years old. I called up LAPD and they told me that they were not testing at that time, but I put my name on the list. A few months later LAPD called, I took the test, went through the application process, and within seven months, I was hired as a policewoman. 

In February of '69, I'm in the Academy and Sergeant Gusti Bell was the very first policewoman I ever saw. She was our class coordinator along with Sergeant Patty Smith. I was pretty quiet in the Academy, but I got in trouble when we were on this one run. It was one of our first runs and I commented, "Here I come to save the day!" Everyone stopped, and Bob Smitson, our PT instructor, said, "Who said that?" Under my breath, I said, "Mighty Mouse." "Oh, Mighty Mouse. "Which one of you is Mighty Mouse?" Nobody said anything. Finally, I said, "I'm Mighty Mouse." Yeah, I copped out on myself. I was a "burpee queen" for a while after that, but I learned to keep my mouth shut. After that first day, I never got in trouble again in the Academy. We graduated thirty-five in April of '69. 

When I came on, women worked the station front desks, the jail, and Juvenile Division. After I graduated, my first assignment was working the Wilshire Division front desk. I learned how to write reports and to deal with the public, which was great training. Then I transferred to Jail Division at the Van Nuys station. I learned how to search prisoners and how to defend myself. I was there a short time, and then transferred to Juvenile Division at Highland Park Division. I worked sex crimes with Rita Knecht who was a detective. I learned an awful lot about investigating sex crimes from Rita. When I finished probation, I stayed at Highland Park and worked the front desk.  

While at Highland Park, I saw my first dead body. I went to the location with the detectives. The man had taken sleeping pills and written a letter to his family. It was not bloody or anything, but the man was in bed and his mouth was wide open. My big thing was, "Am I going to cry? Am I going to throw up? Or am I going to pass out? What am I going to do here?” You don't know what you're reaction is going to be when you see a dead body. Fortunately, I didn't do any of those things. 

While working the desk at Highland Park, I was loaned to various divisions, including Ad Vice Division. On this one investigation that I worked undercover, Ad Vice was investigating a modeling agency for prostitution activities. I applied to the agency as a model. I was dressed in a hippie look and I had a wire on with my fellow investigators listening in on the conversation. I handed the guy my business card, which said, "Marvin's Models." The guy said, "Marvin's Models? They're a bunch of cops." I said, "You're kidding me!" I started laughing because I got scared. He said, "You're not a cop are you?" "No I'm not a cop." "Well, we're going to have to make sure. You're going to have to take your clothes off." I said, "I can't because it's my time of the month and I'm sunburned," which I was and I kept peeling off my skin. "Well you got to take off your clothes." "Ah, I don't need to take off my clothes. You can see what I look like." I'm going on and on, but I kept laughing when they would say things to me. "You don't have to worry about it if you're on your period. We'll just shoot around it," and they made some crude remarks. Well, the crude remarks they made embarrassed me because I knew the detectives were listening, so I would laugh again. These guys thought I was stoned because I was laughing so much. Finally, they gave me a violation. Because I acted embarrassed by what they were saying, this one guy said, "Well, this guy's gay. You don't care if he's gay do you and have sex with him?" I said, "No, I don't care. Every cat to your own sandbox." They started laughing at that and I went out the door, signaled, and the arrests were made. I went back to the van where the detectives were listening in on the conversation. They just roared laughing over that. It was a good case. 

For the position of Policewoman, there were jobs that were what I called secretarial jobs. No police work involved. I was loaned to Internal Affairs and I had a "secretarial" job. I used to tell people that my job was whether to use a paperclip or a staple. It kind of bored me, to tell you the truth, so I didn't work there very long. 

While I was at Internal Affairs, I was loaned to 77th Division and eventually went to the Recruitment section at Personnel Division. We went to various schools and job fairs to recruit. At the time, Chief Ed Davis did not want women on the job as patrol officers. But eventually he said, "Okay, we're going to start recruiting women for the job." That's when the first unisex class was formed. Chief Davis wanted the females that were going to be police officers to first of all to look like men, men's pants, shirt, tie, everything. Policewomen wore skirts, a uniform blouse, high heels, and a funny little hat. 

