Calabasas : New Job Puts Sheriff’s Lieutenant Back Home

Sheriff’s Lt. Bill J. McSweeney, 44, has spent more than 20 years trying to make communities safer. And now, he will be able to do this for his own community of Westlake Village. Again.

Beginning in March, McSweeney will be promoted to the rank of captain of the Lost Hills station when Capt. Jerry Walker retires. Sheriff Sherman Block is scheduled to announce the promotion at 3:30 p.m. today at a press conference at the Lost Hills station, 27050 Agoura Road in Calabasas.

McSweeney, a 21-year department veteran who has lived in the area nearly 15 years, says he’s looking forward to coming back home. He worked 10 years ago at the Malibu station, which covered Malibu, Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Chatsworth, Hidden Hills, Topanga and Westlake Village.

“We’re pretty involved in this community--my wife, my kids,” McSweeney said. “It will be great to work at a station in the community that I’ve lived in for many years.”

He said that his wife, Susan, and their kids seem to be more excited about his assignment than the promotion because he will be closer to home.

Right now he works in Whittier, where he has coordinated training at the nation’s largest sheriff’s academy, the Recruit Training Bureau.

“I’ve been driving a long way for a long time,” he said.

In all his years in the department, McSweeney said, the most difficult thing was dealing with the aftermath of the Rodney King beating.

“There was a lot of criticism, skepticism,” he said. “People thought we were all part of an evil club.”

But McSweeney sees himself and his colleagues as having a mission, which he says is “keeping people as safe as possible and constantly giving them the confidence that we’re diligently doing that.”