Summary
: Just a heads up, this update will contain several slurs and Nazi imagery.
: Now that we’re done with Yo Money, we have to go through the rigamarole of putting the ID card on so we can go back to Parker Center to do paperwork. Hooray.
: You would think that Carey could simply, I dunno, use one 3.14 form for all of this shit since it’s all linked to the same investigation, or do them all at the same time at the end of the day.
: The real reason we came back here is to run Dennis Walker’s name through the crime computer.
: The California Youth Authority was, surprisingly, not a Daryl Gates program. It closed in 2023 and was California’s prison system for offenders under 21.
: Now we can go to the local Nazi den.
: We need to show him the badge - if we don’t, he uses a couple of slurs I won’t bother showing here.
: “I’m Detective Carey, LAPD. Are you Dennis Walker?”
: “Yeah.”
: “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
: “Yeah, c’mon in.”
: This whole situation makes no sense. Why is this guy willingly inviting a cop (who doesn’t have a warrant) into his apartment?
: We can’t talk to him because the music is too loud, so we have to turn it down first.
: I love that it takes Carey so long to switch the radio off that this guy is in another zip code by the time he turns around.
: Then out of nowhere comes a lady with a knife, which we have to immediately use Carey’s gun on to not die. Now, I want to ask you something - how many of you sincerely believe that a cop in Daryl Gates’s LAPD would not have mag-dumped the pistol by now?
: Because this is a well-designed game, we have to take three steps here. The first is to go into the inventory and use the gun on her. We then need to talk to her twice.
: I don’t get why you wouldn’t go for “drop the knife” first. I’m sure a cop would go “Well because then she might have another weapon” but if she has another weapon, why isn’t she using it?
: The second time we talk to her, she drops the knife (which mysteriously disappears) and lets us handcuff her.
: I could barely read the subtitle on this one even when I was recording it, so I’ll transcribe this whole thing.
: “Whew.. that girlfriend of Walker’s is something else! Tough for being so petite!”
: “Hell junior, all women are bears.. god damn grizzly’s [sic]! But if ya thought that li’l tomato was tough, wait till ya meet Garcia’s mamacita! Now that’s one tough bitch!”
: “She’s in giving the Lieutenant an ear full right now… poor son of a bitch!”
: “I am Rosa Garcia. Are you the detective investigating my son’s death?”
: “Yes, I’m Detective John Carey. Let me extend my sincere sympathy for your loss, Mrs. Garcia. I didn’t know Rene personally, but I..”
: “Well, I knew my son, Detective and he was a good boy! He lived at home with me, helped me with my errands, attended church!”
: “I have been told by your Lieutenant and the Coroner that Rene’s poor body was found exposed! I want the person responsible for doing this to my son caught and punished!”
: Are we sure he didn’t die in a sex accident?
: “Yes, Mrs. Garcia, I understand.”
: “Do you understand, Detective? Do you have a son?”
: I covered this last update, but yes and also Daryl Gates called for his death.
: “Well, no…”
: “Well, then you do not understand. Rene helped take care of me. I have heart trouble, I cannot do heavy lifting. Rene cleaned the house, did the laundry, cooked our meals. Maybe, he once in a while would go to a movie, but he didn’t date any of those fast talking, modern-type women.”
: What the fuck is this shit? This sounds like bad TV writing, and.. oh wait, it is. Nevermind.
: “He was waiting for a good girl, he was saving himself, and for what? For some pervert to strip him, murder him! Find who did this to my son!”
: She leaves, and we can fill out yet another 3.14 form. I think this is the only place you can learn the name of Walker’s girlfriend.
: To progress, we need to pick up a memo from Carey’s desk stating that we missed Hickman’s funeral.
: “Katherine, I wasn’t informed about the time. I wanted to be there.”
: “I understand, John. I know how busy you are. I heard about the shooting you were involved in… when I realized you weren’t there today, at first I thought maybe you’d been hurt.. but then the Chief told me you were fine. I was worried.”
: “Thanks for your concern, Katherine, but you don’t need to worry about me. I should’ve called or…”
: It’s kind of amazing that Tammy Dargan had the werewithal to put filler scenes in a game that is really only a couple of hours long if you know what you’re doing.
