Early Praise Gave Way to Criticism as Problems Grew in Department

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, who died Thursday night, was a self-effacing and politically astute former delicatessen counterman who rose to head a department that became mired in increasing controversy over the past decade.

Block, who was America’s highest paid elected official--$234,016 a year versus the president’s $200,000--had survived two bouts with cancer and kidney failure that required dialysis three times a week. The blood clot removed from his brain Monday was the result of a brain hemorrhage that experts said probably was related to those renal problems.

His fatal ailment occurred in the final week of campaigning for a fifth term in office.

In his early years on the job, Block was widely known as an energetic administrator, instituting a “people-oriented,” consensus-building style of doing business that earned him high marks from the Board of Supervisors--which controls the sheriff’s purse strings--and his rank-and-file deputies.

The sheriff supervises 12,400 employees and is responsible for providing police services to 2.5 million people. The department also operates the nation’s largest urban jail system, with 19,000 inmates.

In the Beginning, Admiration

From the outset, Block’s pragmatic conservatism, excellent personal contacts and dedication to the job won him many admirers. He was Jewish, a Republican and a man who easily won election as sheriff four times because he attracted support from across the political spectrum.

“I try to get things done by getting along with people,” he told The Times in 1987.

However, by the end of his second term, Block was being sorely tested by a seemingly unending stream of crises.

His deputies were involved in several controversial shootings of African Americans and Latinos, raising questions that led to a broad inquiry headed by a retired Superior Court judge, who recommended many reforms in the department’s administration. Block reluctantly accepted some of the changes and the imposition of an independent monitor to oversee their implementation.

Block’s woes were compounded when members of an elite sheriff’s squad were found guilty of stealing drug money. Later, truncheon-wielding deputies were videotaped attacking guests at a bridal shower in Cerritos in 1989. The incident led to a record $23-million civil judgment against the department, the largest ever assessed against an American law enforcement agency.

Recurring budget shortfalls prompted Block to cut jail costs by releasing thousands of inmates early. Some officials thought that the releases were ploys to compel the Board of Supervisors to restore his budget at the expense of other county agencies.

Gradually, the sheriff’s once-close alliance with the supervisors unraveled.

More recent, the department has suffered the public embarrassment of mistakenly releasing several dangerous jail inmates while holding others--almost 700 in 1997 alone--beyond their release dates.

Other problems arose from the department’s secretive internal culture. As early as 1991, a federal judge found that a “neo-Nazi, white supremacist ring” of deputies called the Vikings had been operating in the department.

Early this year, Block uncovered a vigilante group of employees who had been formed to “discipline” unruly inmates at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. Eight of those employees were involved in the fatal beating of a mentally ill inmate.

Those problems left Block vulnerable to challengers, and one of his former subordinates, Lee Baca, forced him into his first runoff in his 17 years, for the job he once called “the best . . . I could ever have or want.”

Some critics said he wanted it too much. They complained that he never groomed a successor, then cited the lack of such a person as the reason he refused to retire, even after he became seriously ill.

“I may have a masochistic streak, but I feel there’s still work to be done,” he said.

Rising Through the Ranks

Block, who did not begin his law enforcement career until he was 32, became the county’s top cop in 1982, following the tradition of dynastic succession that had elevated his two predecessors.

The outgoing sheriff, Peter Pitchess, resigned with several months remaining in his last term and recommended Block as his successor. When the Board of Supervisors appointed the recommended candidate, Block became a virtually unbeatable incumbent.

Born in Chicago on July 19, 1924, the second son of a milkman, Block earned a high school letter in soccer and graduated in the top 10% of his class.

With the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted in the Army--against the wishes of his parents and two years before he would have been drafted. He served as a telephone lineman in Gen. George Patton’s celebrated 3rd Army.

He returned to Chicago in 1946, and bought a grocery and delicatessen with his father and brother. When the family moved to Los Angeles in 1953, he landed a job as a counterman at Cantor’s delicatessen in the Fairfax district.

He was so impressed by the courtesy of a police officer who stopped him for having a broken tail light that he decided to try his hand at law enforcement when the Sheriff’s Department advertised for applicants.

So began what by all accounts was a stellar career in the ranks. Assigned to patrol posh Rolling Hills Estates, the young deputy shot more than 50 rattlesnakes one summer and endeared himself to the community as a courtly issuer of traffic tickets.

Block would stop women who had run stop signs while rushing their children, who were late, to school. Block would tell them to go ahead and drop the youngsters off while he waited for them to return.

