Bullish on Billings : LAPD Captain Gives Up Hollywood Glitz for a Small Missouri Town

After spending most of his adult life as a policeman, Capt. Rick Batson is going into a different field. And in this field, he had better watch his step, or more precisely, watch where he steps.

Batson, 46, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division, is forsaking the grit and glitter of Hollywood, and the crime, traffic and smog of the big city, and moving to the small Missouri town of Billings, population 900. He has bought a farm and plans to start raising beef cattle.

It has been 25 years since Batson left his job climbing telephone poles for a career in law-enforcement, in part because he thought police work would be “less dangerous.”

But, as they say in Hollywood, timing is everything, and two weeks after his graduation from the Los Angeles Police Academy, in August, 1965, he was thrust into the midst of the Watts riot.

It was, he recalls, literally a baptism of fire. “There were a few (fires) down there on 103rd Street. From then on it was a very trying time for society.”

In the ensuing years, Batson walked some of the city’s meanest streets, and rose to lieutenant in 1973 after receiving a degree in public management at Pepperdine University.

He was promoted to captain in 1978, and in the years since, he has presided over some of the LAPD’s hottest spots: the gang warfare in South-Central Los Angeles, the homeless crisis in Central Los Angeles, and for the last two years, Hollywood--one of the busiest and highest-profile divisions in the city.

Although he commands a division of 250 officers and detectives, Batson still likes to go on ride-alongs and view the territory from the ground level, the way his officers see it. And he has been widely praised for his work in promoting Neighborhood Watch groups that have effectively cut down on crime.

But now, Batson says, it is time to go. He will officially retire at a ceremony May 4 at the Police Academy. Soon afterward, he and his wife, Carol, will move for good to the 225-acre farm they bought two years ago in southwestern Missouri.

Batson, a tall, bespectacled man who wears a cowboy hat and boots to work, said he has been visiting family in Missouri and planning the move for five years. “Boy, it’ll be a real challenge,” he said in a recent interview. “I’ve got a lot to learn.

“I’m young enough to do something else, and I’m not burned out, tired and bitter,” Batson said. “It’s better to leave on a high than a low.”

His taciturn nature, friends and family said, conceals his delight at the prospect of going to a place where the seasons change and where people all know each other’s name.

Batson’s associates describe him as one of LAPD’s finest and most popular commanding officers. “I’ll miss him like crazy,” Officer Karen York said. “He’ll do anything for you. He’s so high up there (in rank) but he doesn’t act like it.”

His staff is sending him off with good cheer and humor. At a rooftop barbecue held for him at division headquarters recently, Batson was given a large, framed certificate outlining his accomplishments.

As he held it aloft for all to see, he was reminded of something by a voice in the back: “It goes in the house, not in the barn!”

When the picnic was winding down, after they finished their hot dogs and potato salad and heard all the speeches, Batson’s boss, Cmdr. James Jones, took him aside and said: “You’ll be a hard man to replace. . . . There’s no place in the world like Hollywood, so it’ll sure be a change of pace.”

Asked if he thought he’d be able to adjust to the slower pace of Billings, Batson laughed and said, “Easily.”

There will be a lot to do, far more than finding suitable replacements for the suits and uniforms he wears now. Since he has no experience whatsoever in raising cattle, Batson said he will start small: buy about 10 cattle, accept an offer of help from a cousin already in the business and perhaps take a course or two at Southwestern Missouri State in the nearby city of Springfield.

The Batsons will not be disappearing for good, they insist. Their son Greg, 21, and daughter Carrie, 25, are staying in Los Angeles, so they expect to return for frequent visits.

Batson says that his ties to his officers and staff will make leaving hard but that he has learned over the last few years to favor the Midwest over his current home in Whittier.

“I look forward,” he said, “to watching the leaves turn gold in the fall, the grass grow green in the spring, and to going fishing in the summer and seeing the snow fall in the winter.”