Longshot Candidate for LAPD Chief Is Undeterred By Odds

Arturo Venegas, the capital city’s police chief, knows he’s a longshot for the job of Los Angeles police chief.

One of six semifinalists for the post, and the only one from outside Los Angeles County, Venegas doesn’t even meet one of the qualifications set forth by the city of Los Angeles--that the new chief should come from an agency of at least 1,500 employees. Sacramento’s department has 985.

But this is a man who has fought long odds for many of his 48 years. Venegas was born in a one-bedroom home with dirt floors in a small town in Jalisco, Mexico. His mother died in that home before he was 10.

After his father moved the family to Santa Maria in 1958, Venegas worked on farms to help support his six brothers and sisters, dropped out of high school, entered the Army in 1966, and was awarded two Bronze Stars for his service in Vietnam.

Upon his discharge, in need of a job, Venegas applied at the post office and at the Fresno Police Department. The police called first.

“I didn’t have bootstraps,” Venegas said recently. “I used to wear huaraches [sandals with soles made of old tires].”

Venegas knows well that success doesn’t come without hard work. But he also knows no one makes it on his own. Families help, he says. So do friends, bosses and faith. “You don’t achieve it by yourself,” he said in one interview with the Sacramento Bee. “I’ve had a lot of folks who have guided me, helped me, pushed me, kicked me.”

Venegas rose from patrolman to lieutenant in Fresno, and became deputy chief in 1992. Along the way, he returned to school, graduating from the University of San Francisco and receiving his masters degree in management from Cal Poly.

Venegas was hired in 1993 to run Sacramento’s department, the first outsider in more than 50 years to head the force, its first Latino chief, and the one who brought community-oriented policing to the Central Valley city of 400,000.

Sacramento’s force of 625 sworn officers is tiny compared to that of Los Angeles, with 9,495 officers. The city’s 45 homicides recorded in 1996--the record was 85 in 1993--amount to the average number of murders every three weeks in Los Angeles.

Even though Sacramento’s department has fewer than the 1,500 employees called for in the city’s advertisement for its next police chief, William Fujioka, general manager of the Los Angeles Personnel Department, called such points “guidelines,” not requirements.

“It was the judgment [of the screening committee] that Chief Venegas possessed the requisite skills and experience and education,” Fujioka said. “We’re very comfortable with him as a candidate.”

Venegas refused to discuss with The Times his views on the Los Angeles Police Department or policing in general, saying that any such talk is premature. Sacramento city government sources speculate that Venegas does not want to weaken his position here by seeming to be campaigning hard for a job for which he has only an outside shot.

Venegas and the other candidates--four of them top LAPD officials--will be interviewed by the Police Commission. The commission will forward three names before month’s end to the mayor, who will select one for City Council approval.

If Venegas, who now earns $107,000 a year, leaves, it won’t be because he is forced. His position is solid in Sacramento. Although he has detractors on the City Council, City Manager Bill Edgar called him a “star,” and Mayor Joe Serna is among his biggest boosters.

“Art Venegas is a national talent,” Serna said. “Any city would be very, very fortunate to have him. . . . At some point, some city is going to get him. We’re going to be fortunate to keep him as long as we can.”

Venegas has delivered for the city, in part by cultivating connections in Washington with U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and the Clinton administration, which had been considering him for a job. He has secured $32 million since 1993 in federal grants for community policing and equipment, saving the city from having to lay off officers.

In Sacramento, the department Venegas found was a traditional top-down organization, not unlike the department former chief Willie L. Williams found when he arrived in Los Angeles, albeit on a far smaller scale and not nearly so tattered.

Like Williams, Venegas set out to rebuild community relations by instituting community policing--the hallmark of his tenure here, and one reason he is on Los Angeles’ list. Also, like Williams, Venegas’ philosophy rubbed some veteran officers and brass the wrong way.

Lt. Pat Dowden, a longtime board member of the Sacramento Police Officers Assn., says that although the community policing concept is “great,” the department’s first responsibility must be patrol, and he believes it has suffered under Venegas.