“Or he’d let them sign the ticket and then he’d fill it out later and drop it off in their mailbox,” Walter Howe, a former Block colleague once recalled. “Everybody loved him.”

Block worked a lot of overtime, but never asked to be paid for it. He endeared himself to his Christian co-workers by signing up to work their Christmas and Easter shifts, and he catered all the station picnics.

Promoted to sergeant, Block was transferred to the vice squad in 1960. Two years later, in one of his most celebrated exploits, he arrested comedian Lenny Bruce for an allegedly obscene performance at the Troubadour nightclub in West Hollywood.

Block once recalled that at Bruce’s trial, “I had to repeat what he had said on stage. And when I got done, he and his supporters in the courtroom gave me a standing ovation. He said, ‘I’ve been arrested in a lot of cities, but you’re the first cop who ever got my routine right.’ ”

In his autobiography, Bruce’s prosecutor--then deputy City Atty. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.--recalled that the audiotape Block had made with the hidden recorder taped to his chest had been useless. Virtually all that could be heard was the crackle of starch in the young vice officer’s shirt.

Bruce was acquitted on 1st Amendment grounds.

As an articulate member of the vice squad, Block was in demand as a speaker. His willingness to represent the Sheriff’s Department to the public caught Pitchess’ eye.

An entertaining speaker, Block once told the Burbank Optimist Club: “The Sunset Strip call girl probably is the youngest, most attractive, most intelligent and cleanest prostitute there is. She’s a businessperson, however, and this makes her dangerous.”

Soon, Block became Pitchess’ favorite. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1965, captain in 1968, head of the county jails in 1972 and undersheriff--the senior officer in the department under Pitchess--in 1975.

Meanwhile, he earned a degree with honors in police science from Cal State L.A. at age 44.

When Pitchess decided to step down in 1982, after 29 years on the job and with months remaining in his final term, he left no doubt that Block was his choice to succeed him. After all, Pitchess said, “there is no one better, since he’s had all these years helping me run the place.”

Block was the third consecutive sheriff to have been handpicked by his predecessor.

His good relations with the temperamental Pitchess, however, did not last long. When Pitchess urged Block to give him continued perks, such as a department sedan, Block curtly refused and the two men stopped speaking to each other.

As smooth as his first years in office were, problems that came to vex him later were already surfacing.

Severe jail overcrowding, he said in 1985, “significantly escalated tensions and anxieties, resulting in sharply increased numbers of conflicts among the inmates themselves, as well as between inmates and staff.”

Some of the solutions he advocated, such as night courts to speed disposition of cases and the movement of inmates to state prisons, found few supporters. Soon, to relieve overcrowding, Block was regularly releasing inmates early, 600 on one occasion, 1,200 on another.

Troubles Begin to Add Up

Still, Block had little opposition as he bid for a third term as sheriff in 1990, despite the fact that just a week before he filed, 10 of his deputies, including all nine members of an elite anti-drug team, were indicted for allegedly stealing $1.4 million in drug money, filing false tax returns and money laundering.

Eventually, 26 deputies--most of whom had been fired--were convicted. Block controlled the damage by stressing his cooperation with federal prosecutors and by ordering random drug tests in the department.

Before he was reelected in 1990, with 67% of the vote, reports surfaced that excessive-force lawsuits against his department had nearly doubled in the previous five years. Verdicts and settlements often ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Some deputies were repeatedly named in such lawsuits, one 10 times in 10 years.

Block’s initial response was caustic. When civil rights attorneys representing 81 plaintiffs filed one massive lawsuit in 1990, the sheriff responded:

“I would say that much of this has the smell, if you will, of a group of gang members in the community who, perhaps, are banding together and trying to discredit the deputies who work in this area.”

After the Civil Service Commission ordered a new hearing in the case of two white deputies who had been fired for burning a cross in a Men’s Central Jail module, Block rehired them and proclaimed himself outraged by media reports implying he was soft on racism.

“I want it clearly understood that racism has never been, is not now, and never will be tolerated in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department,” he said.

But pressure for an independent inquiry into the department mounted the next year after a series of questionable shootings of Latinos and African Americans, and reports of the white supremacist group of deputies in Lynwood.

At first, Block sought to control the inquiry by appointing a panel of community leaders to advise him how to implement reforms.

But moves for an independent inquiry grew when Block’s in-house review found fewer deficiencies in the Sheriff’s Department than the Christopher Commission had uncovered in its inquiry into the Los Angeles Police Department after Rodney King’s beating.

