Deputy

by Cliff Yates

  The containment was in place, aero unit overhead and K9 unit was on the way. The Lincoln came back stolen from the city of Gardenia and used in an armed robbery. We transported the one suspect to the station to book him on the stolen car and robbery charge. While at the station, another unit arrived to book a suspect that the K9 unit captured. And the suspect hiding in a field could have disposed of all evidence that he was involved in a crime, but he didn't. He still had the gun and a watch that was taken in the armed robbery in his pants pocket. My observation of the gun was substantiated. I was sure the driver was going to plug me in the head as he ran from the car. It was another good night working the streets, chasing bad guys, catching them, recovering stolen items, and taking a gun off the street.

  ASSAULT WITH A DOG

  I WAS BETWEEN trainees, and my good friend and classmate was working alone monitoring one of her trainees who was working a one-man car. She was acting as his sister car. She was tough as they come, and she didn't take shit from anyone. She was a great police officer and went on after Lynwood station to a long career in the department. She was a female officer that I trusted with my life. She worked harder than anyone else.

  Her trainee received a disturbance call. I responded to back them up. We arrived before her trainee. As we parked in front, we saw a large male Hispanic hitting a heavy bag hanging in his garage. My classmate said her trainee was taking too long and said, "Let's contact this guy."

  We called for the guy to come out of the garage and come talk to us on the driveway. We were standing in the long driveway, about 20 yards from the garage. Boxer Boy yelled back, "Get the fuck outta here, and take the nigger bitch with you!" Oh shit, I could tell my partner was pissed. Just outside the garage, there was a doghouse with a pit boxer mix that was on a chain barking like mad. Boxer Boy said, “You want me to come out there? Ok.” He grabbed the pit boxer and took him off the leash. He put the dog between his legs facing us as he held the dog by his head with just the hind legs on the ground. He began walking toward us, stopping every couple feet, holding the dog’s head with one hand while he simultaneously slapped the side of the dog’s head. He continued to do this, switching hands and continuing to slap the side of the dog’s head hard. Then he would squeeze the side of the dog's cheeks. He was working this dog up hard. He was growling and frothing at the mouth, and Boxer Boy continued toward us.

  I pulled my gun and stepped back a couple of steps. I was really mad that this guy might put us in a position of hurting the dog. I love animals, and the sight of him slapping the dog was really pissing me off. My partner pulled her gun and stepped forward, yelling at the guy, "Put the dog back on the fucking leash now!"

  He yelled back, "Get off my property nigger bitch, or I'm letting the dog go to rip you to shit!"

  She moved forward, telling the guy, "You are going to jail."

  I pointed my gun straight out and started walking forward. I was for backing up and giving us some time in case he lets the dog go, but my partner was marching forward and in advance mode. So, I was in. I had my gun hand outstretched, and now we are about 20 feet from the guy and the dog. He was continuing to slap the dog in the head and work him up into more of a frenzy, if that was possible. I wanted to try and scare this guy into giving up, so I yelled to my partner, "If he lets the dog go, I'm shooting this guy in the head. You kill the dog." I said this as a ruse, in an attempt to get him to give up. I think it worked a little.

  Now the guy started backing up with the dog, still slapping the shit out of him. He backs himself to a side gate attached to the garage. We had maintained a distance of about 20 feet. He continued to hold on to the pit boxer while he reached back with one hand, unlatched the gate and yelled, "Getem!" Out of the yard comes this charging pitbull, running full throttle locked in on me. I fired four shots in rapid succession. That pitbull skidded headfirst to a dead stop right at my feet. When I say dead stop, I mean he was dead. Four shots right to the head. Now I'm in kill mode.

  This guy yells, "You shot my dog!"

  I'm yelling, "Let the other one go, and he's next. Come on you pussy, let him go!"

  He says, "No, you're going to shoot him." He puts the dog back on the leash and gets down on the ground and submits to arrest without further incident.

  I was so pissed he put us in a position where we had to shoot the pit bull. I really felt bad about killing the dog. I was so pissed at this son of a bitch causing his dog to be shot. If I had been forced to shoot and kill Boxer Boy, believe me, I wouldn't have felt bad at all. Killing the dog really bothered me. I love animals. I had been bitten before on the job, and boy they can get to you fast.

  Boxer Boy was charged with two counts of 245pc, assault on a peace officer with a deadly weapon. The D.A. filed two counts because he used both dogs as a weapon. He was convicted on both counts and served four years in prison. When we arrested him, he was on parole for a previous assault charge. Mom had been slapped around by him and was happy when we took him away. My classmate’s trainee never made it to the call. I imagine he wishes he had after my partner got through with him.

  STEVE BLAIR

  I WAS FREQUENTLY partnered with Steve Blair. I think we had been partnered together a couple of times, and we had so much fun that we started signing up for overtime together. We had so many laughs. People say I'm funny. I thought Steve was a funny bastard. I was with him on some call where an ambulance was needed. I remember that's where Steve first met Dana, who ended up being the love of his life, and not long after they were married.