Deputy Chief Bob Vernon was the commanding officer of Personnel and Training Bureau and he thought there were not enough women in the police officer program. The philosophy at the time was that the department wanted women on the job but some of the staff at the Academy did not. My Academy class was January 1975. We did everything the same as the men. We excelled in sit-ups, and that was our saving grace, for the physical fitness tests. As part of the modified program agreed to by Chief Vernon, we were allowed to keep our Policewoman badges to retain our ranks, however, one day while we were still in the Academy, a captain looked at our badges and asked why we hadn't change to police officer badges. We said we had an agreement with Chief Vernon. "No, he doesn't remember that agreement." So, we had to change badges. I was so irritated that my blood pressure went up and I didn't do well on a PT test that day. It meant a lot to me. Barbara was so upset, she went out and bought a brand new red Mercedes. She said when she's graduating from the Academy, she's leaving in style. Jeanie had a good attitude about it and she wasn't bothered by it. She did well as an officer and she promoted to sergeant. She was killed later in an off-duty traffic accident. 

After graduation from the Academy, I went to Devonshire Division. I was the first female to work Devonshire as a police officer. The officers knew that I had been a policewoman. They had heard because reputation precedes you. The Department had to hire us, but after that, it was kind of like "what the hell do you do with them?" I left Devonshire and I went to Personnel Division doing background Investigations on new applicants. I was the first female police officer to work backgrounds. Then I went to Hollywood Division as a Detective Trainee, and I worked Sex Crimes.  

I had several cases at Hollywood that stand out. One, I became involved in personally. This young girl went to a teenage club where you could go in and drink, not alcoholic beverages, and dance just like at a regular adult nightclub. She went with a girlfriend, but when the girlfriend wanted to leave, the girlfriend couldn't find her. The next morning the girl had not come home and her parents reported her missing. On the missing report, she was listed as 5'9" with blond hair. How I got involved with it, I had responded to the hospital where an unconscious, very badly beaten up, young female was being treated. 

She had been left for dead, behind a building not far from the same club the missing girl had gone to. She was listed as 5'6." She had so much blood in her hair; they didn't know what color her hair was, so her hair was listed as red. It was believed she had been sexually assaulted. When she finally regained consciousness, she didn't know who she was, and she had no memory of what had happened. I now have a victim in the hospital and I don't know who she is. 

I checked the missing person's reports and came up with the report for the blond girl from the club. I talked to the parents and they offered that their daughter had a freckle on the inside of her finger. I checked my victim at the hospital and she had a freckle on the inside of her finger, it was the missing girl. Now I have her identified, but she did not know her parents. They eventually put her in a home. Four months later, when the swelling in her brain had gone down, she woke up one morning and part of her memory was back, she recognized her parents, but she had no recollection of the night she was reported missing, and specifically of being raped. We never developed a solid lead on the case.  

The family later moved to Santa Barbara. Then one day about seven years later, I got a call from a detective with the Santa Barbara Police Department. He asked, "Do you remember this particular person's case?" "Yes, I do." "Can you tell me anything about it?" I told him everything I knew. "Well we have a head and the left arm of a woman up here that we believe is that girl." He said, "Can you tell me anything that can identify her?" "Well, she has a freckle on the inside of her left finger." It was her. She always felt guilty of the fact she could never identify anybody from the rape or remember what had happened to her. Because of the guilt, she had never really recovered. Her mother had gotten her a job, but the job was somewhat mundane. She responded to an ad for a job as a nanny, and met someone in the parking lot of a supermarket. She was never seen again, until they found her body parts.  

 I kept in contact with the Santa Barbara detectives and one day a woman had called them and reported that her boyfriend had threatened too chop her up "like I did that other girl." Long story short, the detectives thought this boyfriend was the one that killed her, but they couldn't prove anything. 