The Board of Supervisors eventually appointed retired Superior Court Judge James G. Kolts to head an inquiry into the Sheriff’s Department. When Kolts’ often critical report was issued in 1992, Block greeted it with a somewhat conciliatory attitude.

The sheriff took exception to the report’s identification of 62 “problem officers” allegedly guilty of repeated violations, and declared that some recommendations showed a lack of “knowledge and awareness” of law enforcement.

But Block agreed to try to implement many of the recommendations, cautioning at the same time that the process could be slowed by a lack of money.

A Kolts deputy, attorney Merrick Bobb, monitored the department’s progress in implementing the recommendations. Bobb once said he had found that Block’s department was often more amenable to reforming itself than other police agencies with which he had dealt.

“Unlike many other police executives, I did not find Sherman Block walled off and rigid,” Bobb said. “Although testy at times, he nonetheless seemed indomitable and kept on going. He was a formidable individual, daunting, hard to attack and inspiring respect.”

But, as Block’s health problems grew, there was repeated evidence that his administrative skills were eroding. The sheriff, close associates said, continued to be a “workaholic,” but he was not as effective as he had been.

Block was again reelected handily in 1994, but his formerly adroit political touch was fading. He sometimes exaggerated, once suggesting--without evidence--that a model’s killer in a high-profile case might be a serial killer.

Questionable expenditures and the release of prisoners because of clerical errors exposed a department whose internal controls appeared increasingly in shambles. In 1996 Block, struggling to contain the criticism, called for a full county audit of his department.

“The sheriff has the ability of going with punches and turning his head, slipping the punch,” said one attorney who frequently dealt with him.

The attorney, who asked not to be identified, described Block as a man quite willing to compromise on specific personnel issues when approached in the right manner.

“I once represented a deputy who slit the tires of a supervisor in a retaliation,” the attorney said. “He was going to get terminated. But I ran into Block and he agreed to [give him another chance] after I explained all the circumstances. . . . The kid later did exceedingly well in the department.”

Block is survived by his wife, Alyce, a son, Barry, a daughter, Barbara, and two grandchildren.

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Sherman Block: 1924-1998

* 1924: Born in Chicago, the second son of Mattie and Peter, a milkman.

* 1942: Forges his parents’ signatures on his enlistment papers and joins the Army.

* 1945: Trains as Army telephone lineman and enters combat in March, serving in Gen. George S. Patton Jr.’s Third Army.

* 1946: Block, his father and brother, Mel, buy a combination delicatessen-grocery store in Chicago.

* 1948: Marries X-ray technician Alyce Bemis.

* 1953: Family moves to Los Angeles and Block works as a counterman at Canter’s delicatessen on Fairfax Avenue.

* 1956: Accepted into Sheriff’s Department at age 32, but barely passes six weeks of physical training.

* 1960: Promoted to sergeant and transfers to vice squad.

* 1962: Arrests comedian Lenny Bruce for allegedly delivering an obscene monologue at Troubadour nightclub. Bruce, who was prosecuted by then-Deputy City Atty. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., was acquitted.

* 1965: Promoted to lieutenant.

* 1968: Promoted to captain and graduates with honors from California State College, Los Angeles, with a bachelor’s degree in police science.

* 1975: Sheriff Peter J. Pitchess retires, picking Block, his undersheriff, as his replacement.

* 1982: Block wins election with 64% of the vote.

* 1986: Wins reelection with 85% of the vote.

* 1989: Twenty-eight sheriff’s deputies in riot gear attack a group of Samoan Americans at a Cerritos bridal shower. Nine years later, jurors and judges find deputies’ misconduct so egregious they award $23 million to the 35 victims of the melee, the largest monetary judgment ever imposed on an American law enforcement agency.

* 1990: Wins reelection with 67% of the vote.

* 1991: Undergoes surgery for prostate cancer.

* 1992: Decides not to run for mayor and seeks reelection to a fourth term after persuading the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors not to impose age limits on the sheriff’s service.

After 12 years of warring over two landmark gender bias lawsuits, Block agrees to spend $4.5 million over four years to implement gender sensitivity training and a revised policy against sexual harassment.

* 1993: Diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and undergoes chemotherapy for five months.

* 1994: Wins reelection with about 54% of the vote on the slogan, “A tough sheriff, a tough job.”

* 1995: Files workers compensation claim after suffering a leg injury.

* 1997: Begins hemodialysis for kidney failure.

* June 1998: Gets 36% of the vote and is forced into first runoff in 17 years.

* October 1998: Collapses at his home; dies three days after surgery to remove a blood clot on the brain.