Ex-Police Chief Finds Rich Life in Academia

Deep in the heart of Texas, far from the plains of Oxnard and the California sea breeze, former Oxnard Police Chief Robert Owens has carved out a new life.

Now teaching criminal justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Owens has replaced a life of investigating homicides and police pursuits for a life of mentoring and academia. Except for the fire ants, scorpions and heat, Owens says he’s loving Texas, a state rich in history, culture and legends.

After 38 years in law enforcement he says he fondly remembers his career but does not look back. He has brought his experiences as a veteran police officer to his students for them to learn about the challenges, rewards and tactics of police work. And life in the relaxed, contemplative university world suits the 65-year-old former cop well.

“I pick up the paper every once in a while and I think, ‘Now I remember why I don’t want to go back to being a police chief,’ ” said Owens, referring to recent scandals that have plagued some Texas sheriffs’ departments.

Teaching, he said, challenges him and keeps him alert. He sheds no tears about leaving Oxnard.

“I miss my friends there,” Owens said. “But if you look around . . . very few retirees remain in Oxnard. You are a cop for a long, long time and you really want to get away.” Owens retired from the Oxnard Police Department four years ago and received countywide praise for his 22 years on the job.

Once called the “renaissance man of law enforcement” by Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, Owens implemented several anti-crime programs in the Oxnard area that received national attention.

*

In 1979, when crime in Oxnard peaked, Owens started the serious habitual-offender program to keep track of career criminals. Oxnard was one of three cities nationwide that implemented the program.

The program, still in place, tracks the whereabouts, habits, hangouts and associates of criminals while also providing them with job training, counseling and job referrals.

But the rise in crime, combined with pressure from the City Council to erase the problem, affected Owens’ health. Suddenly, in 1990, Owens collapsed from heart failure and has since worn a pacemaker. His doctor told him to take it easy, leaving him no choice but to retire from his stressful job.

Now in the classroom, Owens refers to the habitual-offender program as one of the best ways to fight crime. Community-oriented policing and knowing the neighborhood’s potential criminals gives officers a significant edge in combating crime, he tells his students.

Perhaps unorthodox in his police ideology, Owens is no fan of gang units and gang sweeps.

“Every [officer] should be a gang unit,” said Owens, who clashed with other law enforcement departments in Ventura County over his beliefs. “Having a big show and rounding up gang leaders is just cheap publicity. It does nothing and it makes you look like a fool. You get precious few convictions.”

*

Owens also tries to convey to his students the danger of police pursuits and the inevitable connection they have with civil liability lawsuits. He stresses the importance of controlling the adrenaline rush that a pursuit triggers. The rush usually affects an officer’s judgment and often results in violence, he tells his students.

“A commander or someone outside the scene needs to pull you off,” Owens said. “You’re so high, you find it too difficult to restrain yourself.”

Owens, a pragmatic man, also understands the power of the media and teaches his students to use it to their advantage. He often recalls one of Oxnard’s most gruesome murders, when in 1977 a young couple was savagely attacked in the fields behind Channel Islands High School. The young man was beaten to death while his fiancee was raped and beaten beyond recognition.

The cops had no leads--no fingerprints, footprints or witnesses--only the beatings, the bodies and the movement of dirt on the field from the frenzied attack. So, Owens went to the press.

“We calculated that the [attackers] were probably young people, and they were probably going to talk to somebody,” Owens said. “By that time, I [had] learned the power of sound bites and I called it ‘the most brutal and vicious crime in the history of Oxnard.’ ”

The publicity raised the visibility of the case, enraged the community and within a few weeks a woman came forward to say her friend had described the beatings to her a few hours after they occurred.

The police found the attackers and they were later convicted.

Owens also addresses the changing nature of police work and the increase of women officers in the force. Armed with a recent book published by a Harvard scholar that supports this theory, Owens argues that the taming of the Wild West came not from the triumph of rogue sheriffs and aggressive judges but from the influx of women to the area.

*

The book states that “women civilized western communities in the sense of reducing violence and squalor while at the same time enhancing their aesthetic and intellectual lives.”

Women, Owens said, can have the same impact on the law enforcement community as they did on the Wild West.

“Women use a negotiating posture,” he said. “If that becomes a standard and if we get through these male-dominated standards, we might see a civilizing of the way police officers respond to a violent situation.”

Such theories may seem far removed from the realities of police departments still plagued by sexual harassment, but Owens said he believes change is inevitable.

He hopes that his lessons affect the way his students regard law enforcement and the criminal justice system. For now, he said he finds his life of reading, contemplating and mentoring fulfilling.

“It is probably going to keep me youthful,” he said, laughing. “It forces me to learn and not get stagnant. Every semester I have to go in there with relatively fresh stuff. I am also in an academic environment that is intellectually stimulating.”