Wednesday, February 8, 2012

WAS THAT REALLY EDDIE HASKELL?

While I was in the LAPD Police Academy, they would have role playing situations for the recruits where they would have staff personnel acting as suspects in field situations.  On this one day, we were doing vehicle pullovers.  The first recruit officer went through his run and then returned to our group with a quizzical look on his face.  We all asked him how it went.  He said, “You’re not going to believe this, but the driver of the car was Eddie Haskell, the real Eddie Haskell, and he talked and acted just like him.”  Eddie Haskell was the character on the TV show ‘Leave it to Beaver’ when we were kids.  Haskell was the guy who was overly polite to everyone’s parents and was mean and ornery behind their backs.  Everybody of my generation remembered him. 
 We all thought the first guy was hallucinating until it was our turn.  Sure enough, it really was Eddie Haskell.  Well, actually, it was LAPD Officer Ken Osmond, the actor who played the character of Eddie Haskell in the show.  After the show had its full run, he had joined the LAPD.  At the time I was in the academy, he was one of the staff instructors.  He looked exactly as he did when he was on TV.  He later became a motorcycle officer with the department.  Can you imagine getting pulled over by a motor officer and getting a traffic ticket and looking up and seeing it was Eddie Haskell!  I’m sure he had a lot of funny stories as to how people reacted to him when he cited them.
The dangers of police work caught up to Ken Osmond.  He went in foot pursuit of a suspect who shot him three times.  Two shots hit him in the chest, but luckily he was wearing a bullet proof vest.  The third shot ricocheted off of his belt buckle and he survived.  He eventually retired from the job.

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