So, You Want to 'Be a Cop ' ?

Follow Stan Otremba from his beginnings as a relief bailiff at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in 1959. There, he hears the case of Johnny Stompanato, who turned up dead in his home one night. Stompanato's stepdaughter, Cheryl Crane, testifies that she killed him because he was beating her mother. But bailiff Otremba is suspicious, and years later, he finds out what really happened.

When he becomes a full-fledged police officer with the Santa Maria Police Department, Otremba investigates murders, rapes, suicides, and more. As a deputy coroner, he sees still yet another side of the law, but it's not a pretty one.

Along the way, Otremba adapts to the changes in law enforcement, enjoying the new technology that becomes available from the Law Enforcement Assistance Program and fine-tuning his crime-fighting tactics.

Follow an insider through twenty-eight years of action in So, You Want to "Be a Cop " ?