  I was transferred out of Lynwood in 1991. Steven went on to the gang unit and still worked in the Lynwood area. In May of 1995, he was patrolling on Walnut Avenue next to Ham Park. He stopped to check two gang members. As he got out of his car, he was shot and killed. The gang member was captured and convicted, sentenced to death. I went to several officer funerals after that, and Dana was always there sitting near me, holding Steve's Lynwood jacket. Seeing Dana holding his jacket with tears in her eyes was always a knife to the heart.

  LYNWOOD VIKINGS

  WHEN WE AS a group of trainees first arrived at Lynwood Station and went to the orientation, we were all given a Lynwood Viking Pin to wear on our uniforms. A Viking flag hung on the briefing wall. Most stations had a mascot. Lennox had the grim reaper, and Lakewood the Sea Hawk.

  In my last month of training, Marv said that I would probably be approached to get a Viking tattoo. He said I would have to make up my own mind whether to get it or not. He said that a group of deputies who were no longer at the station had been involved in misconduct that were attributed to a group who had the tattoos. He said the idea behind the tattoo was camaraderie amongst hard-charging deputies, but some bad apples had changed the perception of some of the higher-ups in the department. Long before I got there, he told me a deputy who used to be a station secretary put the captain's personal license into the system as stolen. Someone allegedly sent a hearse to an executive’s house. All this activity was before I got to the station.

  I had been at the station for almost three years when the captain started giving interviews with a reporter from the Long Beach Press paper. All of a sudden there were newspaper articles where the captain mentioned numerous incidents of misconduct, and that there was a segment at the station that was too closely associated to the Viking mascot which the community feels is representative of a blonde hair, raping and pillaging marauder. The captain said the element at the station is like cancer and needed to be cut out. He made it sound like the misconduct from previous years involved current personnel at the station. He then ordered that the Viking would no longer be the station mascot. This was met with immediate pushback.

  Deputies from all over the county were hired for overtime to work the Rose Parade in Pasadena. The Pasadena Police Chief told the Sheriff he did not want any deputies working the parade from the Lynwood station due to what was in the recent articles.

  Then in 1991 five deputies, myself included, were advised that we were be
ing transferred out of the station. None of us wanted to be transferred. We sued to stop the transfers, but a judge would not issue an injunction to stop the transfer pending a hearing. The department said it was not punitive, and that we were being transferred to premium positions and/or stations. We were all transferred to what would be considered choice assignments. The problem in our view was that in lieu of what was said in the newspaper articles, our transfers would link us as deputies that had been involved in misconduct, and we were the cancer that needed to be cut out. I had not served a day of suspension since being on the department. We knew that other department members would look at our transfers as an indication of our involvement in misconduct.

  "Oh your those troublemakers from Lynwood."

  Deputies amongst themselves decided to choose fellow deputies who they felt were hard workers and did great police work to be deserving of the station tattoo. Many of the deputies were Hispanic, and there were some black deputies and some female. Unfortunately, if you google Lynwood Viking, you will find search results indicating a white supremacist police gang. This was blatantly not true.

  When we filed suit, our names were on the front page of the L.A. Metro section: "Five deputies sue Sheriff over transfers." Since we didn't get an injunction to stop the transfers and winning our suit would have just allowed us to go back to Lynwood, we all decided to drop the suit. We were not seeking any money, just to stay at Lynwood. If we won it might have been years later, and by then we wouldn't want to go back. In the end, it was the best thing for all of us. But not in the short term. I was an aggressive type-A personality: kind of a hothead at the time. Looking back, I should have been thankful for the transfer.

  I was approached by supervisors at the time who liked me and wanted to tell me how this was going to be good for me. I regret at the time I was not receptive to any input from these supervisors who as I look back on it were trying to be of help to me.

  Many of us felt the brunt of retribution from supervisors who were against us for filing suit. I had a lieutenant corner me in the station parking lot. "You think you can sue the Sheriff and get away with it. We will never forget, and we're gonna get you." I felt negative repercussions to my career for about 7 or 8 years. Many Lynwood station deputies gave depositions in support of our suit. The five of us were transferred to choice patrol stations I believe in an effort to show that the transfers were not punitive. The deputies who gave depositions in our favor would not be so lucky. About a year after our transfers, Lynwood Station deputies were in a giant pursuit which ended in an officer-involved shooting. The department discovered that most of the deputies who gave depositions in our lawsuit were involved in this pursuit. They used the pursuit as an opportunity to transfer those deputies, and most were sent back to custody. The deputies that came out in support of us really got a kick in the teeth.

  In 1998 Sheriff Block passed away, and there was a new Sheriff in town. About ten years after our lawsuit, all was mostly forgotten, and things started to turn around for me. In reality, it was when I changed that things began to change for the positive. As I had to discover for myself, it's never them, the economy, the circumstances; the problem was an inside job. I was the problem. I had little control over what happened to me. I had one hundred percent control of how I reacted to it. I wasn't quite ready for that lesson.

