‘Drive Our Company Car’ : Sheriff’s Summer Strategy Includes a Beach Invasion

The license plate frame on the Suzuki Quad Runner, a four-wheel, all-terrain vehicle, read: “Drive Our Company Car.” And the plate itself invited passers-by to “Ask how you can have my job.”

Recruiters from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have made the bright red Suzukis a familiar sight at Zuma Beach near Malibu this summer, cruising among the oiled and tanning bodies and dodging an occasional errant Frisbee in their search for would-be deputies.

“During the winter we do a lot of recruiting on college campuses,” Sgt. Mike Grossman said Tuesday. “Everybody goes to the beach in the summer, so we decided we would too. People know we’re here, and they come up to us.”

Working in Shorts

Grossman and his eight-member recruiting team, decked out in white T-shirts and khaki shorts, began hitting the beach in July, and the effort paid off with about 400 applicants that month alone. They will continue recruiting on the sand through this weekend.

Leisa Staab and Michelle Peterson of Simi Valley spotted the Quad Runner’s license plate Tuesday, and Staab hoisted her camera to take a picture. Deputy Katie Campbell wasted no time moving in on the young women to make her recruiting pitch.

“I’m interested in a job, but I’m already signed up to go into the Army on Nov. 27,” Staab said. “I wish I had known what a deputy’s pay is before.”

Knowing the pay ($2,058 a month for high school graduates) would not have helped either 18-year-old woman, however. Deputies must be 21.

Peterson said she had never thought about a law enforcement career before.

“But the money is good,” she said. “I’m going to Moorpark College this fall, but I want to talk to them in two years. It’s a good job and a good opportunity.”

That kind of response has been typical, Campbell said.

“Women have been especially receptive,” the deputy said. “We still have trouble recruiting them. We have to get them to accept the fact that they can do anything the guys can do.”

“The biggest push now is to hire more females,” Grossman added. “In 1986, we anticipate opening a new women’s jail in Lancaster, and we’ll need female deputies to staff it.”

Attracting enough applicants to fill 550 expected openings this fiscal year would appear to be relatively easy. But Grossman said finding 550 deputies will require 30,000 applicants.

Many Are Eliminated

“About half of those who sign up for the exam don’t show up to take it,” he said. “That seems to be true for departments across the state, and no one is really sure why.”

Most of the rest are eliminated during a series of physical, medical and psychiatric tests. Recruits must also pass an interview, an extensive background investigation and a lie-detector test.

The few who pass the hurdles enter the Sheriff’s Academy in Whittier at full pay, up to $2,297 a month for a recruit with a bachelor’s degree.

The department is also using the “Drive Our Company Car” slogan on posters and billboards showing a new patrol car as part of its stepped-up effort to attract more deputies.

“We’re taking law enforcement recruiting out of the Dark Ages and into the 20th Century of marketing,” Sgt. Paul Harman said. “We get calls from law enforcement agencies all over the country asking about our recruiting.”

Covering a Wide Area

Another campaign to be launched soon will feature signs on the sides of the black-and-white buses the department uses to transport prisoners, reading: “Dull Jobs Are a Crime. Fight Crime. Be a Deputy Sheriff.”

Recruiters are also moving in on nearby jurisdictions, offering the department’s written test in San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties.

At Zuma Beach, people from other states have been particularly interested in applying, recruiters said.

“Even two guys from Sweden were very interested,” Campbell said, “but you have to be a U.S. citizen.”

Deputy Paul Tanaka parked his Suzuki near an umbrella where Joe Beerer of Glendale was enjoying a day at the beach with his family. When Tanaka learned that Beerer, 42, is an aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the deputy said: “I don’t think he wants to be a recruit.”

Beerer, though, was still impressed.

“It looks like a good idea,” he said of the beach recruiting drive. “They ought to keep it up.”

Reading the flyer Tanaka had given him, Beerer added: “There are a lot of young guys in my bicycle club. I think I’ll pass it along.”