The Case of the Crime King

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Everyone knows that “Dragnet” stories are taken from actual cases in the files of the Los Angeles Police Department. But because of the famous tag line “The names were changed to protect the innocent,” many people are unaware that the police officers appearing in the stories, with the exceptions of Lieutenant Joe Friday and Sergeant Frank Smith, Captain Peters, and Sergeants Art Haney and Tom Johnson, are real persons. Only the names of suspects, victims, and witnesses are changed.

The only major departure from fact in the typical “Dragnet” story is that Joe Friday and Frank Smith are substituted for the police team that actually handled the case. Obviously this fictional device is necessary to give the series continuity. But it creates an odd situation — the secondary-role officers who appear in the case get a measure of recognition in being identified by name, whereas the officers who enacted the primary roles in real life receive no mention at all. They become, in the story, Friday and Smith.

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