Deputy

by Cliff Yates

  TEMPLE STATION

  I LOVED MY time at Temple Station. I was there from the end of 1995 until the end of 1997. With my “can do” anything mindset, I was focusing on my acting and comedy career. I decided not to continue with my real estate. It was not feeding my soul. I produced a comedy show at the Roxy on Sunset that was a financial success. I produced a great tape out of it, but there was only so much I could do working my cop job full time and doing stand-up on my days off.

  One pm shift I was behind a pickup truck and ran the plate. It returned with a felony warrant. I called for backup and initiated a traffic stop. The truck failed to stop and continued into a private driveway. As we approached to make the arrest, the driver got out and started walking away. I ordered him to stop, and he did. As I approached him, he knelt down and put his arms around the left front tire. My assisting unit and I approached, and each grabbed an arm. He let go of the tire, and the fight was on. He was mostly swinging his elbows in an effort to break free of our grasp. I lost my grip, and he broke free with his left arm. As my partner still had hold of his right arm, the suspect now tried to raise his left leg and kick me. I swing my baton to strike his kicking leg. I heard a loud "ouch!" Shit, I had struck my partner with my baton.

  The suspect had now grabbed the top rim of the pickup truck bed. He wouldn't let go and tried to kick me on his left side as my partner was trying to pry his right arm off the truck. I thought I had a great idea. I reached around to the front of the suspect’s face to pepper-spray him in the eyes. I let go with a two to three-second burst. I heard my partner yell, "You blinded me!" Shit, now I had pepper-sprayed my partner. I thought if I keep this up, my partner will be down, and I will be fighting this guy by myself.

  The suspect finally submitted to arrest. Because we had used force on this guy, we had to transport him to the hospital to be cleared for booking. The field sergeant arrived at the hospital to get our statements and interview the suspect. I was videotaping the interview, and the suspect was telling the sergeant, "I'm fine, but I think that guy’s partner got it worse than I did. I thought this guy might kill his partner and I would get blamed for it, so I gave up." Funny, but a little embarrassing. I don't think I landed a blow on this suspect, but I hit my partner with my baton and pepper-sprayed him in the face.

  Mitch Hendrickson was a great friend of mine. We worked the South El Monte City area as sister cars. Mitch was a gentle giant of a man. He was a big guy, but I never saw him get angry. We played golf together. I talk a lot of shit on the golf course. I can make you angry. I was never able to rattle Mitch. We had many laughs at work and on the golf course. Mitch had two daughters and a lovely wife. And they seemed very happy.

  A few months later, I was at our summer home in upstate New York, and I got a call from Mitch's wife. She said, "Cliff, I'm worried that Mitch is going to kill himself." I told her I would immediately call Mitch and our friend Javier. When I talked with Mitch on the phone, he said all was good, and when I told him about the call from his wife, he said it was ridiculous. I called Javier, who told me he got a similar call from Mitch's wife. He said he approached Mitch, who said, "Dude, stop, everything is good." A short time later, Mitch shot and killed himself. It was a strange thing. I was told a couple of days before he did this, he had tackled a guy who had threatened to jump off a bridge, saving his life.

  I made it back in time for the funeral. The Undersheriff spoke and portrayed Mitch as a hero the best he could. It was a tough time with his two little daughters who I think were about 10 or 11. I will never understand it. I think about it from time to time, and when I talk to others about it, they say there is no way of knowing what someone is thinking in their mind. If they get it in their mind that this is what they're going to do, you can't stop them. I definitely believe in suicide prevention and looking for the signs. I always think maybe if I had been at work and could have been around Mitch as an influence, maybe it wouldn't have happened.

