Deukmejian’s Guards Slept on Job, Panel Told

Two State Police officers assigned to guard Gov. George Deukmejian in his downtown apartment were found asleep early in his Administration, the state Personnel Board has been told.

The incident came to light during a hearing Wednesday on the appeal of Ron Azevedo from his demotion from State Police lieutenant to sergeant in March, 1984. A report on the incident was carried in Thursday’s editions of The Sacramento Union.

Azevedo testified at an earlier workers’ compensation hearing that while checking rounds he discovered two officers on the Deukmejian security detail sleeping. State police guard state buildings and provide security for state officials.

“I startled them,” Azevedo testified. “I walked up on top of them. And I advised them of the sensitivity of this particular beat and they should be more alert in the a.m. I reported this information to the lieutenant.”

Azevedo, who had spent 4 1/2 years on security detail for the family of Ronald Reagan when he was governor, was assigned to the graveyard shift in 1983 to check on reports that officers were sleeping on duty.

Within four months, Azevedo himself was accused of sleeping on the job and was demoted to sergeant.

Eugenia King, a former graveyard shift dispatcher, said Azevedo had been assigned to the graveyard shift “to sort of clean up things because a lot of little things were going on.”

She said officers openly discussed a move to “get” Azevedo because he was checking on them.

One of the officers Azevedo said he caught sleeping, Robert Coob, was later fired for brandishing his gun in the locker room, but was reinstated. Coob and his partner later signed statements that they had seen Azevedo sleeping in his office for several minutes at a time.

Paige Thompson, a secretary in the regional office, said she once found Coob asleep in the dispatch center, but was told by Regional Commander Robert Cardwell to “have amnesia” about it.

Thompson said she often went around the various offices at 6 a.m. to wake people, and that dispatchers routinely put out a “rooster call” to patrol vehicles to let them know the watch was nearly over.