Verdugo Views: Police department celebrates more than a century serving the community

The Glendale Police Department has come a long way since its inception in 1906, the year we officially became a city and elected our first marshal, Orren E. Patterson.

At the time, the police and fire divisions were combined and the first jail was just an iron cage behind the fire station on Howard Street. Six years later, a new station house was built on East Broadway, where the post office currently stands.

Things have changed a lot since then, but police officers today still face some of the same type of problems they faced in 1914, including stolen cars, disturbing the peace and dangerous driving.

Examples from the 1914 police blotter, as noted in the 1981 “Glendale Area History” book, include:

A Ford five-passenger car with a top and windshield, nickel on the doors and a klaxon horn, was reported stolen by a Tropico resident.

A professor at the high school complained that, at 9:30 p.m., “some boys” were creating a disturbance outside the schoolhouse where an oratorical was going on.

A Hawthorne Avenue man lost control of his electric auto on Hollywood Hill and the car “turned turtle.”

By 1918, when the police and fire operations separated and the police moved into two rooms in City Hall, the force included a marshal and eight men, working 12-hour shifts. One was stationed at Brand Boulevard and Broadway, another at Los Feliz Boulevard and San Fernando Road and one more patrolled the residential area on a bicycle.

In 1921, after a charter was adopted, Allen O. Martin was named the first police chief and given a force of 12 officers and the use of a touring car.

Little effort was made to preserve their history before 1980, according to Officer Teal Metts. That changed when then Lt. Michael Post began collecting artifacts, photos and records of important events and displayed badges and other items in a small glass case at the old station on Isabel Street.

Post continued as unofficial historian until 2001 when he retired and handed the reins over to Lt. Pete Michael. In 2008, when Michaels retired, Metts took over.

“It is handed down to whomever the current historian sees as having the drive and desire to maintain the legacy,” Metts wrote in a recent email.

In this role, Metts designed a special badge worn by uniformed officers during Glendale’s 2006 centennial year.

Now he is working with the Glendale Police Foundation to create a museum in the foyer of police headquarters on Isabel Street.

The museum will highlight events important to the department’s history. Replicas of uniforms worn by officers over the last 111 years will be displayed, along with other items.

The foundation is taking the lead in raising the necessary funds and is also seeking donations of letters, artifacts and mementos that tell the department’s story.

To donate artifacts or share your story, contact Officer Metts at tmetts@glendaleca.gov or at (818) 482-4681 or speak to him in person at a police foundation awards event on Thursday at the Glendale Hilton.

To buy tickets to the event or to support the museum financially, contact Larry Miller at larmil@att.net or at (818) 929-6608.

Readers Write:

Police officer Teal Metts grew up in Glenoaks Canyon, graduating from St Francis High in La Cañada in 1994.

His father’s family came here from Ohio in 1948. “Dad grew up on Ardmore and later on Sylvanoak,” he recently emailed.

His mother is part of the Cochran family who came here in 1925. His grandfather Lee Cochran co-founded Cochran Automotive at the corner of Chevy Chase Drive and Lilac Lane in the late 1940s.

Cochran soon met fellow hot-rodders and auto-body guys Tom and George Bistagne, who started Bistagne Brothers Body Shop, a two-stall garage on the northeast corner of Chevy Chase and Verdugo Road in 1946. Two years later, they moved to the southeast corner, and the business is now in its 71st year.

Cochran Automotive closed in the late 1990s, and the shop was leased to Boris Automotive.

The Cochran and Bistagne families became closely connected in 1985 when second generation Bob Bistagne married Mett’s mother Tana Cochran. “Talk about petrol running in our veins,” Metts wrote. Being raised in the automotive industry, “cars are naturally in my blood.”

Law enforcement is another lifelong passion, he wrote. He began volunteering with the police department in 1995 as an 18 year old, working in the jail and traffic division.

This year marks his 20th year as an officer. Currently an organized retail crime investigator, he designed and helped put together the Breast Cancer Awareness pink patrol car and motorcycles, and more recently, the Anti DUI Police Taxi.

KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at katherineyamada@gmail.com. or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o Glendale News-Press, 202 W. First St., Second Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number.