Police Retirees Set Huntington Beach Record : Personnel: Seven officers join about 50 other workers who become pensioners this month. City hirings have been frozen.

Almost 200 years of law enforcement expertise will be lost this month when seven police officers retire, and authorities say they are unsure whether replacements will be hired in the midst of Orange County’s bankruptcy debacle.

Among those leaving are one of four captains, an investigation bureau commander and a jail manager. The average tenure is 23 years for the soon-to-be retirees, according to department records.

“We have more people retiring this month than any other month in the history of the department,” Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg said.

The department will promote three officers today to fill some of the vacant positions, Lt. Gary Brooks said. And the process of sifting through the hundreds of applications of potential candidates will continue.

But when Orange County became the largest governmental body to declare bankruptcy earlier this week, all hiring was temporarily suspended, Lowenberg said. On top of that, the city’s budget already is $912,000 in the red.

“I’m not sure when we will have opportunity to replace these positions,” Lowenberg said. “Frankly, right now, some folks will have to take on the job of two people.”

To make matters worse, city officials said, the officers will join about 50 other Huntington Beach employees retiring this month. The exodus follows controversy that erupted earlier this year over pension spiking, in which vacation time, sick pay and other allowances are added to the base salary used to determine the retirement pension. The practice was part of a benefit package stated in the city’s employee contract.

Former Councilman Earle Robitaille and city administrators believe that, while the controversy was not responsible for the mass retirements, it was an influence, because some employees were afraid that the rules would change, leading to lower retirement payments.

In interviews earlier this week, four of seven retiring officers said the pension-spiking brouhaha was not the deciding factor but made their decisions easier. Three officers couldn’t be reached for comment.

“It was just my time to go,” said Lt. John Foster, who was in charge of the department’s investigations of murder, rape and other violent crimes.

Foster has spent 24 years with Huntington Beach police and five years in Compton as a patrolman. He said he’s glad to get away from the violent crimes, some too horrible to tell. But he’ll miss the “feeling that at times, you are the difference between the criminal and the people,” Foster said.

A native Californian, Foster said he settled in Huntington Beach after joining the city’s police force in the early 1960s, when the beach community was nestled between “bean fields and corn fields.”

“There would be two to three days when we wouldn’t get a call,” Foster said. “I told myself, ‘Oh my, maybe I’ve done the wrong thing by coming here.’ ”

But the peace and quiet didn’t last long. Even the beach parties became occasionally violent, Foster said, along with the other crimes that accompanied a growing population.

Since then, he has been scared plenty of times, said Foster, now 51. He has been shot at in the dark; he has wrestled with drunken criminals.

But what hurts more, what makes Foster’s eyes well up, is the 11-year-old girl who confessed that her dad had raped her and that her mother had done nothing about it. Or the 80-year-old mother who called him to arrest her son, who had beaten her.

“Sometimes it’s hard to be strong,” he said. “But you know that the people depend on you to be the strength in their time of weakness. So you take it all in and let it stay there.”

Foster and the other retiring officers take records of bravery and accomplishment with them, Lowenberg said.

Sgt. Darrell Klopp, for instance, earned a medal of valor in the 1970s after confronting an armed suspect in a shootout, police Lt. Chuck Poe said. Investigator Augie Frost helped catch a thief who took about $200,000 worth of electronics from 50 boats in Huntington Harbour.

“There’s no way to completely make up for that much experience,” Robitaille said.

Sgt. Bob Moran, another retiring officer, led the effort in contracting with other cities to book inmates in Huntington Beach’s jail. The move put about $250,000 in the city coffers annually, Lowenberg said. He also started a program to deter students from bringing drugs and guns to school by having dogs search the lockers and classrooms.

“I would tell (police officer) candidates that, if you’re getting into law enforcement as a job, then don’t,” Moran said. “But if you get into it as a career, it’s the greatest career. This has never been a job to me, it’s always been a way of life.”

Klopp, 54, arrived in Huntington Beach 28 years ago, when the city and the Police Department was about one third the size they are today, he said.

“In those days, they required us to live in town,” Klopp said. “So I bought a house here, and I’ve been here ever since.”

After retirement, Klopp said, he plans to spend a lot more time on his 32-foot boat named Gee-Whiz in Long Beach. Moran said he will do everything his wife tells him to do. And Frost will get another job.

“I want a part-time job at a golf course,” he said. “But I’ll probably end up in security or law enforcement again.”

Whatever they do after this year, the officers know one thing for sure.

“You carry everything with you--the elderly left alone to die in filth, the burn marks, the tears when children look to the parents who abused them (and) then cry when you try to take them away--you take it all with you,” Foster said. “Then you drive away in your car.”