Our Mission
To preserve the appearance of law and order through aggressive presence, selective enforcement, and strategic inaction—while securing continuous budget increases regardless of outcomes.
We do not measure success by crimes solved, communities improved, or lives protected. We measure success by funding levels, union contracts, and how quickly the news cycle moves on.
Community Engagement
We believe trust is best built through staged interactions. Our officers regularly participate in:
On-duty sports games
Toy handouts to children who will later learn better
Social media photo ops
School visits designed to normalize authority, not question it
These efforts ensure favorable optics while consuming time that might otherwise be wasted addressing systemic problems.
We love to crash our cruisers because we don’t pay for them
Los Banos Police Department proudly treats traffic laws as loose folklore. Our cruisers routinely collide with innocent civilians, parked cars, buildings, and—when teamwork really shines—other police vehicles, often without the inconvenience of an active emergency. High-speed chases are generally discouraged, not out of concern for public safety, but because suspects might be armed and that sounds like work. Crashing, on the other hand, is a core competency. After every catastrophic wreck, our officers are rewarded with paid administrative leave, allowing them valuable recovery time on the golf course, out on a fishing boat, or anywhere far away from the people they ran into. Accountability is stressful; recreation is department-approved.
Friendly Faces, Permanent Records - Interactions with Cops without a Lawyer will Cost you the rest of you Life but you will get a freebee
Honestly, we’re still impressed by how easy it is. Put out a folding table, slap a banner on it, spend a little taxpayer money on coffee, hot dogs, or department-branded junk, and suddenly people forget everything they’ve ever heard about not talking to cops. National Night Out, Coffee with a Cop, Shopping with a Cop—it doesn’t matter. Call it “community engagement” and people line up to chat like we’re friendly baristas instead of armed representatives of the state. The badge becomes invisible the moment something free is involved.
That’s when the magic happens. People overshare like it’s a group therapy session. Names, grudges, suspicions, half-confessions, full confessions—stuff they’d never say in an interview room just pours out because we’re smiling and nodding and pretending this isn’t exactly what we’re here for. No Miranda warnings, no pressure, no lawyers—just “friendly conversation” that somehow turns into probable cause later. We don’t even have to ask questions most of the time. Silence does the work. People rush to fill it, and every extra word saves us effort down the line.
The best part is that it’s all paid for by the same people giving us the information. Freebies lower the guard, friendliness does the rest, and when it shows up in a report or a courtroom later, it’s their own words doing the heavy lifting. We call it outreach. You call it trust-building. Either way, it’s cheaper than actual investigation and a lot more effective. So please—keep showing up, keep talking, and keep believing that a freebies that we didn’t even pay for ourselves somehow change what we are.