  Deputy David March had a locker near mine. We didn't know each other very well, just a “how ya doing, hello goodbye” while changing between shifts in the locker room. I could tell by his conversations with others that he was a great guy with a positive attitude. Just how someone talks about how their day went, or how they interact with others tells you a great deal about their character. It must have been early 1998, and for some unknown reason, I found myself working the day shift. Maybe at that time I requested it. Most days I was working car 57, which was the Arcadia, Duarte, Monrovia county car. Car 57 is filled by two deputies on the pm and am shifts, but on day shift it is filled by one deputy. It was always quiet on day shift, and you didn't get too many calls. I would write a few tickets and make some car stops looking for arrests. I made numerous traffic stops on Live Oak Avenue east of Peck Road because it was nice and wide, and just had a couple of industry plants on it.

  Just four years later, after I had transferred to West Hollywood, Deputy March was nearing the end of his time at Temple before transferring closer to his home in Santa Clarita. He was working 57-day shift and made a traffic stop on Live Oak Avenue east of Peck Road. He had no idea that the gang member driving the car had plotted to shoot a police officer on a traffic stop that day. The driver got out and walked toward Deputy March, meeting him between the two cars. The driver pulled out a gun and shot Dave, killing him and leaving him to lay in the street bleeding to death. The suspect was caught a couple of years later in Mexico, extradited, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

  There is a memorial to Deputy March at the location where he was shot. I drove by and saw that it was the same area where I used to make traffic stops. Again I thought, But for the grace of God, go I. There is a memorial interchange sign at the 210 Freeway and the 605 Freeway. Another deputy that I knew personally. I pass the sign seeing his name, and it tugs at my heartstrings, also knowing that could have been me.

  One night my girlfriend and future wife were at Universal Citywalk. We ran into an academy classmate of my girlfriend, and he was walking a foot beat at the Citywalk. I had never heard of this assignment before. I asked him, "You work here at the Citywalk and Universal Studios. You go to movie premiers on the job and work concerts at the Amphitheatre?" He said yea and told me about another 100 things that made this the assignment of a lifetime. Especially anyone interested in the entertainment industry, like me. I learned from my personal growth training how to get anything you want. Decide what you want, find out what you have to do to get it, and start doing those things.

  I asked, “How do you get to work here.”

  He told me, “First you have to transfer to West Hollywood Station, and next you request to work the sub-station at the Citywalk.”

  I told him that was what I was going to do. A few short months later, my transfer came through for West Hollywood.

  WEST HOLLYWOOD STATION

  IT WAS NEAR the end of 1997 when I transferred into West Hollywood Station. This was an exciting place to work. West Hollywood was a contract city. Instead of having their own police force, they contracted with the Sheriff’s Department. This was a 10 million dollar contract. West Hollywood was home to stars, hookers, the sunset strip, and the Russian mob. The station was also responsible for patrol duties at Universal Studios and the Citywalk which were on county property. Actually, part of the Citywalk is in the City of L.A., so many times we had turf arguments as to who was responsible for certain crimes and reports.

  I had to keep in mind that my main goal was to get to the Universal Sub-station because I was having a ball at the city. Remember when I was patrolling the lonely roads of Livingston County NY, it was an ad in Police Product News magazine, “Ride the strip, we pay the gas” with a Sheriff’s car driving down the strip that prompted me to apply to the Sheriff’s Department. Now here I was, driving a Sheriff’s car down the sunset strip. Dream fulfilled. LAPD Hollywood Division has the shitty part of Hollywood, and we had the strip. Driving down the strip was like driving in a movie. I was driving and talking to
myself, and there was the Comedy Store, the Roxbury, The Whiskey A-Go-Go, The Viper Room, the Roxy and then the strip ends. You know the strip ends traveling west because you see that Welcome to Beverly Hills sign.

  I’m driving through Beverly Hills checking out all the spots I saw in the movie Beverly Hills Cop. I was on the job getting paid and taking myself on my own celebrity tour. There was always a nice surprise as I drove around the city discovering new landmarks. Right near the station was the Troubadour, where Lenny Bruce was arrested in the 1960s. And the city loved the Sheriff’s Department. You could pull up in an alley behind a fancy restaurant. The staff would come out and drape a white tablecloth across your hood and lay all the place settings out and serve you lobster on the hood. Seems like somebody always paid for your meal before you could. This wasn’t all the time, or everywhere. But if you developed the right relationships, life at West Hollywood was amazing.

