ORANGE : Teamwork Pays Off for New Sergeants

The Whiteleys seem to have one of those almost perfect marriages--they golf together, study together and pack pistols together.

And when two sergeant slots opened in the Police Department, the husband-and-wife cop team muscled out 12 other applicants.

The muscle in this case was largely in the mind. The two-day sergeant’s exam, which included written, oral and group testing, was designed to select supervisors strong on “people skills, good-sense community policing and problem-solving,” Capt. Gene Hernandez said.

John Whiteley and Jackie Gomez-Whiteley spent nearly a year of their young marriage preparing for the moments last month when each was handed a copper-, gold- and chrome-plated sergeant’s badge.

They both firmly believe that the secret to their success in marriage and on the job is teamwork.

“The fact that we were both shooting for No. 1, it really helped,” Gomez-Whiteley said. “I don’t think I could have studied the way I did without being married to John.”

When she was down, shut in one of their home’s his-and-her study rooms, with her motivation draining away, he would prop her back up, she said. And when the situation was reversed, Gomez-Whiteley would be her husband’s cheering section.

“Jackie put together over 2,000 flash cards,” Whiteley said, recalling the “ton of books” they studied. “We did a lot of cross-teaching to each other.”

The couple went beyond the case law and policy manuals that make up much of the written exam and hired a consultant at Cal State Los Angeles to coach them through the interview process.

Later, surrounded by a lieutenant and five captains from other precincts throwing “situationals” at them, “we watched other guys make the mistakes we would have made,” Gomez-Whiteley said.

They talk shop for many of the few hours they have together while he is on night shift and she is on days, Whiteley said.

“We talk about learning points because we’re both supervisors now,” he said. “We want to apply what we’ve learned.”

And sometimes the shop comes to them, as it did recently when a young resident Whiteley knew from his time on the gang unit approached the couple at a restaurant to assure them he was no longer one of the gang.

But they make a point of nurturing friendships outside of the department to add some diversity to their private lives.

“I’ve seen too many guys, they come into this profession and they get a skewed view of society,” Whiteley said.

They met several years ago when she was on the motorcycle and wanted to become a detective. He was in criminal intelligence, eventually helping to start the department’s gang unit, and things took off from there, they said.

He liked her athleticism and outgoing personality. She liked his maturity and “his reputation for always doing the right thing,” she said. “He is very honorable.”

Whiteley and his colleagues in the department also support Gomez-Whiteley in her status as the Police Department’s first female sergeant.

During the 7 1/2 years since she started, the officers have always treated her well, she said, even as she started competing with them for higher rank.

A double-cop marriage also eases some of the stress that cop-civilian couples have, they noted, because each has confidence that the other knows how to stay alive and unharmed while on patrol.