What it was like to be a Los Angeles police officer during the 1980s crack epidemic

Photographer William Karl Valentine grew up visiting the Pasadena Police Department, where his father was a reserve police officer. When Valentine enrolled at Arizona State University to study photography, he decided that his first project would be a documentation of the police department.

Over the course of four years at ASU, Valentine logged over 1,000 hours shadowing officers in the department, photographing every major operation and event that he was there to witness. What has resulted is a fantastic time capsule of what it was like to be police officer in an LA suburb when the Drug War was on full blast.

Valentine shared a number of photos with us here, but you can check out the rest at his website.