  WALNUT STATION

  I DIDN'T WANT to be transferred, and I especially didn't want to be transferred to Walnut Station. It was considered a slow station that you went to when you wanted to ride out the rest of your time until retirement. But it was a giant station that had San Dimas sub-station. I spent the next four years there. It was different, more than slow. My first year at the station, there were ten officer-involved shootings. So much for slow. Besides a huge county area, Walnut had the contract cities of Walnut, Diamond Bar and San Dimas. The station also deployed mountain cars, and a mountain rescue unit. When I arrived at Walnut, there were about five other deputies who had been transferred in under a cloud. The Captain met with us and said we were starting with a clean slate, and he meant it.

  I was transferred to Walnut Station around January 1991, and in April of 1992 in response to the LAPD Officer verdict in the Rodney King case, the L.A. Riots started. The LAPD had started preparation for reaction to the verdicts if they went in the officer's favor. They didn't plan for and could not have anticipated the degree to which the civil unrest escalated. Most of the initial unrest and violence started in south-central L.A. in LAPD's area. But it quickly spread all over south L.A.

  A year after being transferred out of Lynwood Station I found myself as part of a response team being sent back to the area in response to the riots. From Walnut we sent about ten cars each with four deputies in riot gear. We had a lieutenant and one or two sergeants. We had our helmets, riot batons, tear gas, ballistic shields and all the rest that goes with riot gear. We spent most of our time in ready mode stationed behind strip malls, and when the need came for a response team, we would be called into action and deploy as a squad to wherever the trouble was. Most of our deployments involved moving and dispersing large crowds. Although the department had mobile booking trailers and some response teams made numerous arrests, ours was not one of them. The riots comprised about six days of violence. After the six days, we went from being on 12-hour shifts back to our station and normal schedules.

  One thing the L.A. County Sheriff's Department does extremely well is operate the Emergency Operation Canter. Each station is equipped to operate its own Emergency Operation Center. In any major incident, the department is able to send a response force quickly. Each station on every shift has designated units for an emergency response team. Each station usually has between ten and twenty deputies designated for the response team. With over twenty patrol stations in the county that equates to over 400 deputies that can quickly be deployed to any location. If need be, the jail division can have over 500 deputies deployed as an emergency response team. Many of the deputies from the jail are not patrol trained, but they are well trained in crowd control, squad formations, riot training, and deployment of special weapons.

  In 1993 major fires started burning in Malibu. This fire quickly started burning out of control. I was on the emergency response team from Walnut Station. We sent about ten cars with three to four deputies to each car. We headed down the freeway caravanning with our lights and sirens blaring in route to Malibu. We left Walnut Station in bright sunshine. We arrived at the command post at the old Malibu Sheriff's Station just off PCH (Pacific Coast Highway). When we left Santa Monica travailing south on PCH, we went from bright sunshine to complete darkness. This was the middle of the day, and the smoke was so dark and thick, it completely blocked out the sun. Flames along the highway were leaping 200 feet in the air. Thank goodness for the goggles we were issued to protect our eyes. At the time, I was wearing hard contact lenses, and just a piece of dust could cause great pain and watering to my eyes.

  We got out of our patrol cars, and the wind caused by the fires was really strong. Dust dirt and embers were flying everywhere. We were given our assignments and sent into areas to warn residents about the fires and advise them to evacuate. I can't remember if it was a mandatory evacuation or not. I do know that most did not leave. Some were downright hostile to our recommendation to evacuate. I remember people saying, “We have been through this before, we know better than you how to handle these fires.” This fire was particularly dangerous in that most of the areas burning had not burned since the 1930s.

  At the end of your shift, you were covered with smoke and smelled like a chimney. You get home after not having breathed in fresh air for over twelve hours. I think I responded to Malibu for several days in a row before returning to a normal patrol schedule.

  In January of 1994 the Northridge earthquake hit, creating chaos in the San Fernando Valley and Santa Clarita. Again the station was put on 12 hours on, 12 hours off. Damage to the freeways cut the north end of the county off from the south en
d. Santa Clarita had widespread damage to homes and businesses. I was assigned to a response team deployed to Santa Clarita to provide patrols of neighborhoods and protect homes from looters. The problem was getting from Walnut to Santa Clarita. About forty of us were loaded into one of those big military Chinook helicopters. That was quite the experience.

  We loaded up on a football field in Walnut. Then we were flown to the Magic Mountain amusement park in Valencia. When we got out of the helicopter, there were twenty marked patrol cars lined up waiting for us. Each of our two-person patrol teams went to our assigned radio cars and started our patrol shift. We were given maps and contact information. We had all of the Santa Clarita Station information and local court information for citations. We had booking kits all set up to help us book prisoners at Santa Clarita Station if needed. At the end of our shift, we would gas the car up and drive back to Magic Mountain and get back on a helicopter to be flown back to Walnut Station. The next team exited the helicopter and started their shift. It was a pretty well run operation. The amount of damage to all the homes was really shocking. Very sad to see all the people that were displaced from their homes.

  Twenty-five years later and the earthquakes and devastation of 1994 are a distant memory. Santa Clarita has boomed in the years that followed and is prime real estate now.