Original subtitles

It stars...

The film was produced by...

For the next 30 minutes...

Officer Tom Porter,

one of 6,000.

An ordinary policeman,

but he was more to me.

He was a friend,

and now he was dead.

When an officer is killed,

the Chief of Police is immediately notified,

along with the commander of the division of occurrence.

He has the responsibility

to make the necessary notifications.

Telling a policeman's wife she's a widow

is a job nobody wants.

I never tried as hard for anything.

He was a friend.

It had to be me.

It had to be me.

I knew Tom's wife when her name was Anderson,

when she and Tom first started going together.

But this was two children later.

Marge Porter.

The magazine told us she'd been waiting up for Tom.

What else could I tell her?

What else could I say?

I was part of it all...

When they met,

when they got married,

when the first child was born

six years ago.

I was part of it all,

a lifetime.

The rain had moved on.

Tomorrow could have been a nice day.

Yesterday was.

City Hall, Los Angeles.

That's where you apply.

Tom Porter and I were no different.

For Tom, any job in the Department would do.

Me, I wanted Motors.

That's where the action was.

I lost,

but we both got what we wanted.

The optimism of youthful ignorance.

66% of recruits

have been known to fail a written exam.

15% have been known to fail the oral.

50% of what's left

can't hack the physical.

That morning at City Hall,

Tom was already figuring

how easy the Sergeant's exam would be.

I booked a ticket for the nearest Turkish bath.

The Los Angeles Police Academy.

They have a saying...

The more you sweat here,

the less you'll bleed on the street.

Sergeant Elroy Carter.

He invented sweat.

Tom made it look easy.

The first five minutes on that drill field,

I was looking around

for the guy who sold the oxygen.

We were dead even in one department...

The bookwork.

There's a popular notion

that all an Academy recruit learns is the following...

How to wear his uniform properly,

how to keep his metalwork polished,

and his shoes shined.

How to wear his hat in the prescribed fashion,

how to write tickets,

and unsnarl traffic jams.

That's all there is to it.

True, but not all.

In 20 weeks, the recruit gets 800 hours of training.

640 of them are spent inside a book,

160 in the field.

He's tested on all of them.

He passes, or he's washed out.

And there was always Sergeant Elroy Carter.

During the first few weeks,

the recruit develops the feeling

that there's a giant conspiracy,

not to get him in... To keep him out.

Tom didn't know it,

but the rest of us did.

It showed right from the start.

He'd end up top man in the class.

Tom only had one problem.

He was a slow learner...

About himself.

For Tom, it was a good deal.

He'd trade a button for a badge any day.

But somehow, you and the calendar swap 20 weeks.

And there you are.

You and a lot of other guys.

Tom was first in everything.

Marge Anderson.

He met her at City Hall the day we applied.

He was still making it a habit,

being smarter than me.

Tom and I both knew that after we graduated,

we'd work together.

He'd be my partner,

I'd be his.

We were both wrong.

Officer Howard D. Brown,

my first partner.

They called him "Brownie."

Somehow the name didn't fit,

but Brownie was some kind of policeman.

He taught me everything I know.

12 months of probation

and four years later,

I was the teacher,

not the pupil.

He called himself Jim Reed,

but it was me five years ago.

♪♪

Crowd control detail.

It's a routine part of the job,

but it seems to come around

about every 20 minutes these days.

Tom and I kept in touch.

Sometimes it was pleasant. Most of the time it wasn't.

Tom didn't say it.

He didn't have to.

I knew.

It had already happened to me.

He was sick.

He wanted to vomit.

There's no antidote for it.

He'd killed a man.

Tom never made the same mistake once.

He did everything right.

Two years before,

Marge first increased the Census.

Tom was good at addition.

This time they drew a little girl.

I helped deliver the package.

Reed's attention span was improving by the minute.

He remembered the cigars.

Roll call,

P.M. watch about to get under way.

Here the police officer gets the word

on things to do today.

Each team receives the daily-updated hot sheet.

Tenderloin areas of patrol are indicated.

Officers assigned to the basic car plan operation

are briefed on special problems.

New investigative and procedural techniques

are introduced and discussed.

Here the police officer refines his knowledge,

his skills, his know-how.

Today was no different from any other,

except for a new transfer.

Los Angeles has almost 200 miles

of interconnecting freeways.

There's one problem...

Some people want to drive them before the cement is dry.

And some people drive in a stolen car.

And some people run out of freeway.

She was pretty.

She was a model.

It was her boyfriend's car.

She didn't know it was stolen.

She was late for an appointment.

She thought she'd found a shortcut.

One thing you could say about Reed,

he was an art lover.

End of watch.

Continuation of paperwork.

Every minute on the clock, every move in the field,

must be recorded.

They say that in his lifetime,

the words a policeman writes in his daily reports

could stock a library.

It was always the same.

Tom did more than his share.

He said it every day...

"End of watch...

"two single men could put the time to better use."

One thing was certain.

Young Mr. Porter would put a dent in the fried chicken.

Whenever two policemen pay an unexpected visit

to a fellow officer's home,

it's always a good idea to carry a calling card.

That way, his wife doesn't worry.

Not too much.

Marge was grateful. She'd burned the meatloaf.

Reed could have done ten minutes

on why I insisted on chicken

instead of pizza.

You don't have to be a policeman to appreciate

the two greatest words in a child's vocabulary...

"Daddy's home."

Union Block and Cement Company.

It takes a lot of concrete to flesh out the blueprints

for an expanding city.

The plans did not include

three escaped mental patients.

Somehow they had cut across town

and made their way here.

We had to find them.

And that's the way it goes...

Some days.

The citation read in part,

"Officer Tom Porter's actions

"were in the highest tradition

"of the Los Angeles Police Service."

The Medal of Valor is the highest award

the Department can bestow.

Table 32 had a corner on pride that day.

And just that quick,

it was all over.

He was gone.

A police officer's funeral is like anyone else's.

He's a long time dead.

♪♪

♪♪

Tonight's newspaper will report it all.

Old news.

From now on, she'll have to open her own doors.

Carry her own troubles.

And her children's.

Alone.

From now on, it's just the three of them,

instead of just the four.

And if there must be

a final postscript to all of this,

then let it here be noted.

The coffin will soon be buried.

He will be forgotten

except by a very few.

Out of sight,

out of mind.

And strangely enough,

in view of current custom,

no one will raise a placard

to denounce his senseless murder.

No one will raise indignant cries of protest

at the shedding of his blood.

No one will march in anger

because of his death.

Elegy for a Pig.