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Part One: Daryl Gates: The Man Who Invented SWAT Teams and DARE

Behind the Bastards

Tue Oct 21 2025

Summary

Behind the Bastards — Part One: Daryl Gates: The Man Who Invented SWAT Teams and DARE
Host: Robert Evans | Guest: Bridget Todd
Date: October 21, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the life of Daryl Gates, the infamous Los Angeles police chief largely responsible for the militarization of U.S. law enforcement, the creation and naming of SWAT teams, and the invention of the DARE anti-drug program. Host Robert Evans and guest Bridget Todd trace Gates’ early life, formative traumas, and rise through LAPD ranks. They explore how Gates' personal experiences and attitudes contributed to the contemporary realities of American policing, and set the stage for the LAPD’s transformation into a paramilitary force.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Daryl Gates?

Evans frames Gates as a pivotal, if overlooked, architect of modern American policing:
“He is maybe the single most important figure in the militarization of US law enforcement. He co-created and named the first SWAT team, invented the DARE program, and played a major role in the birth of Hollywood copaganda.” (03:27)
Gates’ legacy directly affects today’s protest policing, militarized responses, and the public image of law enforcement.

2. Gates’ Childhood and Formative Experiences

Instability, Trauma, and Poverty

Born in 1926, Gates’ early life in Glendale, CA was disrupted by the Great Depression; his family was forced into poverty.
His father became an alcoholic, frequently absent, and sometimes abusive, while his mother worked grueling factory jobs.
Gates feels deep shame about growing up poor and on government handouts:
“Once a week, I would go with my father ... I would hold my gunny sack while people tossed in potatoes, cabbage and lettuce. I always felt a little embarrassed...” (13:26, quoting Gates’ memoir)
Evans and Todd note a tendency—seen in other figures like J.D. Vance—for people who benefited from social programs to later resent or oppose them.

Relationship with Police as a Child

Early experiences with police were negative. His father’s drinking brought repeated, traumatic confrontations:
“[Police] rushing in. In those days, they didn’t stand on ceremony. They just pushed in past my mother. … As an adolescent, Daryl saw law enforcement as ‘just a plague on society.’” (19:23, quoting Gates’ memoir)
Evans: “It’s so sad that he grows up understanding … that the police are fundamentally cruel and destructive, then still chooses to become one.” (20:25)

Health Crisis and Neglect

Gates recounts an episode of severe neglect—his father ignored a life-threatening illness, leading to a painful, extended convalescence alone:
“For three months, he was basically rotting alone in bed … just laying there alone, stewing in his anger.” (22:56)

3. Early Violence and Attitude towards Authority

Fighting and boxing became key outlets for Gates’ aggression; both Evans and Todd remark on how this went largely unexamined by Gates.
Gates’ earliest legal trouble: as a teen, he punched a cop who had pushed his brother, but charges were dropped after an apology. Rather than reflecting on lucky treatment, Gates expresses disbelief anyone could beat him on the police exam, showing early signs of narcissism (36:23).

4. Joining the LAPD: From Outsider to Insider

Gates initially despised the idea of police work:
“[There was] no way in the world will I ever be a dumb cop.” (35:28)
But, pressure to support a growing family and good pay drew him to the LAPD—evoking parallels to modern recruitment for controversial agencies:
Todd: “I can’t help but think about … ‘Join ICE, you get a signing bonus.’ … It makes me think there’s a kind of person who will just forget how harmful these jobs are...” (41:46)
Gates’ own memoir reveals a shift: once in the academy, “he met so many great guys that he realizes, oh no, I’ve been wrong about cops all along” (38:01). Evans notes Gates never reconciled his prior hatred for police with his newfound admiration as a recruit.

5. Rise Through LAPD Ranks and Early LAPD Culture

“Celebrity Influencer” Police Chief

Gates frames himself as a proto-celebrity cop, with an autobiography named “Chief.”
He describes early experiences as Chief Parker’s chauffeur—gaining “a front seat to this revolutionary period in LAPD history” (53:24).

