The LAPD’s Desert Fox : Racing Is a Dirty Job, but Officer Brownell Loves to Do It

Roll call at the West Traffic Division of the Los Angeles Police Department isn’t quite the gritty melodrama you’ve seen on “Hill Street Blues.” Twenty officers are listening to the watch commander drone through a thick, detailed memo on . . . what? The crime of the century? Corruption at the highest levels of government? Not exactly. Venereal disease is the topic of the day. Bored to tears, the officers yawn, volley wisecracks and squirm in their hard wooden seats.

A captain stops by and interrupts the watch commander, much to the relief of the officers. There to announce the recipients of the LAPD’s safe-driving awards, he begins reading the names of four officers who have ridden herd over the city’s carburetor cowboys without incurring so much as a ding in their black and white Fords. One of the four fidgets as the captain hands out the citations.

“Joanna Brownell,” he announces. “Three years without crashing--not even in the desert.” Officer Brownell blushes. Her colleagues applaud.

Four days later, Brownell, 26, is a long way from the mean streets and the night watch. Dressed not in blue but fluorescent orange, she is 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles in Adelanto, a usually peaceful desert backwater amid the pucker bushes and sagebrush that crawl across the sand to the distant snow-tipped mountains. As Brownell awaits the start of a gran prix motorcycle race, the captain’s words come back:

“Three years without crashing--not even in the desert.”

Brownell’s driving record as a cop may be impeccable, but, with all due respects to the captain, she has crashed in the desert. On different occasions, she has been catapulted over her handlebars, fallen off the bike, tasted sand and mud and been forced to cut cactus barbs from her legs. Two years ago, while she was cruising across the desert in a 174-mile race from Barstow to Las Vegas, a competitor suddenly materialized through the dust and sideswiped her, causing a painful shoulder injury that didn’t prevent her from being the first woman in her division to cross the finish line.

During roll call, a sergeant tells the officers about two traffic cops who were shot recently while investigating a routine traffic accident. But as Brownell knows all too well, disaster doesn’t give you any warning in the desert, either. The sand washes and the hills that appear friendly can be hiding unexpected calamity: abandoned mine shafts waiting to swallow you, cliffs that aren’t on your itinerary, hidden rocks and logs and crevices that haven’t made any maps.

Although high-speed chases through L. A.’s asphalt jungles in a police car can, Brownell said, “really get your hair up,” she also knows that being encased in a ton of metal makes her feel more secure than racing a motorcycle across the unpredictable desert. At 100 m.p.h., a desert biker has only a cushion of wind and a thin layer of plastic body armor for protection.

Depressing thoughts like these were filtering through Brownell’s mind as she prepared for Adelanto’s gran prix. She was focusing her concentration on the task at hand: In a few minutes, she would be competing in a race with 100 highly skilled riders, the majority of them men who would not make any concessions, or show any mercy, or treat her any differently because she was a woman.

The course would not discriminate, either, testing her ability to handle changing terrain and man-made hazards. Unlike most races in which Brownell competes, the Adelanto gran prix didn’t take place entirely in the desert. The eight-mile loop would begin on asphalt, take the riders through a mud hole, around a zig-zagging motocross layout, and then into the desert where they could open the throttle and reach speeds in excess of 100 m.p.h. Riders would complete the three loops in about 45 bone-jarring minutes.

“It’ll beat your upper body to death,” Brownell said before the race, folding her arms and standing next to her 250cc Husqvarna, a six-speed Swedish superbike provided by one of her eight sponsors. Wearing knee-high boots, chest protector and skin-tight clothing over a solid, husky frame, she looked like a warrior from the days of Mad Max, a heroic figure ready to mount her faithful chrome steed and ride off to another adventure.

