Los Angeles Police Department in the context of "Columbo"

The militarization of police (paramilitarization of police in some media) is the use of military equipment and tactics by law enforcement officers. This includes the use of armored personnel carriers (APCs), assault rifles, submachine guns, flashbang grenades, sniper rifles, and SWAT (special weapons and tactics) teams. The militarization of law enforcement is also associated with intelligence agency–style information gathering aimed at the public and political activists and with a more aggressive style of law enforcement. Criminal justice professor Peter Kraska has defined militarization of police as "the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model".

Observers have noted the militarizing of the policing of protests. Since the 1970s, riot police have fired at protesters using guns with rubber bullets or plastic bullets. Tear gas, which was developed by the United States Army for riot control in 1919, is still widely used against protesters. The use of tear gas in warfare is prohibited by various international treaties that most states have signed; however, its law enforcement or military use for domestic or non-combat situations is permitted.

A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes allow helicopters to be used in congested or isolated areas where fixed-wing aircraft and many forms of short take-off and landing (STOL) or short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft cannot perform without a runway.

The Focke-Wulf Fw 61 was the first successful, practical, and fully controllable helicopter in 1936, while in 1942, the Sikorsky R-4 became the first helicopter to reach full-scale production. Starting in 1939 and through 1943, Igor Sikorsky worked on the development of the VS-300, which over four iterations, became the basis for modern helicopters with a single main rotor and a single tail rotor.

The government of the City of Los Angeles operates as a charter city (as opposed to a general law city) under the charter of the City of Los Angeles. The elected government is composed of the Los Angeles City Council with 15 city council districts and the mayor of Los Angeles, which operate under a mayor–council government, as well as several other elective offices. Under the California Constitution, all judicial, school, county, and city offices, including those of chartered cities, are nonpartisan. The current mayor is Karen Bass, the current city attorney is Hydee Feldstein Soto and the current city controller is Kenneth Mejia.

In addition, there are numerous departments and appointed officers such as the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT), the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL), the Los Angeles Department of Public Works (LADPW), and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).

Close-quarters battle (CQB), also called close-quarters combat (CQC), is a close combat situation between multiple combatants involving ranged (typically firearm-based) or melee combat. It can occur between military units, law enforcement and criminal elements, and in other similar situations. CQB is typically defined as a short duration, high intensity conflict characterized by sudden violence at close range.

The Air Support Division (ASD) is the police aviation division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). It is the largest municipal airborne law enforcement organization in the United States and operates from the LAPD Hooper Heliport.

While originally devoted to aerial traffic enforcement, the ASD has grown to support a wide variety of police activity. Its operations are divided between Air Support To Regular Operations (ASTRO) and Special Flight Section (SFS). The Air Support Division currently operates sixteen helicopters and 1 fixed wing aircraft of two different helicopter brands, and maintains the largest municipal police aviation unit around the world, in addition to having the world's largest rooftop airport and world's busiest heliport.

Thomas Bradley (December 29, 1917 – September 29, 1998) was an American politician, athlete, police officer, and lawyer who served as the 38th mayor of Los Angeles from 1973 to 1993. A member of the Democratic Party, he was Los Angeles' first black mayor, first liberal mayor, and longest-serving mayor.

Bradley went to college at the University of California, Los Angeles, serving as captain of the track team. Bradley joined the Los Angeles Police Department after graduation. Disenchanted with the racism prevalent in the LAPD, Bradley became a lawyer. Bradley won election to the Los Angeles City Council, becoming its first black member in 1963. Bradley ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 1969, losing to incumbent conservative mayor Sam Yorty before defeating Yorty in 1973 and 1981.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), officially the County of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, is a law enforcement agency serving Los Angeles County, California. The LASD is the largest sheriff's department in the United States and the third largest local police agency in the United States, following the New York Police Department, and the Chicago Police Department. The LASD has approximately nineteen thousand employees—9,915 sworn deputies and 9,244 unsworn members. It is sometimes confused with the similarly-named but separate Los Angeles Police Department, which provides law enforcement services within the city of Los Angeles, which is the county seat of Los Angeles County, although both departments have their headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.

The department's three main responsibilities are to provide municipal police services within Los Angeles County, courthouse security for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, and housing and transportation services of inmates within the county jail system. In addition to providing municipal police services to the unincorporated communities within Los Angeles County, it has contractural arrangements to provide police services for 42 of the 88 independent cities within Los Angeles County. The LASD also has contracts to provide police services for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Metrolink.