Culture of Violence and Jokes About Abuse

Significant “joke” recounted: Gates’ colleagues file a fake child rape report against him as a prank, which Gates describes with no visible discomfort:
“The joke is filing a fake child rape report for him … He thought he raped a kid… And then you’d say that about your colleagues: I respected my— I really had my mind changed.” (60:21, 60:56)
Both hosts are appalled, drawing a line from these anecdotes to persistent issues in police culture.

6. William Parker: Gates’ Mentor and The LAPD’s Transformation

Parker is depicted as a deeply influential chief whose reforms made LAPD “less corrupt and more professional ... also turning it into one that was aggressive, intimidating and confrontational by design” (46:38).
Notably, Parker was a raging alcoholic—Gates frequently had to drive him drunk, directly paralleling his own father.
Parker instilled militaristic, paramilitary attitudes in the LAPD, shaping police mythology and practice for generations.

7. Setting the Stage for Modern Crisis

By 1965, Gates oversaw patrol in Watts, a heavily policed Black neighborhood, right on the eve of the Watts riots—a harbinger of his later role in the 1992 Rodney King unrest:
“He gets made the inspector overseeing all patrol officers in … Watts. … The same guy was on deck for both [the Watts uprising and Rodney King riots] … Unbelievable.” (62:40)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On DARE’s impact:
“I will never forgive him for making me spend what could have been a free period … watching a police officer sing a song about why you shouldn’t do drugs and play acoustic guitar.” —Bridget Todd (03:56)
On police as outsiders:
“As an adolescent, Daryl saw law enforcement as ‘just a plague on society.’” —Robert Evans, quoting Gates (19:23)
“[Gates’] most consistent characteristic is that he never learns the right thing from the things that happen to him with a consistency that's like impressive in its fucked up edness.” —Robert Evans (39:19)
On LAPD promotion culture:
“You know, the chief likes him. He’s the golden boy. He drove him around, they bonded. So … he’s never going to get turned down for a promotion when he goes up for it.” —Robert Evans (61:30)
On cop “pranks”:
“You thought you raped a kid. You were thinking back to remember if you’d raped that kid. Ha ha, ha ha.” —Robert Evans, reacting to Gates’ anecdote (60:32)
On the LAPD’s changing relationship with the city:
“Parker reinvented the LAPD, making it … aggressive, intimidating, and confrontational by design, a small force of faceless paramilitary cops and patrol cars. Policing through fear.” —Robert Evans, quoting Dominique (46:38)
“There’s four guys in all of history and two of them are Daryl Gates. The other two are Hitler. It’s just Daryl Gates and Hitler all the way down, baby.” —Robert Evans (63:46)

Timeline of Key Segments

00:01 – Episode opening, introduction of Bridget Todd
03:27 – Why Daryl Gates matters: his impact on policing
07:07 – Gates’ autobiography “Chief” and early family dynamics
13:26 – Gates’ shame about poverty and welfare
19:23 – Childhood encounters with police and growing resentment
22:56 – Childhood illness and emotional neglect
35:28 – Gates’ initial refusal to join LAPD
41:46 – Discussion of jobs with moral costs and recruitment parallels
46:38 – Introduction to William Parker and LAPD transformation
53:24 – Gates as Parker’s chauffeur; early LAPD politics
60:21 – Child rape “joke” anecdote illustrating police culture
62:40 – Gates in charge of LAPD during Watts; foreshadowing Rodney King riots

Tone and Style

Conversational, irreverent, and darkly humorous — true to the Behind the Bastards signature.
Hosts mix deep historical research with personal reflections and pointed cultural criticism, often underscored by sardonic wit.

