56-Year Run on Police Beat Ends : Journalism: Norman ‘Jake’ Jacoby retires. His last story is on quake.

The dean of America’s police reporters ended his career Friday the way he started it 56 years ago--in a chaotic police pressroom chasing a story that sent shock waves across Los Angeles.

Norman “Jake” Jacoby left his City News Service desk at the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters for the last time after filing dozens of bulletins, stories and updates on Friday’s earthquake for area radio and TV stations and newspapers.

It was just another day at the office for Jacoby, 75. Since 1935, he has pounded out stories of mayhem, murders and madmen stalking the streets of Los Angeles that not even Raymond Chandler could have thought up.

He started his career at City News Service and worked for the Los Angeles Herald-Express and the Herald Examiner before returning to the local agency.

Jacoby was on a first-name basis with 1940s gangster Mickey Cohen. He sent out the first bulletin when the “Black Dahlia” was slain in a gruesome 1947 murder. He covered the murderous rampage of the Manson family in the 1960s. He sat at a typewriter and dubbed the serial killer roaming the city in the 1970s the “Hillside Strangler.” He was first to report the description of the “Night Stalker” suspect in the 1980s.

Along the way, Jacoby became a walking encyclopedia of modern-day crime in Los Angeles. In 1985, his penchant for detail even helped him solve the 1981 kidnaping of a Venice toddler. When police reunited the child with her parents after a 3 1/2-year absence, police gave him the credit.

“I’ve always looked at newspeople as being public servants,” Jacoby explained between calls to police sources about damage and injuries from Friday’s 6.0 temblor. Despite the hectic aftermath, every dispatcher and watch commander talked to Jacoby.

“Police today are afraid of reporters. But I’ve had pretty good luck with them. I’ve had pretty good success in not misquoting them. My editors might frown on it, but I’ll read the story back to my sources if I have a question about something I’ve written. And I’ve never gone back on my word to any of them.”

Over the years, police responded by sharing information with Jacoby and with no one else. That sometimes rankled rivals--particularly in earlier days when the police pressroom was filled with reporters from as many as a dozen highly competitive daily papers, radio stations and wire services.

That was a rollicking era, right out of Ben Hecht’s “The Front Page.” Reporters kept whiskey bottles in the desks and press cards in their hats. They sometimes planted phony leads on the typewriters of their rivals to send them on wild goose chases to Hollywood or the harbor.

From the start, Jacoby says he learned that it paid to cultivate his sources. He married one of his best ones, in fact. After Queen of Angels Hospital telephone operator Audrey Keary tipped him off about mobsters who were brought in for treatment, he stopped in to thank her and romance followed.

Despite his rapport with police, Jacoby broke dozens of stories about scandal in the Police Department.

“There were times I would have liked to put a gag on him that would have taken an army to take off,” said Deputy Chief William Booth, a former press relations officer who worked for 14 years with Jacoby. “He’s a legend in journalism, and to the LAPD also. We named the pressroom after him about seven years ago.”

Lt. Fred Nixon, the current press officer, said he often deals with celebrities but Jacoby’s autograph is the only one he has ever asked for. He made the crusty, gravel-voiced reporter sign a GQ magazine that in 1986 printed a long profile on “The Best Cop Reporter in Los Angeles.”

“I admitted to Jake a few days ago that I was going to miss having him come by and torture me,” Nixon said. “Jake said he isn’t going to stop trying to make a decent police officer out of me.”

As Jacoby worked the three telephones on his cluttered desk Friday and listened for damage reports from 10 chattering police and fire radio speakers, he took time out to help rival reporter Dollie Ryan pinpoint the location of a partially collapsed building.

“Jake is such a good guy,” said Ryan, who works for United Press International’s Metrowire. “After he finishes scooping me, he’ll come over and say, ‘Honey, there’s a triple homicide. I got this story, but I didn’t get it all . . . see what you can do with it.’ ”

A steady stream of police and Parker Center workers said goodby. Computer operator Anita Rouse gave the reporter a hug and was posing arm in arm with him for a snapshot when the temblor struck.

“I went out with a pretty girl shaking in my arms,” the great-grandfather quipped. “You can’t do better than that.”