: I mean, it’s really not, because Tammy Dargan is an incompetent fuckwad of a TV writer. I am thoroughly convinced there is no such thing as a good TV writer.
: “Oh, no… I know how you guys work, it’s your life, I understand. I.. I was wondering how the investigation was going. Nobody would really tell me very much today.. I guess they didn’t want to upset me.”
: Stop fucking repeating yourself! Fuck! Shut the fuck up! This scene isn’t even that long and I’m already getting pissed off.
: “Well, there’s good news. Bob’s name has been cleared of any wrongdoing or involvement with the Washington boy’s death. Bob’s gun was retrieved and ballistics testing cleared it as the murder weapon. However, new evidence suggests that Bob’s death is unrelated to the alley incident.”
: WE ALREADY KNOW THIS, YOU ABSOLUTE SHITFUCK OF A WRITER! You know what this is? This is The Room, only even The Room is better than this trash.
: My headcanon about this, and this makes the game make so much more sense, is that Carey is like the guy from Memento and has no ability to form memories.
: This would explain so much - why he always has to address everyone by name constantly - he has to do it because otherwise he’d forget.
: “Oh, John, that’s horrible.. really horrible.”
: “Katherine, I know this is a rough time for you, but I need to ask you to think back to the night of the murder. Can you think of anything out of the ordinary happening that night.”
: You know, this would be a good time for a Daryl Gates story. There’s a part in Official Negligence where Lou Cannon talks about how Daryl Gates was chosen to be the LAPD chief, and I imagine it’s a lot like how Tammy Dargan got the writing position for this game: by default.
“Gates, who was assistant chief under Davis, placed second on the civil service examination behind an outside candidate, but moved up to first place when credited for his twenty-nine years of service with the department. Under the arcane rules by which the commission was then bound, the outsider was eliminated.” - Lou Cannon, Official Negligence, pp. 91-92
: It’s kind of telling that he didn’t get promoted after William Parker retired, given that he was apparently Parker’s favorite. But wait, there’s a better quote in here:
“Gates had no intention of kowtowing to a part-time civilian commission that had selected him only because it liked the other candidates even less.”
: The other candidates included Robert Vernon (who would go on to be Deputy Chief under Gates and would later go on to blame Tom Bradley for the 1992 riots like the complete dipshit he was) and Charles Reese, who I could find almost no information on other than his obituary from 2004.
: “Bob and I had an argument.. he went out, John. I don’t know where he went, or if he saw anyone. Thing is, he didn’t take our car. I don’t think anyone picked him up. I mean, we started arguing and the whole thing just blew up. He was gone before I really had a chance to understand what happened.”
: “Can you tell me what you argued about?”
: “We fought over his drinking. He.. everything was manageable until he started taking sedatives to calm down from work. The combination made him mean.. he’d yell at Valerie, me.. for no reason. That’s how he left when he went out that night. He’d been drinking and taking pills.”
: I’d be surprised if he had the capacity to even walk after that, given what mixing sedatives and booze usually does.
: Katherine fucks off for the rest of eternity and we can move on with our lives to the next bit of racist bullshit.
: Cool grammatical error there. Anyway, I was wrong about one thing. Yo Money isn’t meant to be anyone from NWA. He’s meant to be Ice T, which is really funny when you realize that these days, Ice T is known far more for playing a cop on Law and Order.
: In 1992 though, Ice T was part of what was basically a metal band called Body Count. Their most memorable song was “Cop Killer”, which released in 1992. It was written before the riots, but after the beating of Rodney King - and was done partially in response to the Rodney King beating.
: The police.. were not big fans of Ice T. Note that they call it a rap song despite it very clearly not being a rap song - this was because they wanted to lump it into the same category as NWA.
: This is, as you can see, totally unrealistic given that the real news media at the time were questioning whether the song would cause people to want to actually kill a cop. The news media was definitely not on NWA or Body Count’s side.
: This screen is a goddamn pixel hunt. You see that little black bowl in the middle of the table, between the three beer glasses?
: We need to use that so that Carey can awkwardly shove some pretzels in his pocket. There’s no way in hell those aren’t going to be dust by the time he leaves.