Resources and Recommendations

Upcoming: Part Two will draw heavily from Mike Davis’ "City of Quartz"
Books cited:
- Daryl Gates' "Chief" (autobiography)
- John Bunton, "L.A. Noire"
Bridget Todd’s podcast: There Are No Girls on the Internet

This episode is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand the roots of contemporary police militarization, the mythology of “tough on crime” leaders, and the personal and institutional attitudes that shaped 20th-century U.S. policing.

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Transcript

Robert Evans (0:01)

Call Zone Media. Oh. Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast formed or filmed, recorded all of those things in the burning hellscape that is Portland, Oregon. The. The most vicious and collapsed war zone on planet Earth. Here from the rubble, Robert Evans to talk to you about a really bad piece of shit with someone who isn't really bad, my wonderful guest today, Bridget Todd. Bridget, welcome to the program.

Bridget Todd (0:35)

Thank you. I am also calling in from a bombed out hellscape city that is Washington, dc. Yeah, Hellscape. To Hellscape.

Robert Evans (0:42)

It was so funny when we Both got on JDAMs. Detonated simultaneously right above both of our houses on opposite coasts. It was quite funny. It's very good. Very good stuff. Bridget, what's your least favorite US aerial munition?

Bridget Todd (0:58)

Ooh. Do most people have a least favorite?

Robert Evans (1:02)

Most people who've been targeted by them do. I'll say that much.

Bridget Todd (1:09)

What's your least favorite?

Robert Evans (1:11)

I will say the scariest thing I've ever seen hit anywhere is a jdam. Although hellfires are pretty fucking scary, too. And then just watching an Apache empty itself, empty its whole cartload into a building is pretty fucked up. None of them are really that fun when you're anywhere close to seeing them. It's more just like, oh, fuck. Fireworks. Really ain't got the juice.

Bridget Todd (1:32)

Yeah. No part of you is like, oh, that looks cool.

Robert Evans (1:35)

Oh, no, fuck me. I gotta get away from that son of a bitch real fast. Bridget, what do you do on the Internet? A place where there are no girls, according to one of your podcasts.

Bridget Todd (1:48)

That is true. There are no girls on the Internet. Yet here we are, showing up there every day, making.

Robert Evans (1:53)

That's right.

Bridget Todd (1:54)

Flapping our gums and making opinions and all of that.

Robert Evans (1:58)

That's right. And yeah, you got anything else you want to plug right up at the top here before we get into it?

Robert Evans (9:12)

Yeah, that would be fun. So Daryl and his four year older brother Lowell had separate rooms, you know, which means, again, you're doing pretty good in the 20s and 30s if each kid has their own room. And up until Daryl was four or so, his family was doing all right. But as he notes in his autobiography, In 1930, my world changed. And without explanation, his parents moved the family to the other side of Glendale. So far out they were almost in Burbank, which residents of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area will recognize as the very pit of hell itself. You know, if you've ever had to be out on that side of Glendale, you know, I wouldn't, wouldn't wish it on the devil. And this is, you know, today when we're talking about Glendale, nobody's like, oh, that's the rough part of Los Angeles. But this is legitimately like a more impoverished area. Especially as, like, we're coming into the early years of the Great Depression and it's also semi rural. Right. Gates describes the move as like, you know, the family going past cornfields and grape orchards into this tired, ramshackle house that was very small. He and his brother have to share a room and a single bed. And quote, even more disconcerting, my mother wasn't at home anymore. That was the most shocking thing in my memory. My mother going to work and this is like the first great trauma of Daryl's life is that his mom has to get a job to keep the family afloat, which he doesn't describe as like a bad thing on his mom's behalf. It's just like it changes his entire conception of the world because his dad goes from, you know, this powerful figure holding up the family to someone who is on unemployment and unable to actually earn anything. And he responds to it, Daryl's dad, by becoming a self destructive alcoholic and abandoning his family for days at a time. Not a unique story during the Great Depression, but obviously something that's gonna fuck this kid up, you know. And when Daryl's dad does show back up, he's no longer present or functional. He stumbles around in what his son describes as a boozy haze. And Daryl would later write, with my mother gone and my brother at school, I was in effect home alone. So he's kind of raising himself in the earliest years that he has memories, you know, that's a big deal for this kid. So we're starting to see some of the trauma that is making him the person he's going to be. It's not surprising that this leaves a mark on a kid. I don't think.