  The city demographics were predominantly gay. There is a line of gay night clubs on Santa Monica Blvd. The hookers on Santa Monica Blvd. were male and don’t come out until a certain hour. Some of the hookers on Santa Monica Blvd. were transgender, or he/shes. Driving down the street late at night, if you didn’t know the area, you wouldn’t know these hookers were male. The female hookers worked on Sunset Blvd.

  I was really enjoying my time at the city, and then one day I was called into the Scheduling Deputy’s office. He started apologizing to me, saying there was nothing he could do because I was the last person to transfer in, he had to send me up to work the Citywalk sub-station. I didn’t tell him that’s why I came to the station in the first place. I think I did pretty good hiding my excitement. I told him that I was there to serve the station and wherever he needed me to go, I was there to help. He was so thankful. He told me that he would never forget that I went without complaint. I rode that goodwill for about five years. If I needed a day off or vacation time, he always approved it. So off to Universal I went for the next five years.

  UNIVERSAL

  Universal was a different world. It was about five or six miles from the home station. We had a station right at the Citywalk on the second floor that we shared with the uniformed security officers. Universal is a big property. We had patrol responsibilities for the back lot where all the sound stages were and where they gave the studio tour, also for the theme park and the Universal Amphitheater. We also covered the Citywalk and the surrounding parking structures. Our patrol shifts started at 6 am and ended around two or three in the morning, depending on the activity. So for about two to three hours, police calls would have to be handled by the West Hollywood city cars. There is a bank that faces the street on Lankershim but is actually on Universal property. So we also had that.

  One morning many years before I got there, the bank had been robbed at gunpoint. It was early in the morning sometime around 7 am. The bank was not open yet; employees were inside and tied up. A lot of money was taken. After the robbery, the department promised Universal to always have deputies on duty at six am. So day shift at Universal was a good gig. You started at 6 am, and the theme park, stores, and restaurants didn't open until 10 am. By the time anything was really happening, your shift was half over. I'd like to say it was all fun and games, and it was. But there were some nights all went bad. During the day and up until about nine at night, the clientele were mostly families walking around and leaving the theme park.

  After nine pm on the weekends, there was a heavy gang presence. There was some type of understanding between the gangs that Universal was neutral territory. Either because of choice or necessity based on the heavy police presence. But every so often, someone would throw a gang sign or give a wrong look to the wrong person, and the fight would be on. On rare occasion, the shooting would be on. But these incidents reinforced the need for our presence. Part of our job was to be seen, to give patrons a feeling of security with our presence, and put the crooks on notice. This was no place for them to be capering.

  For the most part, things went smoothly. If they went too smoothly for too long, the Universal Executives would be walking around seeing us standing around having coffee and laughing. In their minds they are thinking, Are we paying these guys for this? Do we need armed, uniformed deputy sheriff's around here? And then someone would get beat up, shot or robbed, and that was the reminder. We need the police close by.

  The Universal Amphitheater was just a hundred yards behind the sub-station. Depending on the concert and the type of clientele it attracted, they would hire deputies for overtime. Sometimes it was easy money, and sometimes it was a crazy time. This was a great venue to have as our patrol responsibility. It was a lot of extra overtime money, and it was fun. And we had a great relationship with the management of the venue. For any event, we had first access to purchase house seats at regular prices. House seats were orchestra seats and anywhere in the first ten rows.

  Chris Rock did a concert there, and I signed up to work overtime for the event. I watched the whole concert standing in the back. After the show, I went back to the green room and met Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Madonna, and Carl Reiner. I had recently met Jerry Seinfeld on the set of his show. I was taking acting lessons with Judy Kerr, who was the dialogue coach on the show. She arranged for me to do extra work on the show. I was a patron in the coffee shop. One show that I worked as an extra the guest star was James Spader. The day before doing the extra work, I had actually seen Jerry driving one of his Porsche's down Sunset at a good clip. I didn't stop him. While waiting for the scene to shoot, I told Judy to tell Jerry that I saw him speeding on Sunset and didn't stop him because I was going to be on the show. He laughed and came up and introduced himself to me. Alba (my wife) and I did extra work together on the very last show of Seinfeld.

