All photos by Joseph Rodriguez
A new book offers never-before-seen photos of the LAPD in 1994
Two years after the LA riots, Brooklyn photographer Joseph Rodriguez embedded with the LAPD which was attempting to fix its image
In 1994 the New York Times Magazine assigned photographer Joseph Rodriguez to ride along with cops from the Los Angeles Police Department, photographing them at work. Today, for the first time, those images and attendant commentary are available to view for the first time in an online exhibition at the Bronx Documentary Center, and new book published by the Artists Edition called LAPD 1994.
A documentary photographer born and raised in Brooklyn, Rodriguez gained unprecedented access to the department, hoping to give readers a story about LAPD’s new “kinder, gentler cop.” Of course, 1994 was just two years after the protests that erupted when four officers were acquitted on charges of beating Rodney King. The LAPD needed a public image makeover.
Rodriguez was embedded with officers from several divisions and branches, including some of the more notorious ones: the anti-gang unit “CRASH,” which literally stood for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, the Rampart Division, and the homicide unit.
“For several weeks, I rode day and night in the back of police cars, taking photos,” Rodriguez writes today. “Given the potential revolution around policing in the U.S. taking place right now, the time has come to share them with a wide audience. The photos are a reminder that the same problems we are reckoning with today—systemic racism, violence against community members, corruption—have been around for decades.”
Here are a few of those images, for more be sure to visit the BDC for more or check out the book here.
LAPD Rampart division officers feel the heat from all sides— from the mayor, their superiors and citizens like this man, assaulted by gang members, who complains about the lack of police protection.
(Courtesy Joseph Rodriguez)
Pacific Division Officer Hoskins tries to pry open the door of a truck involved in an accident that left the driver and passenger locked in the overturned vehicle.
(Courtesy Joseph Rodriguez)
A man arrested for threatening a family member with a knife is questioned in a Rampart Station holding cell by Officer Jim Edwards.
(Courtesy Joseph Rodriguez)
Pacific Division officers confront a man found squatting in an apartment building garage.
(Courtesy Joseph Rodriguez)
A murder suspect is arrested at the Mar Vista Gardens housing project as his family watches.
(Courtesy Joseph Rodriguez)
Vice Squad officers arrest and book prostitutes at the Rampart Division.
(Courtesy Joseph Rodriguez)
At an abandoned Westlake motel near Skid Row, de facto living quarters for dozens of people without homes, CRASH unit officers search for a murder suspect.
