Officer Pete Malloy, a seven year veteran of the LAPD and the senior man in his division's patrol, is getting a new partner: twenty-three year old Officer Jim Reed, who has just graduated from the academy in the top-10 in his class. Regardless of Reed's on-paper credentials, Malloy is not happy, not only about having to break-in a neophyte officer, but also about something that happened in his professional life three weeks earlier, which is making him contemplate his future, that incident which he refuses to disclose to or discuss with Reed. This evening, their unit, called Adam-12, deals with what looks to be an altercation between two men and a woman on the street, two suspicious men who looked to be casing a liquor store, and a baby who may have died from suffocation in a dry cleaning bag. But it's their last call of the evening - a shooting in a pitch black park - and Reed's actions at that call which makes Malloy have a clearer picture about his future and that incident three weeks earlier.
—Huggo