“I generally have seven people to handle 911 calls,” said Dowden, a watch commander in a station north of downtown Sacramento. “Some days I can’t meet that minimum. When you call 911, you should get someone promptly.”

Venegas also has won converts, like Ron Soohoo, an 18-year veteran. Soohoo was a SWAT team member before Venegas arrived, and was a skeptic of neighborhood policing. Now, he’s one of the neighborhood police officers, working on one of Sacramento’s more troubled commercial strips, rousting street prostitutes, stopping truants, trying to help bring back customers to the struggling small businesses.

“What Venegas has done is let you use your abilities and skills to solve problems,” Soohoo said. “That strikes at the tradition of policing, where everybody took orders, and only did what they were told. . . . People don’t want change, but it’s sweeping the country.”

Venegas’ style of community policing means cracking down on so-called quality of life crimes, like public drunkenness. Crime statistics reflect that emphasis. Misdemeanors accounted for 55.9% of Sacramento’s 24,130 arrests in 1995. So far in 1997, misdemeanors account for 61%.

Out in one of the neighborhoods, community policing means that Ella Boyce, 68, can invite her neighbors to sit on her front porch of her bungalow and chat, as she did on a recent 100-degree afternoon. Not long ago, she never would have thought about it.

Boyce’s block was a typical urban nightmare: gunfire on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis; toughs down the street hanging out, smoking dope, playing music, cursing; crack and heroin dealers doing business in other houses up and down the block.

“You were just locking doors, putting up bars,” said Boyce’s neighbor, Billie Rogers, 68. “There was no such thing as sitting out.”

Then neighborhood police officers arrived. In a year-long effort, they arrested several gang members and persuaded landlords to evict others. Working with police, the city refurbished some houses for new tenants, and city workers and volunteers painted houses along the entire block.

Venegas’ tenure has not been without problems. The Sacramento Police Officers Assn., angry about management changes and issues such as promotions, polled its members earlier this year. A third of the members, including 44% of those with five or more years of experience, rated Venegas’ overall effectiveness 1.4 on a scale of 10.

When he arrived, Venegas elbowed aside the men at the top of the department, forcing the four deputy chiefs to retire or find other jobs. Two are suing in federal court, alleging that he discriminated against them because they are white and over 50.

“It was wrong, it will always be wrong,” said former Deputy Chief Mike Shaw, who left on a medical retirement after 28 years on the department. “I’ve never been treated so badly in my life. I still can’t believe it. I had never been disciplined in 28 years. . . . I was told I was not on board with the management team, and I was too old.”

Mayor Serna, however, lauds Venegas’ efforts to promote women and minorities. “It was basically a lily-white department, and it ought not be that way,” Serna said. With Serna’s backing, Venegas has increased the number of minorities on the force to 186, from 160 of 581 officers in 1994, and the number of female officers to 86, from 67 in 1994.

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Candidate Profile: Arturo Venegas Jr.

Born in a one-bedroom home with dirt floors in the small town of San Nicolas de Ibarra in Jalisco, Mexico, Arturo Venegas Jr. became Sacramento police chief in January, 1993. Venegas is the first outsider to head the department of 985 employees in more than 50 years, and its first Latino.

* Age: 48

* Residence: Sacramento

* Education: Bachelor’s degree from University of San Francisco; master’s in management from Cal Poly, Pomona.

* Career highlights: Began his police career in Fresno, where he was hired as a patrolman in 1969. In Fresno, he rose to the rank of deputy chief in 1992 and was hired as Sacramento police chief in 1993.

* Interests: Running, chess, reading, and teaching public administration and leadership classes.

* Family: Family: Married, with three teen-age children and a 29-year-old daughter from his first marriage.

*Quote: Success takes a lot of hard work, and you don’t achieve it by yourself. I’ve had a lot of folks who have guided me, helped me, pushed me, kicked me.”

--Sacramento Bee interview, 1994

Venegas refused to be interviewed by The Times or to answer in writing questions posed by The Times about community policing, productivity, accountability and other topics.