By Hal Collier

Ah, the computer age! Most people my age were dragged into the computer age kicking and screaming. We used telephones with wires attached to the wall and rotary dials, in some cases with a party line. We watched TV and got the signal from an antenna on the roof. TV was only in one room and you watched what your father watched. If the channel needed changing the youngest member of the household got up and turned the dial, which was me. Later you could listen to the radio on something called a transistor radio. Life was good.

I didn’t own anything close to a computer when I joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1970. I believe that computers back then were the size of a Volkswagen. I breezed through the 5 months of the police academy. 

Ha, some said that the Marine Corps boot camp was…