The fired officer manning a lonely picket line outside LAPD HQ

LOS ANGELES — Nothing much fazes Gabriel Cabrera after 17 months of picketing outside Los Angeles Police Department headquarters.

There was the time, he said, a bicyclist spat on him. And the glares he encounters from officers on their way to and from work. Plus the occasional "F— 12" taunts hurled from passing cars, "12" being slang for police. He said he mostly tunes them out and tells himself, well, at least people are paying attention.

It's been more than a decade since the former LAPD officer was fired for what department officials said was involvement in an improper real estate deal. Cabrera has denied any wrongdoing, and hopes his protest will help get his job back while drawing attention to what he says was the real reason for his termination: the department's unspoken policy of forcing out officers who have been injured at work.

And so on most Tuesday mornings — his day off from his current job working security at Disneyland — he drives downtown to carry out his protest. Sometimes his wife, Maria, tags along. She usually stands nearby, flipping through her phone in the shade of a large auditorium that abuts the LAPD's glass-and-limestone