LOCAL ELECTIONS / SHERIFF : At Last, Drama in the Picking of County’s Top Cop

After decades of predictable results and uneventful campaigns, this year’s race for Los Angeles County sheriff has all the drama and bickering of a good daytime soap opera.

The main protagonist, Sheriff Sherman Block, 65, finds his department mired this election year in the worst scandal in recent decades, with 10 members of a top anti-narcotics unit indicted as the department investigates allegations that they pocketed seized drug money.

Enter the chief rival, a political novice named Roland C. Biscailuz. A detective in the department’s Lennox station, the 44-year-old Biscailuz is the cousin of the late Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz, considered by many to be the grandfather of the modern Sheriff’s Department.

The younger Biscailuz says Block’s mismanagement of the department has ruined its once sterling reputation.

Biscailuz’s low-budget campaign received a boost recently from the elderly “sheriff emeritus” Peter J. Pitchess, who ran the department from 1958 to 1982.

Pitchess, 78, is playing a small but important supporting role in this year’s sheriff’s race. When Pitchess was sheriff, Block was his right-hand man. Now Pitchess has called on his former protege to resign.

Uncharacteristically flustered by the criticism, Block called Biscailuz’s statements “basically garbage” and said of Pitchess: “In his old age, he’s more to be pitied.”

Even his opponent and detractors concede that Block very likely will win reelection to his third four-year term in the June 5 balloting. But Biscailuz and Pitchess have interjected a contentious note into what is usually one of the county’s most routine elections.

At the root of this enmity are the controversies that have made this one of the most difficult years the Sheriff’s Department has endured in recent memory.

Besides the indictment of the deputies, the 7,500-member department has also come under fire for its handling of the January shooting of a member of the Nation of Islam in Athens. And in August the Sheriff’s Department was criticized for its handling of a 911 emergency call that preceded the killing of four women at a birthday party in East Los Angeles.

Faced with such bad news, some public officials might face an uphill fight for reelection. But Block’s prestige among members of his department and the voters apparently has not faded. A recent Los Angeles Times Poll showed that 62% of Los Angeles County residents approved of the work of the Sheriff’s Department.

For now, as one union official put it, Block seems to be the “sheriff with the Teflon badge.”

Bob Feliciano, a forensic consultant who ran an unsuccessful campaign for sheriff in 1982, said victory for an incumbent sheriff is virtually automatic.

“The sheriff is so powerful (that) it’s not an elected position, it’s an appointed position,” Feliciano said. “In the campaign, nobody ever talks about the issues. There’s no debates. It’s a locked-in system.”

Feliciano is not running this year because, he said, a recently enacted state law limits the post to working law enforcement officers. He came closer than anyone to defeating Block, garnering 21% of the vote to Block’s 63%. In 1986, Block won reelection with 913,303 votes--his nearest rival, Saul E. Lankster, could tally only 70,772 votes.

Apart from a gala fund-raiser last fall, Block has not actively campaigned for reelection. He has been endorsed by several state and local officials and by the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, which represents about 6,500 deputies.

According to his last campaign statement, Block’s reelection committee has $351,992 in cash on hand. His list of contributors includes oil companies, waste disposal firms, land developers and bankers, all members of the “county family” of organizations and individuals whose business is intertwined with county government.

By contrast, with less than three weeks left before the election, Biscailuz said he had raised only $1,400 for his bid to unseat Block. He has made a single campaign appearance, setting up a table at Olvera Street on a pleasant Sunday afternoon to distribute posters and green pens with his campaign slogan: “Leadership and Accountability.”

Biscailuz, who has never run for office, investigates auto thefts and burglaries at the Lennox station. A 21-year veteran, he says his campaign represents a grass-roots movement of sheriff’s deputies who are dissatisfied with Block.

He is critical of department disciplinary procedures under Block, which he said have contributed to low morale among the department’s rank and file. Block said such criticisms are unfounded and that he has the support of the vast majority of his deputies.

Biscailuz acknowledges that he is running chiefly on the strength of the name he shares with his late cousin.

The challenger has also drawn some indirect support from Pitchess. While Pitchess has not endorsed Biscailuz, the “sheriff emeritus” met recently with Biscailuz. “Roland is a fine boy,” Pitchess said.

More important for Biscailuz, Pitchess also has made stinging criticisms of Block, the man he groomed for sheriff.

All three men--Block, Biscailuz and Pitchess-- belong to the virtual dynasty that has ruled the department since 1934, with incumbents winning reelection to the post in 14 consecutive elections.

Eugene Biscailuz supported Pitchess, then his undersheriff, in the 1958 election. And Pitchess, in turn, named Block undersheriff. Before the 1982 election, Pitchess stepped down, allowing Block to finish out the term and run in the 1982 election as an incumbent.

In a telephone interview, Pitchess said he was calling on Block to resign because of the recent money-skimming scandal that has led to the suspension of 26 deputies within the past year.

“I am very disturbed,” Pitchess said. “The department is full of a bunch of fine law enforcement men and women. For them to suffer like this, the bad image that they are getting, it’s almost criminal. There is only one person to blame for this.”

Block points out, however, that Pitchess’ bad feelings toward him go back several years, almost to the day Block was sworn in as sheriff. The two men were involved in a dispute over Pitchess’ use of a sheriff’s car after Pitchess had retired from office. After the dispute, Block says, Pitchess spurned him.

“He’s an angry old man who has never been able to accept the fact that he’s no longer the sheriff of Los Angeles County,” Block said.

Also running in the election is Joseph G. Senteno, 43, of Inglewood. Senteno, a custodian at UCLA, finished third in the 1986 election, drawing 58,004 votes. He did not respond to calls from The Times.