As she stood there, her trademark braid dangled limply down her back. It is when she rips across the desert on the Husqvarna that the long braid flies behind her like a banner, sending the other riders a message: Joanna Brownell has left you in her dust. There isn’t a woman she competes against who hasn’t received the message, loud and clear. Ranked the No. 1 woman desert racer in Southern California by the American Motorcycle Assn., Brownell won her first professional race last month, finishing 40 minutes ahead of the second-place woman in Whisky Pete’s World Championship.

Brownell slipped her helmet over her head, pushed back her bangs and adjusted her goggles. The race was minutes away. Her husband, Rick, was commiserating with a rider whose arm was in a sling. Rick Brownell, an LAPD motorcycle cop in the Valley and an officer for 18 years, got his wife involved in desert racing nearly three years ago to give himself a play-riding companion. He never imagined she would begin beating other men, including him.

Nine months ago, Rick suffered a devastating shoulder separation when he flipped over the handlebars at 70 m.p.h., his humerus wrenching from its socket and winding up under his armpit. After a long convalescence, he summoned the courage to race again, but the psychological wounds hadn’t healed, and his riding lacks the bravado that once made him one of the top open-class veterans in the state. In racing parlance, he was “seeing spooks.”

At Adelanto, he was scheduled to compete in a race that began before his wife’s, but he scratched because the front brakes on his ADK 560 weren’t working properly. But he had enough to do just helping Joanna get ready for her race. Aside from offering advice and warnings, he fine-tuned her machine and even provided her with a milk crate she would use to mount the bike.

With the race about to start, Joanna glanced over to pink-clad Vicki Scott, her main competition among the women, and flashed her a quick wave. But Brownell was noticeably subdued, not her usual easy-to-laugh self. Despite her success, she always gets pre-race jitters, and once had to endure the misery of standing on the starting line while dry-heaving in her helmet.

The starter called the racers to their marks. A hundred bikes were lined up in single file along a curb on Bartlett Avenue, the main drag in this town of 4,000. A hundred riders were on the opposite curb, poised like sprinters. There was an eerie silence until the starter dropped his flag and the riders sprinted across the street. In an instant, they had leaped on their bikes like cowboys and brought the engines to life, an awful howling rumble filling the air as the machines went whipping down the street, sounding like the hounds of hell.

Brownell got off to a quick start but found herself trailing Scott, whose bike had been lined up behind hers. Crouching low on the Husqvarna as it shot across the asphalt, Brownell passed thunder-struck spectators who were watching the mayhem from the sidewalks in front of Bob Johnson’s Used Furniture store and the Fluff ‘n’ Puff dog grooming salon.

The course funneled into the mud hole. Dozens of racers were jockeying for position on the narrowed course, causing a logjam and a lot of bumping and jostling. Brownell slowed down, leaned into the turn, accelerated out of it and braced herself for the jump off a three-foot ledge. The bike left the ground, sailed about 15 feet and landed hard in the goo. But Brownell gunned the 40-horsepower engine and the bike bucked away, spraying mud on everybody behind her.

Watching the tumultuous start was Estelle Needham, Joanna’s mother. When the Husqvarna disappeared into the desert chaparral, Estelle relaxed and chatted about her daughter. Indirectly, it was Estelle who influenced Joanna to become a cop. When the Needhams lived in Plainville, Mass., Estelle owned a 24-hour diner that was a hangout for the local police. Joanna, not yet a teen-ager, sat around, idolized them, listened to their stories and decided then that she would someday wear the badge.

When she was 13, Joanna began to display extraordinary athletic ability. In addition to excelling at sports like tennis and track, she took up karate and was a third-degree black belt before she graduated high school. Feared for her devastating leg kicks, she won national karate titles for two consecutive years while attending American University in Washington.

In the early 1980s, she entered a made-for-television event called “The World’s Toughest Gal” competition, which was a series of no-holds-barred brawls in a boxing ring. Brownell won the $1,000 prize, knocking out her first opponent, scoring a technical knockout against a 240-pounder named April the Assassin and winning an easy decision in the championship match. Despite her ferocity in the ring, however, she remained mother’s little girl.

