Guardian of the Law

On a
recent Saturday about 2 p.m. Mrs. Joan Wheeler, 21, six months
pregnant, began having pains. Her husband Ernest, 27, phoned the
doctor, who said to take her to the hospital immediately and he would
meet them there.

The husband put a robe around his wife, carried
her to the car and headed for the West Valley Community Hospital, about
three miles from their home in VanNuys.

He drove fast, he
admits, but stopped for all the signals against him. Incidentally, he
drives between 35,000 and 40,000 miles a year on his job.

About
halfway there a motorcycle officer pulled him over. Wheeler said it was
an emergency. He indicated his wife, lying on the front, seat, bleeding
badly.

THE OFFICER said profanely that it was no excuse
for speeding. Wheeler asked him to escort them to the hospital and he
could write them up there.

When they reached the hospital the
officer wanted to write the citation before Mrs. Wheeler was admitted.
Then, Wheeler says, the officer followed him inside and prevented him
briefly from seeing his wife. Finally a hospital attache made him wait
outside.

Perhaps the officer was not to blame. It seems to be
rigid LAPD procedure that writing a traffic ticket must come ahead of
everything.

Wheeler, outraged, pleaded not guilty and asked for a jury trial.

When the case came up in Van Nuys court last Thursday the officer said Wheeler had been traveling 65 m.p.h on Balboa Blvd. between Victory and Burbank Blvds. He admitted traffic normally went 45 although it was posted 35.

Wheeler,
armed with the hospital records, backed by his employer, had no
opportunity to tell his side of the story to the jury, which included
eight women. After the officer's testimony the prosecutor chatted
briefly with the judge, who dismissed the case.

The outcome was irrelevant anyway. Mrs. Wheeler lost her baby and is still recovering from the ordeal.

::

ONLY IN L.A. — Everyone who caters to the whims of blue jays
thinks he has the craziest one in town. Comes now a lady named Hilda
who reports the clown in her back yard buries bits of bread in a mound
of Red Star fertilizer, and when they're too hard to eat when he digs
them up he dunks them in a water dish.

::

WISH YOU WEREN'T HERE

If egos weren't so strong,
Meetings wouldn't be for as long.

-GLADYS FOREMAN

::

 A MAN WHO
last week turned in his large, heavy, expensive Detroit made car on a
sleek little foreign job has already noticed a big psychological
difference. Twice in the last few days other drivers have asked for
help. One called out. "Hey, buddy, how far is Western Ave.?" Never
happened when he sat, a man apart, in the big car.

::

A TROUBLED
young man threatened to leap off the 12-story Broadway Arcade Building
last week, you may remember, and when he didn't some of the nearly
3,000 persons assembled below taunted him by yelling "Jump!" and when
he didn't called him "Chicken!"

It was morbid, all right, but
Mario Corona defends the crowd. This is an impatient age. People,
conditioned by the shoot-em-up guys on TV, want action. And here was
this youth up there on the building, stalling. What was he trying to
do, waste their time?

::

MISCELLANY
— Recommended reading: Peter Ustinov's short story, "The Aftertaste,"
in the May Atlantic. Which prompts the question: How can one man have
so much talent? … Reporter Jimmy Wilson didn't know whether he should
be prepared for a boy or girl so hecross-filed — got some of each. The
big event happened over the week end. "Anybody want to buy a box of
'It's a girl!' cigars?" he asks … Suggested slogan for an
extermination firm: Is this thrip necessary?