For Hueneme Chief, Retiring Would’ve Been a Crime

There was a time when John Hopkins believed he might be Port Hueneme’s last police chief.

Struggling with budget problems, the city was considering closing the department and contracting out for services, but Hopkins did not want to go down in history as the man who disbanded the 50-year-old organization.

Although the police veteran had plans to retire at least three times in the past four years, the threat that the department might not survive kept Hopkins on the job.

“I didn’t feel I could leave until that was resolved,” he said.

Now that voters have decided to keep the department in business through a 4% utility tax passed in November, Hopkins said he would like to stick around at least another 18 months so he can focus on new programs for the county’s smallest police department.

The 21-officer department recently received three grants that allowed the chief to hire a crime prevention officer, buy a new patrol car and radar gun, and set up more sobriety checkpoints in the city, whose crime rate ranks slightly lower than the county average.

Hopkins also wants to push the formation of Neighborhood Watch programs and the idea of opening a police storefront.

“I guess I wasn’t really ready to bail out yet,” he said. “I want to see what other grants are out there, complete the ones we have, and I’m rewriting our procedures manual. I’ve got stuff I’m interested in doing, that I’m excited about, which makes it enjoyable again.”

Since 1978, budget concerns have periodically pushed city officials to the point of considering contracting with either the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department or the Oxnard Police Department for police services.

“I think we figured out that it would save the city about $300,000 the first year, but you’d be giving up a lot,” Hopkins said. “They would have tried to do it with fewer people, and I think response time would have been hurt as well.”

Then came the utility tax.

The money from the tax--$450,000 to $700,000 a year--will go into the city’s general fund, but will mostly be used as a safety net to support the Police Department’s $2.8-million budget, officials said.

“It’s not a lot of money, but it guarantees that we will at least keep our Police Department,” Hopkins said.

According to U.S. Justice Department statistics, police services in Port Hueneme cost about $126 per resident each year. Oxnard residents pay about $148 per year and Santa Paula residents pay about $109.

Oxnard tried to get a similar utility tax measure passed in November but failed to get the necessary votes, while Santa Paula is considering several ideas to raise money for its struggling department.

Until this month, Hopkins had plans to retire in March, but worries about what he would do next helped push him to sign another 18-month contract.

“It’s hard to quit,” he said. “Frankly, I was a little worried about what I was going to do, and they [City Council members] still like me, so I said I’d stay another 18 months.”

Recently, Hopkins and his top officers went to a retreat for an open and critical discussion about the department.

“It gave us all a chance to let it all hang out,” he said. “I got my share of it.”

Although he is a self-described “grouchy old man” who has been known to “go off” on subordinates, Hopkins said he tries to be responsive both to his officers and to the public.

“I’m definitely a people person,” Hopkins said. But “sometimes I think that can be a weakness, because I can get emotionally involved with people.”

Councilman Jonathan Sharkey said he likes Hopkins’ style.

“He’s a great ambassador to the community,” Sharkey said. “It’s hard not to like the man and hard to turn him down when he asks for something.”

Hopkins, whose father had been in the Army, was born in Australia and moved around as a youngster before his family eventually settled in Fillmore.

He joined the Navy after graduating from Fillmore High School in 1962, a year ahead of Ventura County Sheriff Larry Carpenter.

“Larry says I used to beat him up all the time, but I don’t remember that,” Hopkins said.

After a four-year Navy stint, Hopkins, whose last assignment was at the Point Mugu Navy base, joined the Port Hueneme Police Department in 1966 as a reserve officer and became a regular officer in 1967.

As with several other top county law enforcement officers, Hopkins attended Ventura College to study criminal justice and later received his bachelor of arts degree from the University of Redlands. He and his wife, who works for GTE, have three grown children, the oldest a police officer in Los Angeles.

During his career with the Port Hueneme Police Department, Hopkins has worked everything from traffic to homicide. He began taking advanced classes in fingerprinting in the 1970s and is now considered an expert in the field, testifying in court and occasionally working with other agencies such as the FBI and Navy.

Before he became chief in 1993, he was the department’s top lieutenant for more than 15 years. Hopkins makes about $98,000 a year in the top job.

When he first stepped into the job, Hopkins still went out to crime scenes to collect evidence and fingerprints. But he decided he had to stop when his own work was not getting done.

But as recently as Jan. 26, when an off-duty sheriff’s deputy shot and killed 26-year-old Jack Dale Sexton, Hopkins was at the crime scene offering to help.

“He’s not in the way,” said Lt. Fernando Estrella, Hopkins’ second in command. “He’s just out there for us, willing to help if we need him, and sometimes we do.”

Many of the 21 Port Hueneme officers see Hopkins as someone they can look to for answers.

“He’s a real leader,” said Sgt. Ken Dobbe, a 20-year veteran who heads the Port Hueneme Police Officers Assn. “The other thing is that he is very well-respected in this community, and I think that tends to fall back on the Police Department.”

Hopkins, who lived in Port Hueneme for 28 years before moving to Oxnard two years ago, said he feels close to the community.

When a crisis hits, Hopkins said, he feels he owes it to local residents to tackle it head-on.

“I don’t believe in hiding anything,” Hopkins said. “If we made a mistake, then we have to address that.”

Soon after he became chief, the city had its first officer-involved shooting death when officers from the Port Hueneme and Oxnard police departments opened fire after 23-year-old Santos Anderson Arias raised a shotgun at officers.

A federal civil-rights lawsuit was filed by the man’s family, but the city won the case, Hopkins said.

Late last month, the department had its first homicide in more than a year after off-duty Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Steven Lengyel killed Sexton, who officials said was drunk and acting irrationally when he attacked a man in the home of an 81-year-old widow.

Three days after the incident, Hopkins and Carpenter held a press conference to answer questions on the shooting.

At one point during the press conference, Hopkins fielded queries from friends of Sexton, who did not believe the police account of the shooting. Later, Hopkins offered to discuss the case in private with the three young men.

“I can sympathize with what they are feeling,” Hopkins said later. “But I know that I won’t be able to give them the answers they want.”

It’s an approach that he used when he was on patrol. Even though he’s been chief for four years, Hopkins said he still thinks of himself as a regular patrol officer.

“I feel like a cop,” he said. “I feel like I can understand what my officers are going through--what’s going on in their heads.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

About This Series

This is one in a series about Ventura County’s five city police chiefs. Over the next several weeks, “The Chiefs: Profiles of Ventura County’s Top Cops” will look at the common concerns of the county’s local law enforcement leaders, as well as the issues that make the departments and their chiefs unique.