Community Relations: DR-10

Community Relations

I'm this episode I found quite a few feathers to add the Dragnet hat. I find the little details in structure and salute those who do it.

OJ Simpson is in this episode along with Olympian Rafer Johnson.

Don Marshall , Rafer Johnson and OJ Simpson all have roles in this Dragnet episode. Like all episodes this one is just as thorough as all yet it has a star Olympian , a future popular actor, and a future celebrity athlete in a young Orenthal James Simpson.

Community Relations may be as relevant today as it was in the year it was produced. Issues don't change only clothes and hairstyles evolve out and back in to style.

Sometimes our best lessons are not on reality TV but on well written and thought out characters and plots without the action and super-violence .

I.

Officers Gannon and Friday are trying to persuade a group of community college students in East LA to join the LAPD. It's a diverse bunch, before the word "diverse" entered the vernacular, with a large number of African American students. They convince African American officer Dave Evans to talk to the group. Several of the students seem interested, but there is one heckler that questions everything. Later it is learned that several of the students were thinking of joining the force except for one thing that Gannon and Friday don't know - Dave Evans has put in his resignation! Complications ensue.

There are some things that date this episode - Such as one of the black officers referring to himself with what is now considered to be a slur. Also, note that one of the students in the community college classroom is a very mute O. J. Simpson in his first appearance on TV or film. I hope he didn't join up! Yikes!

It's pretty interesting from a historic point of view to look back on the problems black officers probably had in the late 1960s even when working on big city police forces in areas of the country that didn't have deep rooted and historic problems with prejudice. I'd recommend it.

Constructive dialogue about race relations. Relevant message for today.Shows need for police, and it's wrong to brandish officers as racist. Like a number of episodes it's dialogue heavy. More action makes for memorable stories.