A Man Who’s Been There Helps Other Stressed Cops

Anthony Sperl now helps other cops as few were able to help him when he needed it five years ago.

Sperl counsels stress-plagued cops, occasionally organizing seminars in the living room of his rented Los Angeles house. There, sharing their frustrations and anxieties with sympathetic colleagues, they know they also have an understanding listener in Sperl.

“I’ve been there,” said the former Stanton police officer, “and I’ve been through all of this.”

Sperl certainly has.

He was a promising young policeman when, on March 3, 1983, he entered the apartment of Patricia Ridge in Stanton to check a report that Ridge and her young son had not been seen in recent days. Finding the bedroom door tied shut, he kicked the door open. A shadowy figure in the room, lit only by a flickering television, pointed what appeared to be a gun at the officer. Sperl fired, hitting the figure in the neck.

When the figure crumpled, Sperl discovered it was 5-year-old Patrick Andrew Mason, Ridge’s son, holding a toy gun. As Sperl rushed to the boy’s side, the dying Patrick grasped the officer’s leg and looked up at him.

As paramedics tried to save the child, according to police and neighbors, an anguished Sperl pounded his fists on the apartment wall and screamed, “What have I done? What have I done?”

Sperl, 24, went from being the model of an up-and-

coming cop to being the subject of national publicity, investigations and lawsuits. The police drama “Hill Street Blues” aired several episodes that re-created the event. The television news show “60 Minutes” broadcast an interview in which Sperl broke down while retelling the incident.

An Orange County Grand Jury decided not to indict either Sperl for negligence or Ridge for endangering her child by leaving him alone. (Ridge had gone to work and could not afford a baby-sitter.)

Ridge filed a $20-million wrongful-death suit against Sperl and the city of Stanton and settled for $395,000 two years ago. Sperl also sued the city, claiming he was improperly trained and given improper orders. He later dropped the suit. Another suit, alleging civil rights violations for being forced to wear his blood-soaked uniform for five hours during an interrogation after the incident, was dismissed by a Superior Court judge. Sperl retired on a medical disability. He is still awaiting a decision on his Workers’ Compensation claim for vocational rehabilitation.

Before the shooting, Sperl’s future looked as shiny as his badge. He had earned a master’s degree, was halfway toward a second one, and had graduated third in his police academy class.

“He was the picture post card of what a good police officer should be,” said the former police chief who hired him.

Today, Sperl scrapes by on his disability checks and lives with his dog, Dog, while working on a law degree. He hopes one day to have a practice specializing in police officers’ workers’ compensation claims.

He also is still awaiting word on his 1985 application to the U.S. Border Patrol. After he took the written, oral, medical and psychiatric tests, officials began the standard background investigation but have never said whether he has been accepted or rejected, he said.

Sperl is on a waiting list to be hired as a senior deputy probation officer in Santa Barbara and has occasionally worked as a bodyguard and as a cross-country courier of valuables.

And then there is his California Police Stress Institute, a nonprofit organization. Stressed-out cops need specialized counseling, he said.

“Being a policeman is like belonging to a club. It’s a real fraternity of men and women who are considered to be superhuman, physically and emotionally,” he said. “As long as you’re in the department, everything is fine.

“But when you retire or leave, you are automatically ostracized from that group. You are no longer superhuman. A lot of the guys don’t want to see you anymore. Because they’re automatically reminded that this might happen to them, they might get shot, they might get stressed out.”

His current life certainly is not what he had envisioned for himself when he was an eager young officer who thought one day he might want to be a police chief somewhere.