The City Records Center in downtown Los Angeles is an immense repository where
150 years' worth of city documents is held. Amid the 47,500 square feet of cardboard
crates filled with paperwork and other bureaucratic detritus lies a vast collection
of photographs taken by Los Angeles police officers and criminologists. Many of these
images come from the Special Investigations Division, the nation's oldest crime lab,
which was established in the 1920s. It is estimated that there are over one million
images in storage.
In a 1950s photo, a detective takes part in a crime scene reenactment. The… (Los Angeles Police Historical Society)
The first request for funding to buy photographic equipment for the department was made by Chief Walter Auble in 1905. And the oldest crime scene photos in the LAPD's possession are of Auble's murder Sept. 9, 1908.
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