Robert Evans (18:09)

And, yeah, that's. That's not a. Again, uncommon parenting experience for kids to have. Because prohibition coincided with the collapse of the economy and his family fortunes, and because his dad was a drinker, his father took to brewing beer in the family home in order to stay supplied with alcohol and to supply his friends with alcohol. And so some of Darryl's earliest memories were watching Paul and his Irish Catholic buddies make beer in the bathtub and bottle it. When the family moved houses, his dad's friends still came over to make beer. But he notes that his father was increasingly absent because he's just drinking too much to make beer. You know, too much of an alcoholic to be a moonshiner. And this is where Daryl makes his first reference to being aware of the police at the kid, which is really interesting to me for a guy who grows up to be one of the most famous cops in the country, is he doesn't like the cops as a kid because when his dad gets more out of control as a drinker, there are increasing run ins with the law. And one of Darryl's worst memories as a kid was the day the Glendale PD finally came for his father. Quote, there was a knock at the door, a loud knock. And out front stood these large uniformed people. It was just devastating. As a kid, drunk or not, my dad was still the authority figure in the family. And there he was, scurrying out the back door into the blackness of night while these massive uniformed people were beating on the door, rushing in. In those days, they didn't stand on ceremony. They just pushed in past my mother. Where is he? And that's a searing Memory, Right. It's a memory, unfortunately, even more kids are having today with what the ICE raids are doing, you know. And it's not surprising that Daryl grows up hating the cops. He repeats this story, variations of it, numerous times over his childhood. The police are coming constantly to his house. They're chasing his dad off or taking his dad away all the time. And he comes to see the police as fundamentally cruel and destructive. As an adolescent, Daryl saw law enforcement as, quote, just a plague on society. Wow.

Robert Evans (20:53)

That's probably not the way, you know. Yeah. One of his other traumatic incidents from his childhood comes when he wakes up sick with his face. All this just tells you a lot of growing up in the depression. He like wakes up with his face swollen and like just clearly deathly ill. And his brother tells him, you should probably skip school and go to a doctor. And Daryl goes to his dad and is like, hey, dad, I think I'm not doing well. And his dad, who was drunk at 7 in the morning, probably from the night before, is like, fuck off. Like, sleep it off, kid. I'm about to do that. And so Daryl stays home. And then by the time his brother gets home from school, Daryl's face is twice its normal size. Right. It's just become clear that this kid needs to be in the hospital. And instead of going to the hospital, Daryl tries to go out and play with the other kids when they get out of school who mock him for looking fucked up because they're like, dude, your whole face is, what the fuck's wrong with that? Right. And it's not until his mom gets home later that night that she's like, no one took him to the doctor. What's wrong with you people? And she Calls the family doctor, who diagnoses Daryl with an acute kidney condition. He blames this on the fact that there'd just been, like, a sports competition in school that he won and that he'd had to push himself so hard to win that he pulled a kidney loose. I don't know if that what happened. I think it's just that it's the 30s. People are getting sick all the time. You know, they don't know medicine yet. But he's treated in time and he manages getting over it. But the fact that his dad ignored it in order to get drunk is like a searing moment to him. Right. This really burns itself into his brain as you'd expect it to. Right. He spends three months slowly recovering from his injuries. And since his mom worked all day and his brother was at school, that means that for three months, he was basically rotting alone in bed. You know, there's not a tv. They don't have a radio. His dad doesn't go to the library often to check out books, so he's mostly just laying there alone, stewing in his anger, you know? And that's not gonna help anything about this kid.

