MY REPLY TO THE HOOKER CRITICS

On other messageboards, and websites, I've seen critiscm of the show being unrealistic because Hooker & co are always involved in the action.

However, my reply would be as follows:

The show is set in a large city. Lets presume its LA, the second largest US city, in the world largest urban area. Many landmarks are from LA, signs, places, names etc. so lets not be annoying - lets just settle on an alternate-LA with LCPD as the police force.

In real life there are currently 12,000 staff in the LAPD. Of whom 9,000 are officers and 3,000 are civilians. However according to wikipedia.org there were only 7,000 officers during the under-staffed 1980s and 2,000 civilians.

So lets presume the LCPD is covering Los Angeles in the 1980s, and that there are 7,000 officers as in the 1980s.

Lets say that half of officers are involved in street patrol (i.e. the rest are detectives, in drug enforcement, administration, prisons etc.). This is probably a massive overestimation, but that leaves 3,500 street-patrol officers. The real-life LAPD is divided into 19 areas, and each area has a varying number of stations.

So 3,500 divided by 20 (remember some overall support staff) is 175. Then divide this again into the stations, which we will presume are precints. I've only got to Episode 14 so far - I'm new to Hooker! - but in 'Terror at the Academy' I know that the rebellious officer rifles through maps in a drawer called Precint Stations taking photos. The top map is 'River Precinct' the next is 'Park Precint' then he gets to 'Academy Precint' and there is another below which flashes by too fast to read. So even if we presume there are just 4 in the area, then our 175 officers become around 35 per precint.

So bearing in mind 3 shifs a day, we're talking no more than 16 officers - or 8 cars - on patrol in each precinct at one time, with less at others, before we've even considered all higher ranks like Sheridan, or desk staff like Stacey, or tow truck drivers, gatesmen etc. or holidays, injuries, etc. So realistically I'd say during daytime we're talking no more than 6 cars per precint on duty at a time.

Lets draw this to a conclusion then. If the Academy Precinct is the HQ station for the whole area, which has at least 4 precints, it will have at least 24 cars - likely more, for overlap/repair/training/emergencies etc.

What does this tell us? Well, a number of things. For a start, 4Adam30. We know the last number varies often - could the last number be the area car? And the first number, it varies once so far - is it the area? And Adam - could this be that its a black-and-white opposed to a detective car, tow truck etc.

Then flip this back up - the city of LA has a population of almost 12M in the direct urban area alone. With around 20 areas running a minimun of 4 precints of minimum 6 cars each, we're talking 400-500 black-and-whites on duty at a time. This is still 1 car and 2 officers per 24,000 people minimum, more during the day when people commute in for work, though there will be more officers on duty then presumably.

So to my mind, since the show is set during a "crime-wave" its not unrealistic to presume each officer team will have something major to deal with regularly. And each episode runs over between 3 and 6 days, so again 1 major thing a week is not unduly great.

Also, on the subject of the Academy - well with a total number of officers of 7,000 of all types and ranks, spread between ages of say 20 and 45, we're talking about 300 reaching compulsory retirement age every year. Add in at least that number again for early retirement/withdrawal, and say the same again for injuries, not up to job, crooked cop etc. and we're saying LCPD needs almost 1,000 new recruits every year to break even. Plus theres a crime wave so want MORE officers. Well, its made apparent that each stage of training takes about 3 months. So 4 sets of recruits graduate each year. And even if Police Academy is the only training establishment in the whole city, we see at least 200 recruits running at one time on the track. Since they will be more than 1 training group, and many recruits drop out, it would be realistic that there might be 400 recruits per 3 months, producing say 300 finished officers minimum? Well thats 1,200 a year. Voila!!

Oh and yeh - I do believe Hooker has THAT many friends who are always involved!!