  Alba transferred to West Hollywood Station in 1998. She was having a great time working the city, and I was having a great time up at Universal. She met a contact at the Argyle Hotel in West Hollywood. Every Monday night, Jeff Goldbloom played piano in the lounge of the hotel. We went down a couple of times to hear him play. Not too many people knew at the time that he was a world-class jazz pianist. When he played in the Argyle Lounge, it was not to any fanfare. There maybe was fifty to one hundred people in the lounge enjoying his music. Now in 2019, he's releasing an album.

  The manager of the Argyle took Alba and me around the hotel and gave us some of the history. Wow, it was a pretty amazing tour. He took us to the penthouse suite, which had a balcony that went around the top of the hotel. The manager told us that John Wayne used to stay there, and he always had a cow on the balcony because he wanted fresh milk daily. He took us into another room and showed us a burn mark in the rug. He said it was from a cigar Oliver Stone dropped when he fell asleep smoking. Not sure if these stories were true, but fascinating none the less.

  Things were going great at the department and in my comedy and acting career. Having been to Tony Robbins and having an unlimited mindset, I set out on another lifelong dream. I had success doing my show at the Roxy on Sunset, so that inspired me to the next level. Richard Pryor released a comedy DVD called Live on The Sunset Strip. I loved the look of the stage and venue on the DVD. I checked the credits and saw that it had been filmed at the Hollywood Palladium. Before leaving NY in 1983, I had put in my subconscious mind that I wanted to do a comedy special at the Hollywood Palladium.

  It was now 1998, and I made an appointment with the owner of the Palladium. He turned out to be one of 12 owners. But he was the man handling the office and daily function of the Palladium. He was a reserve officer with the Culver City Police department, so we hit it off right away. He told me I could rent the Palladium during the week for $5500.00. But that would just be what they call four walls. I would have to provide the spotlights and sound. I had some money from the Roxy show, tax returns, and some savings. I gave him a check and signed a contract.

  I had a few months before the show, giving me time to sell tickets and fill the Palladium. It holds almost 3,000 people. But th
e bottom floor can look full with 1,000. I even went to a publicist. She said, "I'm not gonna take your money; you're not a name; you will never fill the Palladium." She meant well, but I thought, Watch me, lady. I didn't know how; I just knew it was gonna happen.

  A few weeks after signing the contract, the owner of the Palladium called me and said, "Paramount Studios just called me. They're doing the re-release of Grease, and they want the Palladium on your date. I told them I already had a contract with you, and they offered $5500.00 for you to change your date."

  I don't know why I told him this, it just flew out of my mouth. "I have already spent money promoting and selling tickets, it will cost them $9,000.00 for me to change the date."

  The owner said he was kind of the whore in this deal. I told him if the studio paid the $9,000, I would have a brokerage fee for him. He said, "I know what to do." Now I talked to all my acting friends in the business, and they all asked what was wrong with me. Why didn't I take the $5500.00, where did I get the $9,000 figure from? I didn't know, and I hadn't spent any money yet, so the $5500.00 would have been free money.

  The Palladium owner called me back and said, "They’re gonna pay you the $9,000.00, write up a billing voucher to Paramount for the amount." I met him for lunch later in the week, and I pushed an envelope with $500.00 cash in it across the table to him. He said, "Did the studios pay you yet?" When I told him no, he said, "I don't trust them. When they pay you, then I'll take your envelope." Wow, what a standup guy. It did take a while and several phone calls to get them to send the check finally. But they did, and I met with the owner, and he got his envelope. Now I made $9,000, and I hadn't opened the doors yet.