Administration Books

“I'm not convinced," Dodds said.

It was Thursday morning, just six hours after Bosch and Chu had ended their surveillance of Chang, with the suspect going to an apartment in Monterey Park and apparently retiring for the night.

"Well, Cap, you shouldn't be convinced yet," Bosch said. "That's why we want to continue the surveillance and get the wire."

"What I mean is, I'm not convinced it's the way to go," Dodds said, "Surveillance is fine. But a wire is a lot of work and effort for long-shot results."

Bosch understood. Dodds had an excellent repu tation as a detective, but he was now an administrator and about as far removed from the detective work in his division as a Houston oil executive is from the gas pump, He now worked with personnel numbers and budgets, He had to find ways of doing more with less and never allowing a dip in the statistics of arrests made and cases closed. That made him a realist and the reality was that electronic surveillance was very expensive. Not only did it take double-digit man hours to carefully draft a fifty plus-page affidavit secking court permission, but once permission was granted, a wiretap room had to be staffed twenty-four hours a day with a detective monitoring the line. Often a single-number tap led to other numbers needing to be tapped and under the law each line had to have its own monitor. Such an operation quickly sucked up overtime like a giant sponge. With the RHD's OT budget seriously down because of economic constraints on the department, Dodds was reluctant to give any of it up for what amounted to an investigation of the mur der of a South Side liquor store clerk. He would rather save it for a rainy day-a big-time media case that might come up and that would demand it.”
― Michael Connelly, Nine Dragons