“She’s a love,” Estelle said, wrapping a down coat around her to fight the morning chill. “When she was growing up, she wasn’t a tomboy. Never had a fight with anybody. She was always a lady. Dresses and shoes, that was her. Never cared for slacks. She started playing sports in the seventh grade and was just a natural. They said she was Olympic material.

“My son, he couldn’t give two cents for sports, but Joanna, she just loved it. And smart! Did she tell you, she was valedictorian of her class in high school and junior college? I really shouldn’t be saying this. But whenever I meet somebody, I can’t help bragging about her. She gets so angry at me.”

Brownell moved to Los Angeles in 1981 hoping to do stunt work for the motion picture studios, but decided, she said, that “jumping out of buildings and being set on fire” wasn’t for her. In January, 1982, she enrolled in the Los Angeles Police Academy. When she graduated a year later, she satisfied a long-time dream by buying her first motorcycle, a 750cc Suzuki street bike. Then she met Rick, who had been racing desert bikes for more than 15 years. He took her to watch a police desert bike club called the Badgers.

“She really got pumped up,” he said, “and she is so competitive and so strong that she took to it right away.” In 1 1/2 years, she won 20 races, including the first one she entered, and advanced from novice to expert.

Although Joanna takes time off from racing to enter and win police combat shooting matches with Rick and compete in the Police Olympics--she holds state records in the discus and shotput--she and Rick spend almost all their days off in the desert. Even with sponsors, racing costs the Canyon Country couple about $1,000 a month, but it also keeps them close.

Rick takes great pleasure in Joanna’s accomplishments. He also takes a lot of teasing. On the force, he’s known as “Ranger Rick.” Joanna, who hopes to become the first woman motorcycle cop in the history of the LAPD, is called “Mrs. Ranger” or “Rangerette.” When Joanna finishes ahead of Rick in a race, their fellow officers don’t miss the chance to needle him.

“They say things like, ‘You let your wife beat you?’ ” Rick said. “So I tell them, ‘I don’t let her. If you think you can do better, give it a try.’ ”

Standing at the motocross layout, Rick glanced at his watch. About 15 minutes had passed since the race began. A couple of riders had already finished the first loop and were coming through for the second time. He checked his watch again, calculating in his head, wanting desperately to see No. 301 barrel around the curve toward him. A few more riders shot by.

“This is what I hate the most,” he said. “Waiting for her to come around. . . .” His voice trailed off and his eyes brightened. The Husqvarna was 100 yards away. Rick quickly focused his camera. Joanna slid through a turn, not more than a foot from Rick, who snapped the picture and shook a fist at her for encouragement. But she didn’t acknowledge him, her eyes fixed on the winding layout.

Four minutes later, a pink blur appeared on a crest. It was Vicki Scott; Joanna had caught her a few miles into the first lap. As Scott finished the motocross section and headed into the desert, she rode by a man who was hobbling back to town on foot, his bike laying silent somewhere in the sand, a busted shock testimony to the unyielding terrain and diabolical “hoop-de-doos”--stretches of moguls similar to waves in the ocean.

Half an hour went by. Rick walked to the finish line, passing through a field packed with hundreds of campers and trucks, a lot of them flying colorful flags that made the scene reminiscent of a medieval joust. He gazed down a long asphalt road for his wife. Eight riders had already finished when he saw her in the distance. She slowed down at the finish. Coming up behind her, a male rider ran wide open and nipped her by a tire length.

“He didn’t want to get beat by a lady,” Rick said, grinning.

Joanna yanked off her goggles, exposing the only clean skin on her mud-streaked face. She had finished 10th overall, behind nine men. Scott came in a few minutes later. She and Brownell compared notes on the course.

“You’re talking death out there,” Scott said.

A smile creased Brownell’s face. The race was over. She could laugh again.