After a while, I wanted a change from working sex crimes, and I started working the Robbery table. I was the first woman to work Robbery at Hollywood. After I left Hollywood, because I wanted to promote, I probably had sixteen or seventeen years on the job. So I went to work at the Academy. I taught report writing and then I was in charge of the CPA program, the Crime Prevention Assistance Program, and it was fun. One of the things that I always used to tell them was, "don't get your meat the same place you get your bread." What would happen was a woman would date one guy in patrol, and then they'd break up, and then she'd go with another guy in patrol and they'd break up, and then she'd go with another guy in patrol, it was like a kid in the candy store. When I first came on as a Policewoman and worked Wilshire Division, I dated one policeman, then I didn't see him anymore, and I dated another policeman. The second one told me, "You know what? It's not a good idea to go out with cops that you work with because in the locker room, whether you did or didn't, you did." The best thing was not to date cops. In teaching the CPAs, I used the phrase my mother taught me, "Don't get your meat the same place you get your bread." my mother said, "Not a good idea." She was right. 

In '89, I made sergeant and went back to Hollywood Division. I'm the only female sergeant. There were computers in the cars, radios on the officers' belts, and all sorts of stuff they didn't have when I was in patrol ten years prior. Some of the women there knew who I was and some didn't. In the locker room, it was difficult, because I'm a sergeant they're officers. They want to talk about somebody, but they don't want to do it with a sergeant around. I just told them flat out, "Look this is your locker room. Cuss all you want, say whatever you want. If you come to me with a problem, then make sure that I know it's a problem. Otherwise, I'm going to ignore stuff that you say and do, unless it's inappropriate behavior. Unless you come to me officially, I'm just going to get dressed and get the hell out of here and let you vent." It worked out once we had the rules understood. 

At the time of the '92 riots, I was working Bunco-Forgery downtown. When the verdict came out, I was watching it on TV. When it was announced that the verdict was not guilty, it was like go get your uniforms, boys and girls, because we're going to work. Sure enough after we left the building that day, they were starting to raise hell in the streets. The next day I came in and we were sent to the Command Post at 54th Street and Arlington Avenue. I ran into a couple of guys that I had put through the Academy and they said, "Ma'am, they wouldn't let us roll on that call with that guy in that truck. They wouldn't let us go." I don't know who was in charge at the time or if whoever it was, caught hell for the decision. I would say it was scary in the fact that you never knew who was going to come at you just because you're wearing a uniform. That's really the first time I ever felt vulnerable on the job was during the riots. Then we were sent to Hollywood to patrol there. We made a few arrests. We would drive by areas in Koreatown where people were up on their roofs with rifles protecting their businesses. After the riots, one of our assignments was to try to locate furniture that had been taken by looters. We told people that had taken the stuff during the riots, if they returned the items; they would not go to jail. We'd go into these people's houses and they would have a picture of the Blessed Virgin on the wall with stolen furniture in the same room. We had trucks available to transport whatever we recovered to Southeast station. 

In the midst of the riots, I saw this man walking back and forth on the sidewalk in front of his house that had burnt down. It was an older man and he just kept looking at the house as he walked.Watching him, I thought what would I do if somebody burned my house down? Where in the world would you begin? Do you call your insurance company? Do you rent a bulldozer? Where do you go? When I was first married, I wanted to join the police department because of the Watts Riots to help people. Throughout my career, I felt that I was able to do just that. Sometimes that help came by my taking a crime report, investigating a traffic accident, recovering a gun or some narcotics, putting bad people in jail, teaching new recruits, or just by listening to my partner's as they complain about whatever. Sometimes, like with the man whose house had burn down, it was just being there. 

I suppose I could have studied more and promoted sooner. As a single mother without child support, I was busy working off-duty jobs so that I could raise my son. I have no resentments and no regrets about that. Had I promoted sooner, I would not have had the variety of experiences I did. I worked with some very wonderful people, who I respected, and who respected me. My world changed when I joined the police department and I learned a lot about life. I have friendships from my time on the job that continue to this day. I am the past president of the Los Angeles Policewomen's Association; I still socialized with the "Legendary Ladies," an organization of retired police women, and with the Los Angeles Police Officers and Associates Organization. Like taking that kid home or finding the smoke on the hill, I'm still involved, and I have no worries about getting my pay docked!