The Highland Park Police Station on York Boulevard in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles, California, USA is the city's oldest surviving police station. Closed in 1983, the station is now operated as the Los Angeles Police Museum. It has been designated as a Historic Cultural Monument and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.HistoryBuilt from 1925-1926 at a cost of $100,000, the station opened in April 1926 in a ceremony attended by Chief Edgar Davis and Police Commissioners Birnbaum, Insley and Webster.A number of big cases were handled out of the Highland Park station; it was that Det. Robert Grogan pursued the "Hillside Stranglers", Angelo Buono, Jr.. and Kenneth Bianchi. In the early 1980s, the building was cited for failure to meet seismic safety standards and was described as a "Shake and Bake Hellhole". The radical Symbionese Liberation Army (the group that kidnapped Patty Hearst and engaged in an infamous shootout with the LAPD in 1974) planted a bomb in the Highland Park Station in 1973, but it proved to be a dud.In 1942, future LAPD Chief Daryl Gates was arrested and briefly held at the Highland Park station after punching a police officer; in 1963, Gates returned as a police captain in command of the station. He later wrote, "Never dreaming I would voluntarily return to the station where I'd been brought in for punching a cop, I showed up for work, eager to continue trying out my talents as a boss."