Robert Evans (24:13)

Yeah. What are the notable races in your childhood? So the same year his dad notched a new public drinking arrest for which he finally serves jail time. And Daryl calls this his dad's rock bottom point. You know, he goes through the DTs after he sobers up in the drunk tank. And the experience fucks up Paul Gates so much that Paul commits to sobering up, and he did. And Gates family life gets better at this point. Not only is the Great Depression starting to wind down by the later half of the 30s, but his dad gets to another job and starts working again. He gets a family car so that the Gateses have a vehicle for the first time. And his new dad, the sober dad, becomes a real gung ho pro fdr, New Deal Democrat, which makes complete sense because a lot of people, my grandparents were like that, where it's like, yeah, they were dedicated New Deal Democrats for a long time because they survived thanks to New Deal programs. You know, of course that that makes you real positive towards government programs, you know, at least for a period of time. Paul becomes more involved with his kids and makes the questionable decision to teach young Darryl how to box. I say questionable because Daryl decides I want to be a professional fighter, right? So as an adolescent, he joins a boxing club. He spends all his free time fighting. By the time he's 15 years old, he is muscular and increasingly aggressive. That Halloween, he dresses up in costume with what he called a bean shooter up his sleeve. And at parties, he would shoot beans randomly at other kids. This predictably leads to a fist fight, which his brother broke up. But the other kid's dad came in and saw Lowell with hands on his son. And so he starts attacking Daryl's brother Lowell. And Daryl sucker punches the dad of the kid that he'd shot repeatedly with beans. Absolutely furious at me. Lowell grabbed the bean shooter and snapped it in half. But the lesson he intended to teach me fell on deaf ears. I could not keep my fists to myself. So just a bean shooting little prick.

Robert Evans (44:09)

You think you can figure it out? Yeah, I know what it means. It's not talking about the color of clothes or whatever, Right. Per the book L A Noire by John Bunton, it was seen as, quote, a place where native born white Protestants could enjoy the magic of outdoors. Inviting always, trees in blossom throughout the year, flowers in bloom all the time, as well as mystery, romance, charms and splendor, all safe among others of their kind. Right. The weather's always nice for white people who are the only ones allowed in Los Angeles. That's how LA is presenting itself to the rest of the country at this period of time. And not because that's a totally accurate description, because even LA is never not a diverse place, right? Like it is always an incredibly mixed city. This is how they're trying. They're trying to portray themselves to the rest of the country that way so that white people will move there. Right. This is a conscious attempt by the people leading the city to gentrify it. Right now, LA is at this point a hub of vice and organized crime because there's a lot of money and the film industry's there and all of the gangsters who'd gotten cracked down on the east coast had moved out west, right? Like that's a big thing that has happened by this period of time. It's why, I mean, I just quoted from a book called L a Noire, but it's why L A Noire becomes a genre. Genre, right, is because Los Angeles, a lot of crime there, a lot of real good opportunities for organized crime there. It's a huge port, a lot of money moves through it. And as a young man, Parker joins the police and he spends his adulthood fighting crime in a city overwhelmed by it. He takes a brief break to fight in World War II and he comes home a war hero and is the highest ranked LAPD officer and war veteran. This earns Parker a measure of fame. The city Council passes a resolution thanking him specifically for his service. And to make a long story short, he rides that fame to the top. Parker would go down as perhaps the most consequential chief in LAPD history, certainly before Daryl Gates. In an LA Times article, Joe Dominique describes his reign this World War II in the years that followed had brought a mass migration to Los Angeles of job hungry African Americans, Jews and later Latinos. By the mid-60s, these new arrivals were transforming the complexity and politics of the city and coming into conflict with the lapd. Parker reinvented the lapd, making it a less corrupt and more professional Department, but also turning it into one that was aggressive, intimidating and confrontational by design. A small force of faceless paramilitary cops and patrol cars. Policing through fear. Doesn't sound familiar.