Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [19]
At first, the LASD system seemed to be moving me through faster, so I thought I’d be heading there. When I went to complete the background info stage, I had to fill out all this paperwork on my family and personal life.
“I see your dad worked for the police department,” the deputy sheriff said as he looked over the paperwork. “Why aren’t you interviewing there?”
“My sister’s a deputy for the sheriff’s department,” I said, “and there seems to be more opportunity for me here.”
This deputy sheriff had worked for the Special Enforcement Bureau, which is their version of SWAT. “I really don’t know the LAPD, but we did some training with their SWAT Unit. There was this one crazy guy who would stick his badge pin in his arm.”
If I could’ve shrunk into the chair and disappeared altogether, I would’ve. He was talking about my dad. As he talked to other officers, my dad liked to sterilize his pin with a lighter and sit expressionless while he stuck the three-inch steel spike into his arm. He wanted people to think he didn’t feel any pain. His forearms had loads of tattooed dots, permanent marks from the burned carbon.
“Have you ever heard of him?” the deputy sheriff said.
I just looked at him. “I haven’t.”
It wasn’t that I was embarrassed. I just didn’t think they’d look at the relationship as a plus. Yeah, let’s hire the son of the wacko guy.
In the hiring process, I also had to fill out a questionnaire that listed recreational drugs. As I’ve mentioned, I never tried anything other than steroids, which were legal at the time, and alcohol, so I marked that down, handed in my sheet, and waited to take the mandatory polygraph test.
Shortly after, a woman came into the room. “I don’t think you understand the way this test works. If you lie, you will be disqualified. It’s okay if you’ve experimented with marijuana.”
“I haven’t,” I said again.
She looked at me like I was a kid elbow deep in the cookie jar.
“You’re telling me you never experimented with marijuana? At all? Not even a little puff?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, you realize you’re going to fail the test if you lie.” She shrugged, fed up with the game she thought I was playing.
But I wasn’t playing. Not even close.
Screw this, I thought, but I collected myself. “Ma’am, I told you how many times, I’ve never used marijuana. I have never taken any drug. Either you believe me or you don’t.”
I passed the test, though I’m sure I got no extra points for congeniality. The woman and her polygraph test irked me so much I told myself I wouldn’t go into the LASD if the LAPD made an offer.
Thankfully, I passed all my tests with the LAPD as well, so the choice was mine.
The thing about this whole interviewing and testing ordeal is that you don’t get paid for it. It’s like one long, maniacal interview from hell where you wade through medicals, background checks, physicals, and other evaluations just to wait to see if you get a job, which could take months or years depending on how many slots need to be filled at any given time. After all this, they give you a hire date and you’re off to the academy for training.
At the time I applied, the LAPD was brimming with about 6,400 officers, which was a relatively robust number. Newspapers today say the LAPD underpays and is understaffed. When I was looking to get hired, the process was slow and arduous because the 1984 Olympic Games were taking place in Los Angeles and eating up the city’s budget, so the department had instituted a hiring freeze.
A year and a half passed from the time I started testing till the day I was hired. In the meantime, I had to stay busy with other work and keep out of trouble. I accomplished one of the two.
A good distraction for me was my upcoming wedding. Since I was twenty-two years old and Elaine was eighteen, you can imagine our parents’ reaction. None of them had a problem with our chosen mates, but they all thought we were way too young to get married. Elaine’s parents pretty much paid