A Secret Police Ritual

For those of us outside of law enforcement, there are police rituals known only to cops. One of them is the K party, mentioned in Michael Connelly's crime novel, The Late Show (Little, Brown and Co., 2017), featuring Renee Ballard, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. (The book is a page-turner.)

What is a K party, you ask? It stands for kill party. Connelly describes it this way: "It had once been a secret tradition for officers to gather and drink after one of them had killed someone. It was a way of releasing the tension of a life-and-death encounter."

Connelly probably learned of this "secret tradition" of the LAPD during his time as a newspaper reporter.

It's not far-fetched to assume that such a ritual still exists in the LAPD and other big-city police departments. I'm sure it would be almost impossible to get a police officer today to admit to its existence or their participation in one, fearing the reaction of the public as well as elected officials.

It's also not far-fetched to assume that tensions between the police and the black community being what they are, for the members of that community to say that the "K" in K party stood for the Klan, as in the Ku Klux Klan.

A postscript: The late show referred to in the book's title is presumably what the LAPD in real life call the 11 pm to 7 am shift.