The Wrong Side of History, or Being a Cop in L.A. Noire
Blake Reno, Contributing Editor
L.A. Noire’s second-to-last case starts off with a boom. A mushroom cloud appears in downtown Los Angeles. Phelps’ partner, Herschel Biggs, immediately assumes that the Russians have dropped a hydrogen bomb on L.A.. Biggs buys into American propaganda: that the most dangerous evils in the world are from outside of the United States. This speaks to his past as a WWI veteran, but it also speaks to the dreadful irony that war is being fought on US soil every day, not between cops and criminals but between systems of power within capitalism and those helpless against those systems.
The case, “Nicholson Electroplating,” is based on the real perchloric acid explosion at O’Connor Electro-Plating Company. The process that the company was attempting to patent was dangerous, so they were testing it in a building located in an area primarily populated by minorities: meaning that the PR due to loss of life would be lessened by whose life was lost if anything were to go wrong (5 of the 17 killed in the explosion were African American, and the entire block was leveled). While L.A. Noire’s overarching plot isn’t historically accurate, it does try to expand on how individuals are at the mercy of capitalism during the post-World War II economic boom. Even the game’s supposed hero and player-character, Cole Phelps, is eventually done in by those who use the justice system for mere profit.
As Phelps works his way through the various “desks” (traffic, homicide, vice, arson) of the game, he learns how powerful the machine is and eventually that he can’t dismantle it alone. While working the traffic desk, he’s able to turn “hot” pink slips into busting a national auto-theft ring and a stolen diplomatic vehicle into busting both the thief and uncovering that an Argentinian diplomat is a pedophile. However, with the last case on the desk, where Phelps has to find out the truth of what happens to young women that come to L.A. looking for stardom, he begins to understand just how far-reaching capitalist exploitation goes. Part of the case has you uncovering hidden cameras in Marlon Hopgood’s sound stage that’s supposedly used for “casting.” But before you can take him in, Roy Earle, the head detective of the vice squad, steps in, claiming Hopgood to be a vice informant.
Things only get worse from there, as Phelps’ “golden boy” sheen carries him through the ranks of the LAPD. The homicide desk section of the game plays with the idea that you may be hunting the Black Dahlia killer, but end up taking in people who are innocent of their crimes, merely because that’s what’s demanded of an LAPD officer. Eventually, Phelps gets proof that there is one person behind all of the killings, but once he’s finally subdued, the homicide chief informs you that the case is going to disappear, because this person is connected to politicians high in the state level. Unfortunately, the LAPD cannot publicly admit the mistake of arresting five innocent men, and you’re told that they would create false cases of “mishandled” or “missing” evidence in order to exonerate them.
After this, Phelps’ old friend Roy Earle pulls strings to get Phelps as his partner on the vice squad. While Earle convinces Phelps this is a promotion, he quickly learns that Earle and the vice squad are as dirty as dirty cops come. Earle openly expresses racism and misogyny, complaining about being assigned cases in which African Americans have overdosed on morphine—to which the vice chief replies not about the fact that their lives matter too (this is why “Black Lives Matter” is the call for action of contemporary civil rights), but that the case involves government-issue morphine, and that’s what makes it an important vice case.
It’s on the vice desk that Phelps finally realizes what LA’s police department is really for. One of the cases on the desk only happens because Earle and the mob take a big loss on a boxer who was supposed to intentionally lose a bout. But ultimately, the morphine leads Phelps to a series of murders connected to his old company in the Marines. They are systematically being murdered in order to scare Courtney Sheldon, who stole a supply of morphine to help those who fought in WWII get the financial security they deserve in .
However, Sheldon’s attempt to do good is taken advantage of by those in power. Sheldon realizes he cannot sell the morphine himself and turns to the mob for help selling it. When they put the squeeze on Sheldon, he turns to a psychiatrist, Harlan Fontaine, who says he’ll sell the morphine to hospitals and use it to fund GI housing. Of course, Fontaine just gives it over to the mob while funding housing built by a land developer named Leland Monroe, who builds these GI houses out of wood used for sets on films (since they’re not strong enough for proper building materials). Monroe, Fontaine, the chief of police, the mayor of LA, the VP of California Fire & Life, and Meyer Cohen, the mob boss, are all in on this scheme together.
Phelps believes that he can change the world by arresting people who break the law. But a German jazz singer, Elsa Lichtmann convinces him that it’s much more complicated than that. This causes Phelps to fall in love with her (at the cost of his marriage). As Phelps is about to get Sheldon to confess to stealing the morphine and using the mob to distribute it, Roy Earle, who is in the pocket of the leaders of the morphine/fake housing scheme, reports Phelps’ infidelity to the chief of police and gets him suspended and demoted to the arson desk.
As Phelps resumes his position with the LAPD in arson, he, with help from his former rival in the war, Jack Kelso, uncovers Monroe’s scheme to build these “houses made of sticks” for the insurance money they get when the government builds a highway through the path of the developments. While Kelso is able to get enough evidence to get Monroe in jail, Phelps hunts for the man who Fontaine used to burn down the houses of folks who did not want to sell to Monroe so he could build his “GI Housing”. The man is none other than a person who Phelps ordered to burn a cave full of innocent people (unbeknownst to him) and suffering from PTSD. This hunt eventually kills Phelps, demonstrating the fact that he’s punished for his crimes.
L.A. Noire unpacks how those in power profit during a “boom” in the economy, by exploiting the plights of veterans and minorities. Anyone who tries to unravel this system, like Cole Phelps, is helpless to intervene. While Kelso puts Monroe away and Fontaine gets murdered by the former flamethrower, everyone else connected to the scheme, including Roy Earle, remains unpunished for their crimes. The police, the game suggests, do not serve the people, they serve those with money, and LA’s post-war boom is when the fact of such exploitation became even more apparent.
