Joseph Wambaugh, American police officer and author
Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. (born January 22, 1937), is a best-selling American writer known for his fictional and nonfictional accounts of police work in the United States. Several of his early novels were set in Los Angeles, California, and its surroundings, and featured Los Angeles police officers as protagonists. He has been nominated for four Edgar Awards (winning three), and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.