Adapting to the Changing Face of Crime

When Sgt. Gene Thayer started patrolling a beat on the streets of Oxnard 30 years ago, he saw his share of murderers, muggers and thieves--no nostalgia for the past can hide that--but what was different then was that most of the criminals he busted were men, not boys.

“There’s a lot more juvenile crime now. That is one big difference,” Thayer said. “Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of violence back then, but it was pretty much unheard of for a young kid to use a gun. They settled things with their fists. Now kids have access to the tools of violence. . . . You see them with guns all the time.”

Teenagers and preteens using guns is just one of many stark differences that veteran police officers and sheriff’s deputies say contrasts their work today with the work they did when they were rookies in Ventura County.

Adapting and learning to handle those changes have kept these officers sharp after two, three and even four decades in law enforcement--long enough that younger officers sometimes call them dinosaurs.

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Despite the occasional ribbing they get, these veterans who have “seen it all” have become an invaluable resource to their fellow officers, and few departments could survive without them.

“You need a few veterans to hold everything together,” said Bob Quesada, a sheriff’s deputy and president of the Peace Officers Assn. of Ventura County. “These guys know too much to get rid of. I mean just think about it, a lot of these officers were doing police work before the other guys were even born.”

Ventura County Sheriff’s Department

Capt. Mike Gullon, who has been on the force so long that his badge number is 1, sometimes looks back with nostalgia.

“Part of it is you remember things maybe a little differently than they really were,” said Gullon, who got into police work in 1951 and came to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department in 1961. “That was our time, you know, that’s when we were the young guns.”

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Santa Paula Police Cmdr. Bob Gonzales, who with only 24 years under his belt is relatively young, said he is still affectionately referred to as “Tyrannosaurus Mex” by the rookies.

Gonzales, 46, said that after being around so long--he also grew up in Santa Paula--one advantage of his years on the force is that he knows virtually every local criminal.

“I call it the fishbowl effect,” he said. “I work in a small town. I’ve been around long enough to know just about everybody. When something happens, chances are very good you know just who did it and where they are.”

Experience also comes in handy for Oxnard’s Thayer, 53. When he cruises on patrol, the streets speak to him.

He remembers the spot in front of the Michoacan bar where he made his first arrest. He remembers one juvenile homicide at the Elks Lodge 20 years ago that he thinks was the first in what he sees as a growing cycle of youth violence.

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On another street he sees the spot where he chased down a man he watched stab another in the stomach. And the homes where he used to be called to shoot a skunk in the backyard.

Today he taps into all these experiences as a patrol sergeant who supervises all the officers in the field on any given shift.

When a major crime occurs, Thayer is on the scene making sure it gets handled properly and reporting back to the watch commander.

Police work takes its toll--divorces, ulcers, heart attacks--but Thayer, who plans to retire soon, said there are few jobs that can possess you like being a cop.

“I remember on my one-year anniversary driving down Oxnard Boulevard stopping on a corner and saying: ‘This is a pretty nice place and this is a good job. I’m gonna put in the full 30 years.’ And here I am.”

Other veterans agree but add that part of the reason they stay so long in uniform is the retirement pay.

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Each year an officer stays means a higher percentage of his salary for retirement benefits, but Dr. Randolph Nutter, Sheriff’s Department psychologist who screens applicants for positions, said the money is seldom a strong enough motivation to stick to it.

“A lot of these guys grew up in their departments,” Nutter said. “The guys that were hired in the ‘50s and ‘60s probably had fathers in the second or even the first World War, and likely have a deep work ethic and sense of duty running in their families.

“You don’t see that so much anymore. . . . Some of these guys will probably have to be pried from their jobs.”

Tom Burke, a Ventura Police Department fraud investigator, is the man with the unofficial distinction of being the longest-serving law enforcement officer in the county.

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Burke, who first slipped on his blue Ventura police uniform 41 years ago, said he has no immediate plans to leave.

“I still like it . . . most of it, at least,” he said.

Burke, who will say only that he is in his 60s, says he has seen nine or 10 police chiefs come and go over the years and estimates that he has out-lived or out-served another 300 officers.

One veteran from another department said he is convinced Burke stays on because it keeps him sharp, and because Burke is so competitive.

A few years back, after he was teased by a fellow officer about how far he could run, Burke challenged the younger man to a race. He won, and then proceeded to continue running every day.

“I ran a little and I thought: ‘Hey I feel pretty good. I think I’ll keep doing it,’ ” said Burke, who apparently is also unmatched in the county for his expertise at solving check and credit-card fraud cases.

Now he runs as much as four miles every day after lunch.

Whether they are highly duty-conscious or simply very competitive, all veterans seem to share at least one trait, Nutter said.

The veterans have perspective and know how to roll with the punches, he said. They know how to keep the dark side of humanity that they see every day from overwhelming them.

“At any given time, about 10% of any police force is burnt out,” Nutter said. “You see high incidence of heart disease and ulcers. The guys that survive know how to take it.

“It may affect them, but these guys know that when it’s really bad, it will eventually get better, and when it’s good it will probably get worse,” he said. “They know how to act in a crisis, and although they may not like it, they’re used to changing.”

Simi Valley Police Capt. Jerry Boyce, who started in the Oxnard department 30 years ago, has lasted through even department-made crises. Boyce, 54, was one of the first officers who joined the new Simi Valley department in 1971.

The city manager at the time decided to experiment with the new agency and, with a nod to the antiwar, anti-police sentiments of the time, required that the officers wear green blazers and drive unmarked white sedans, and referred to the department as the Simi Valley Community Safety Agency.

“Fortunately that didn’t last too long,” Boyce said.

Residents didn’t take the officers seriously, Boyce said, and they were soon wearing traditional police uniforms.

Apart from that strange interlude, Boyce says the biggest change in his 30 years of police work is the extra scrutiny focused on all police departments. And the eagerness of people to file complaints and sue.

“Let’s say an officer’s had a bad day,” said Boyce, who said he will retire this year. “Maybe he just saw a kid all smashed up in a bad traffic accident, or was out on an ugly domestic call or something. Then he has to go to another call and he gets somebody that wants to be smart, so he’s not as polite as he should be. [The department] will get a complaint and probably a lawsuit. People will sue you simply because the officer has been rude. It happens.”

For many of the veterans, the constant concerns over lawsuits and the second-guessing of police action have made their jobs not just more difficult but also much less enjoyable.

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But the extra scrutiny has also made officers better trained and more adept at handling difficult situations, said Chief John Hopkins, 53, of the Port Hueneme Police Department.

Hopkins, who joined the force in 1965, said that the department has become much more careful.

“I’ll be honest with you. Back then if you had a confrontation with somebody you didn’t hesitate to get into fisticuffs,” he said.

Although it didn’t happen all that often, said Hopkins, who plans to retire soon. “You’d get in a scrap, most of the time beat the guy, and that would be the end of it.”

That doesn’t happen anymore. Instead officers are studied in the art of what Hopkins calls verbal judo.

“It’s a way of talking through a situation,” he said. “Avoiding any physical confrontation.”

He gives a recent example of a man who locked himself in his house with a gun in August and threatened to kill family members.

“In the past we probably would have surrounded the place and stormed it,” Hopkins said.

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Instead the department surrounded the home, evacuated the neighbors, called in more than 50 officers from Oxnard and the Sheriff’s Department, brought in officials from the mental health department, and spent almost eight hours talking the man out of his home.

It ended peacefully. No shots were fired, and the man, who had barricaded himself with several rifles and handguns, surrendered peacefully.

“We operate by different rules now. Society expects different things from an officer,” Hopkins said. “These are more complicated times.”