As a cop, I dealt with every kind of bum and criminal. They all have more integrity than some Hollywood people.
Civil servants take forever to do anything.
Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.
I certainly believe it's over for the jury system, but we won't admit it for a while.
I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books.
I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.
I hadn't done anything in six years; I was just vegetating.
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.
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.
Jury selection is strictly an emotional process. They're looking for people they can manipulate. Both sides are.
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.
Probably 95 percent of the things that are written never get on the screen.
The O.J. Simpson case, they had no understanding of that DNA evidence, and didn't want to.
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.
The serial arsonist is the most difficult to apprehend because the evidence is burned up.
The time has come for professional jurors.
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.
Today, lawyers are attacking more; they're attacking everything. A good example is the O.J. Simpson case.
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.
What is it about the component of fire? People have written about it. People have wondered about it.
When I interview people accused of capital offenses, I never even ask if they did it. I would consider that unprofessional.
When I wrote The Onion Field, I realized that my first two novels were just practice.
You've got people who are looking at DNA evidence and other evidence like that and they're ignoring it.
Wambaugh stated in a 2000 interview that he does not believe that the LAPD is inherently racist or corrupt.
Wambaugh's favorite novel in Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
Wambaugh wrote screenplays for the movie versions of his novels The Black Marble and The Glitter Dome.
In recent years, Wambaugh has taught screenwriting courses as a guest lecturer for UC-San Diego.
Wambaugh allegedly paid Pennsylvania prosecutors to funnel him information for use in his book, Echoes in the Darkness. These allegations led to the suspect's conviction being overturned.
Wambaugh resigned from the LAPD in order to publish his novel The Choirboys. Because of the novel's controversial nature he feared retribution.
Wambaugh's first two novels, The New Centurions and The Blue Knight, were published while he was still a member of the LAPD.
Wambaugh was a member of the LAPD from 1960 to 1974 rising from patrolman to detective sergeant.
Wambaugh's father was a police officer in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
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