Getting in the LAPD's Police Academy

The daughter of a retired LAPD officer, author Ann Patchett writes in Sunday's Washington Post Magazine about her struggle to get into the LAPD's Police Academy. Her new novel, Run, will be published in September and is about the department.

Inspired by the 1992 riots, Patchett said she wanted to understand why people are motivated to become cops.

Ted Koppel and then-police chief Daryl Gates were picking through the rubble of South Central Los Angeles. They were talking about the riots and Rodney King.

"There's a guy who did some good things for the city and some bad things," my father said about Gates. "But all that's over. Now he'll only be remembered for this."

My father had retired from the LAPD two years before. With Koppel and Gates in the background, we fell into a conversation about how the police force had been portrayed so often over the decades and yet was so rarely understood. Somewhere in my brain, a little light bulb switched to bright: I decided to write a book about the LAPD.

"You want to be a cop?" my father asked. Even with two books behind me, he still felt I lacked a professional calling.

"Not at all. Not even a little bit. I want to understand why other people want to be cops."