: There’s a lot of pointless dialog here I’m going to skip, but there is one line..
: The Rampart scandal hadn’t happened yet when this game released, but boy was this a bad choice.
: Carey’s boss then just.. kinda shows up at the bar and tells him to stop drinking, which is a perfectly normal thing that has actually happened (it’s not).
: I checked, and this is in fact a photo of LA’s City Hall. After this game released, the city named a room in it for Tom Bradley.
: What we’re seeing is the city council chamber. I have to wonder what the LA city council’s reaction to Sierra wanting to film here was, especially given that Daryl Gates’s name was on it.
: “The Mayor and the Council want to ask you a few questions. Get up there, and remember, do not divulge anything that could harm the case.”
: This would never happen anywhere in the US, but especially not in LA where the cops are part of a very powerful union. Carey wouldn’t be going up there without a union rep and probably an attorney present.
: The mayor (center, next to the flag) looks to be Tom Bradley, who had left office in early 1993.
: “Miss Bilden, I was briefed about the homicide just this morning as I entered this council meeting. I have not yet been able to confirm or refute its relationship to my current investigation.”
: “Mr. Mayor, the police department has always had to deal with the threat of violence. Tragically, someone has now moved from thought to deed. However, I do not believe there is a threat against the city as a whole or that a random selection process is occurring.”
: “It is my belief that the Los Angeles Police Department is living up to the oath ‘To protect and to serve’.”
: Now for the absolute fucking dumbest part. Let’s say you don’t have the game’s speed cranked all the way down before you leave the bar. You see that guy directly to Carey’s right, with the.. I think those are supposed to be suspenders..?
: Yeah, that’s Dennis Walker, and on the game’s highest speed setting you don’t have the time to react to him. By the way, the game defaults to the highest speed setting every time you load the game.
: On a slower setting, we have time to pull out the gun and do the same exact thing we did to Walker’s girlfriend not even minutes ago. Compelling gameplay, this is not.
: “What a morning I’ve had. First the Mayor and the City Council, and then Walker. Geez, the feds are talking to Walker right now. Apparently he’s a real special case.”
: Not pictured: filling out another 3.14 form.
: We have to do something in this room. Can you guess what it is?
: That’s right, we have to search the ashtray for a pack of matches that are not visible or in any way indicated as existing on the screen. Quality Sierra game design.
: Also not pictured: me doing the gun range again. The only difference is that we fill out a different form, and don’t have to pay for the bullets.
: Like an idiot, I forget to talk to Bottoms before we leave Parker Center, because we need him to tell us where to go.
: “What have you got in the way of updates, Hal?”
: “You’re damn lucky ya got me as a partner, Junior. I got friends everywhere! I was the first one my buddies over at Hollenbeck called. Seems they got the patrol car. Garcia’s patrol car. Seems the damn thing was found abandoned at Hollywood and Vine!”
: “Hollywood and Vine? That wasn’t Garcia’s patrol area, was it?”
: “Hell no it ain’t, Junior! Seems our good son ain’t so good! Either that, or hell, Junior, he was good at somethin’! Damn good.”
: Time for some more pointless bullshit.
: I did a search on the address. It’s still an impound lot, but it’s now a private one.
: We have to use the badge to get in, which causes Carey to do a very awkward-looking crouch.
: “Ah, Beavis? I was told to tell you that Butthead sent me.”
: “Ha! Ho, ha ha, ho! Hey buddy, what do you want?”
: “I’m looking for a patrol car that was brought in from the Hollywood and Vine area. It had been abandoned.”
: You’re… you’re looking right at the patrol car. How many cop cars do you think are going to be in a police impound lot?
: “Well, come on in, buddy!”
: The thing in the middle of the car is a “Mobile Digital Terminal”. I found a pic of an actual one on some guy’s blog. They were essentially really fancy radios.
: I wish they still made desks like these. I would absolutely get one. This is the “Emergency Command Control Communications System” that the MDTs linked to.
: Here’s the stupid part. We have to come back here later to get the license plate number of the car - even though there’s no real reason we couldn’t do that now.
: We’ll tackle those next time.