Character Sketch

Robert O'Brien
LAPD Narcotics Officer
Born: January 7th, 1980 New York City, NY

Robert is a 38 year old LAPD Narcotics officer. At the fresh age of 21, He graduated from the police academy towards the top of his class with a squeaky clean record, and tons of promise. As a child, Robert did well in school, and frequented the honor roll list throughout his schooling. He graduated early from John Jay with a degree in criminal justice. It was not always so great for Robert. The only son to Melissa O'Brien, Robert grew up without a father figure in his life, and his mother was an alcoholic who died his sophomore year of college. She was on permanent disability due to a car accident that killed his father when he was 5, and her subsequent substance abuse directly stemmed from this event. His entire life, Robert lived in a studio apartment in New York City, sharing the space with his mother, and whichever men she found herself attached to at the time. Often picked on at school, Robert's escape was his imagination and playing cops and robbers with the few neighborhood kids he was close with. Robert knew his entire life he wanted to be a police officer as he frequently saw drugs and violence pull at the fabric of his NYC neighborhood. As Robert grew older though, his few close friends began to succumb to the allure of fast money and lives of crime, and Robert found himself often justifying their actions in his own subconscious, the beginning of his desensitization to the underground. Upon graduating from college, Robert decided he had had enough of the city and stepped on a plane for the first time with a one way ticket to Los Angeles. He had accepted a job with the LAPD in their Narcotics Task Force, and was excited to set out on this new journey. The first year on the force found Robert in the thick of the action with the LA drug trade, doing raids, using undercovers, and even involved in his first gunfight. Robert's service was exceptional, and he began to attract the attention of his superiors as a possible candidate for promotion. At home, Robert was a far different person than at work. The cross country move left him in a foreign place with hardly any connections outside of his job, and the intensity of his work had begun to both excite and frustrate him. Robert began to get drinks with other members of the task force, and would often justify alcohol as a release from an exhausting work day. As Robert became close with the other young members of his unit, he was eventually let in to the illegal dealings of their operation. Members of the LAPD narcotics unit were facilitating the importation of mass amounts of drugs in collaboration with the Mexican cartel. While Robert's unit was often assigned to predominantly African-American neighborhoods, the cartel had capitalized on this and recruited members of the force around him to facilitate these large traffickings. Confused and with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line, Robert is slow to participate with his coworkers, but for fear of his own life does nothing to turn them in. As years go by and Robert begins to climb the ranks through the task force, he becomes less afraid of these illegal dealings and begins to facilitate more. He remains secretive and deflective of his work, but begins to love the thrill it brings him. He meets our female later in these dealings, and they become extremely close. Robert does not immediately let her in on everything that is going on, but eventually spills the beans. This causes a riff between them, but she is still loyal. She then is promoted to an FBI position where she eventually gets rumblings of LAPD narcotics officers involved in the illegal drug trade. Robert's mental health progressively worsens during his time on the force, and once the FBI becomes involved, he really struggles to keep it together. Robert is in a constant battle between good and evil both in his work and in his own head. He struggles to look in the mirror, and whether or not he has backed himself into a corner completely with no way out can only be discovered by listening to the podcast!! :)