Sheriff’s Sweepstakes : 1,229 Applicants Begin Testing for 25 Vacancies in Ventura County Department

Dissecting word puzzles and vaulting six-foot fences, 1,229 would-be deputies began competing this weekend for 25 vacancies in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

The applicant pool is the largest in the department’s history, said sheriff’s Sgt. Christopher Godfrey, who is in charge of the application process.

It is more than twice the size of the last group, which was tested in 1991 only to have the vacancies vanish during last year’s county budget cuts, Godfrey said.

“We maintained records on all the individuals that applied last time, and we re-solicited them,” Godfrey said last week. “This is the largest group we’ve ever gotten.”

On Friday morning, the sheriff’s staff began putting the hundreds of hopefuls--young and old, men and women alike--through a two-hour written exam in the Camarillo Community Center. The testing will continue in groups of 100 or more through Monday, Godfrey said.

The written exam evaluates the powers of analyzing, summarizing, recalling and reporting facts--the kinds of language skills required in a job that often relies heavily on written reports, said Galen Tittle, one of several county personnel officials who paced around the testing room to safeguard against cheating.

Of the 80 who took the test, 54 passed and went on to a physical agility test in sweltering heat on an obstacle course at the Sheriff’s Training Academy at Camarillo Airport.

Shannon Jackson and her husband Dennis, both 23, came from Victorville to take the tests, hoping the department will hire them.

“It wasn’t bad at all,” Shannon Jackson said of the exam, after a computerized scoring device scanned her test and declared that she had exceeded the required passing grade of 70%.

As for the physical test, she said beforehand that nothing could be as tough as the sultry summer she spent in the U.S. Coast Guard’s boot camp in Cape May, N.J. “I’m not worried about it,” she added. She later passed the sheriff’s test, as did her husband.

Applicants included fresh-faced college graduates, seasoned officers from other departments, and older candidates seeking a change of professions.

Peter Bishop, a wiry 49-year-old applicant from Simi Valley, asked rhetorically, “Why is such an old man in the process?” Because, he said, air quality agencies all but shut down his airplane-restoration business, and he was encouraged to apply by friends who are police officers.

“I think it’s just wonderful. I can take it,” Bishop said of the prospect of becoming a 50-year-old police rookie. “I’d like to get into community relations. At my age, I know I’ll have to spend a lot of time on patrol, but anything against gangs would interest me. I think the gang problem is getting out of hand.”

Moments later, Bishop was sweating his way through the physical tests, coming close to matching times with men and women half his age.

One by one, applicants hustled through the tests as best they could.

First came an agility run through a twisting course of tightly placed highway cones and concrete curbs.

Then a body drag--hauling a bulky, sagging 165-pound dummy 30 feet--followed by the challenges of scaling a six-foot chain-link fence and a six-foot wooden wall, and ending with a 500-yard run.

The wall is the make-or-break point for many applicants, particularly for women, who often lack the upper body strength to haul themselves over, Sgt. Jean Edwards said.

“Most of it is technique,” said Edwards, as grunting applicants hit the wall one at a time, competing against the clock.

“Unless you’re in really good shape, it can be frustrating,” she said. “It’s hard to get over the way men do. A lot of women don’t have any past experience with it.”

Although men hoist themselves over with arms and shoulders, many of the women succeed by grabbing on, throwing a leg up to straddle the top and then hauling themselves to the other side, Edwards said.

While Peter Bishop scaled the wall on his second try, Shannon Jackson had to hit it four or five times.

As she was trying the wall, burly Ray Mosones of Oxnard flung himself at the metal fence and flew over it, his feet never touching the top. The former football player at Channel Islands High School vaulted the wooden wall with the same grace and speed, drawing whoops and applause from his fellow applicants.

Mosones said he looks forward to the possibility of being a Ventura County deputy or an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, where he also has applied--maybe even working to combat Asian organized crime of the type that affects his own Filipino community.

“It intrigues me,” he said, gathering up his street clothes. “My major was criminal justice, and I want to use my degree. . . . While I’m still young and brash, I want to do something exciting.”

After only three of the 54 failed--all women--Lt. Mark Ball said, “Few if any wash out physically . . . none of this is too difficult.”

He added, “Probably the biggest failure is people who demonstrate that they lack ethics.”

This weekend’s physical and written exams are only the beginning of a rigorous two-month shakedown. The purpose of the tests, along with interviews, psychological testing, a deep background check and a polygraph test, is to weed out the unfit, the uneducated, the unethical and the unstable.

The oral exam tends to winnow out “people who have no concept of what law enforcement is,” Ball said. “We ask them, ‘What do we do?’ and maybe they answer ‘You guys give out tickets.’ ‘Well, is that all?’ They say, ‘Uh, yeah, I guess so’--and they’re outta here.”