Aside from our LA Lyft drivers being super chatty, I also noticed that they were rather agro in their driving style. One woman in particular drove a tiny little Ford Fiesta, and in our brief five minute ride, she twice committed illegal maneuvers blatantly in front of LAPD cop cars! I mean, I’m not a rigid law-abiding ninny like my dad, but she was pushing the boundaries!

In the first instance, a cop car was immediately in front of her turning left on the left green arrow. Mind you, the light was already yellow when he pulled forward into the intersection. Then, the light turned red, and she clearly did not give a fuck. Home girl proceeded, pulling straight into the intersection and turning left in front of oncoming traffic. All while the light was red. WTF?!?

Less than two minutes later, to drop us off in front of our destination, she decided to do an illegal u-turn, again right after a cop car in oncoming traffic passed by. Again, no hesitation. I mean, like I said before: the people we talked to describe former DTLA as really rough and tumble. Admittedly, I’m a suburban princess, so I don’t have a true understanding of what that entails… beyond like what I saw with the LA riots and shit on tv. But I definitely noticed a stronger police presence (compared to SF or DC) when we walked around. We passed a police station, and there was an entire multi-level parking garage filled with cop cars. I mean, how big is the police force for a legit US city? I have no idea.

According to the interwebs, the LAPD (at over 10,000-strong) is the nation’s third largest police department, behind NYPD (over 34,000 uniformed officers) and Chicago PD (over 12,000). Yeah, that’s a lot of cops. Thinking about it more though, I guess the LAPD has bigger fish to fry than unruly Lyft drivers. Huh.