Interim Chief of Police Will Head Department Permanently

John Cleghorn, the retired Los Angeles police captain who has served as Corona’s interim police chief since August, will permanently head the department, City Manager James Wheaton announced Thursday.

Cleghorn, 50, was the last commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s controversial Public Disorders Intelligence Division and the first head of its successor, the 2-year-old Anti-Terrorist Division.

After 26 1/2 years in Los Angeles, he retired from the LAPD in January and accepted the interim position in Corona seven months later.

The city received 30 applications for the job, said Deputy City Manager Bill Garrett.

“I’m very pleased with the opportunity this presents me to continue to work with the department and the community in Corona,” Cleghorn said Thursday. “I’ve found it to be an extremely good experience so far. . . . I’m very optimistic about the future.”

The new chief will receive $56,184 annually.

“We are very pleased that he has accepted the appointment,” Garrett said. “We believe the city in general, and the Police Department in particular, will benefit from his experience.

“And we look forward to having some consistency in the (department’s) leadership, which we have been lacking in the past.”

The Corona Police Department had been without a permanent leader for more than a year, since the August, 1984, indictment of Chief Bob J. Talbert and Deputy Chief Edward Sampson on charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice.

A Riverside County jury acquitted Talbert and Sampson in May, after a three-week trial that was the culmination of more than a year and a half of bitter, often public acrimony between members of the Police Department and their top officers.