County’s Sheriff Hopes to Extend Job Honeymoon

Bob Brooks considers his first year as sheriff something of a honeymoon. Crime is down, there were no serious controversies, relations with the community have been on an even keel.

The only serious blot on the department’s reputation, the lawsuit accusing several deputies of contributing to the beating death of Nicholas Dowey, was removed when the jury found in favor of the officers.

Brooks would like to stretch out this period of good feelings until he grows old in the job.

“I’m not a hard-core politician by any means,” said Brooks, a lean 49-year-old career cop, a soft smile curling his lips. “I hope I can make it through a couple of terms with no political crisis.”

Patient, smooth, flawless in his speech, Brooks replaced the folksy, sometimes raw Fillmore cowboy Larry Carpenter a year ago after serving a 26-year apprenticeship in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

While still adapting to the responsibility of being the county’s top law enforcement official, Brooks can already tick off a laundry list of accomplishments.

He quickly pulled together a five-year plan outlining the department’s priorities for the first years of the new millennium, focusing on departmental accountability and strengthening relations with the community. To do that, Brooks sought the advice of business people, educators and community activists.

He struck a deal with Ventura College to build a $50-million training facility for deputies. The department will supply instructors. Academy graduates will receive about 30 units of college credit.

Recently, he helped create a countywide task force to crack down on drug and gang activity. The task force, made up of sheriff’s personnel, local police, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration personnel and others, works out of a secret location in Camarillo.

And during this month’s budget negotiations, often a bruising affair, Brooks fared well, persuading supervisors to approve nine new civilian positions. The clerical workers will allow deputies more time on the streets, Brooks said.

“I really am having fun,” the ever-optimistic Brooks said. “I’ve been able to accomplish a lot, and I think people see that. There hasn’t been a day yet when I don’t want to come to work.”

In the old sheriff and the new one, Ventura County has a top cop who cherishes family and community. Both are lifelong county residents.

But where Carpenter was a good old boy who never minded mixing it up in political power struggles, Brooks is a student of the new school. He has shown himself to be a conciliator and manager rather than a brawler.

While many praise him for this, some say his polished administrative skills and consensus-seeking style could become a liability. Some county officials wonder whether he can develop the same clout his more confrontational predecessor used in forcing the county to build a new jail on farm land and to persuade voters to approve a half-cent sales tax that increased his budget by more than $28 million annually.

“Brooks has the potential,” Supervisor John Flynn said. “But he hasn’t lived up to it just yet.”

Flynn and others, however, note there have been no major political wars to wage this year, and no department scandals to test the sheriff’s mettle.

Brooks is reluctant to speak up in his own defense.

“I don’t think that’s for me to say,” he said when asked about his toughness.

Carpenter, however, speaking in the blunt style he was known for as sheriff, was quick to weigh in with his own opinion on those questioning Brooks’ backbone.

“Anyone who doubts that is slow mentally,” Carpenter said.

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Mostly, Brooks, a deeply religious man who is rumored to have never uttered a curse word, said he operates by simply trying to do what is right.

He draws strength from his family’s roots in law enforcement. His grandfather was a police lieutenant in Montreal who moved to California after retirement. The young boy was in awe of the badge, the uniforms, and any other law enforcement paraphernalia scattered about his grandfather’s home.

“I heard all his stories,” said Brooks, a Thousand Oaks native. “It was fascinating to me as a kid.”

Brooks was 14 when his grandfather died, and today his grandfather’s picture is displayed on a bookcase in Brooks’ office, “just as a reminder.”

It was also during his teenage years that Brooks became a Christian. A member of Sunrise Christian Fellowship in Simi Valley, his faith carries him through the job’s tougher times.

“It gives me a source of strength when things get stressful,” Brooks said. “I know I can take it to a higher power.”

And it gives him a moral underpinning to help him make difficult decisions, such as firing a deputy last year after an investigation into complaints of excessive force. Deputy Donald Rodarte was cleared on the excessive force complaints, but fired for lying to authorities during the investigation.

“It’s much easier to say, ‘Well, it’ll be all right, just do it better next time,’ ” said Undersheriff Richard Bryce, who deals with a lot of the department’s disciplinary issues. “But in this job, there’s not a lot of room for that. . . . And Brooks, he’s such a nice guy, people don’t expect him to be tough, to stand up to people. But he does. He has the strength of a leader.”

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There have been other challenges for Brooks along the way.

Among the biggest hurdles of his first year has been the Y2K computer problem. Being sheriff at the turn of the century has meant committing countless hours toward, among other things, ensuring electronic jail locks won’t spring open at the stroke of midnight and 911 service continues uninterrupted. In June 1998 the sheriff established the Y2K Emergency Planning Committee, which meets once every month.

The emergency systems will be working fine on Jan. 1, officials say.

The shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado set off a wave of bomb threats that kept authorities busy. But the most difficult challenge, Brooks said, was coping with the loss of Deputy Lisa Whitney, killed in a traffic collision last August while on her way to interview a witness in a sexual-assault case.

“The whole department took that really hard,” Brooks said. “And I’d only been sheriff a couple of weeks at the time.”

Amid all this, Brooks has had to learn how to be sheriff. That has required meeting with department heads, union representatives, city officials, county officials, chiefs of police and community activists, to name a few.

“It was a very laborious process,” Bryce says. “There were early morning breakfasts, late-night dinners, whatever it took. . . . The management style here goes something like we work harder than the people we supervise. And nobody works harder than Bob Brooks.”

Brooks took his first vacation last month--a two-week jaunt to England with his wife, Debbie. It was the longest vacation for Brooks in 15 years.

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While many employees and colleagues characterize the transition from Carpenter to Brooks as seamless, some noted a few bumps in the road.

Union representatives said last year’s contract negotiations were rockier than most, leading to an impasse in November. Union officials blamed sheriff representatives, who they said were slow to compromise and a novice sheriff who had never been through the process.

“I’d say it was one of the hardest [negotiations] I’ve ever participated in because of the sheriff’s side of the table,” said Donna Clontz, general manager for the Ventura County Deputy Sheriff’s Assn. “There seemed to be a lot of miscommunication.”

President Glen Kitzman added, however, that once representatives were able to sit down with the sheriff directly, differences were quickly resolved and a settlement was finally reached in December.

Rank and file officers say they like and support Brooks. They say they consider him a smart man with a modern mind grounded in traditional ideals.

But he also has something of a reputation as an administrator first, and as a cop second.

Said union Vice President Nancy Alaniz on Brooks: “Some people in the upper ranks are polished, are trained to work administration. Larry, well, he worked quite a bit of patrol time, he worked narcotics, he worked everything.”

“Larry Carpenter, people just had that respect and confidence in him because of where he came from,” Kitzman added. “The current sheriff, they want to, but it’s not as forthcoming because they see more administrator in him.”

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Carpenter was a man who, even as sheriff, listened to the police radio in his car and regularly rolled to a scene to assist on a call. It was the type of thing that reminded deputies the sheriff was one of them.

Although the police scanner in Brooks’ car is also permanently flipped to the on position, and there have been occasions when he has rolled as backup, the image of a sheriff with a palm pilot in his breast pocket and a computer full of ideas remains.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Alaniz said. “You almost need that to survive today. But there needs to be a balance--you have to communicate with the live troops too to have their respect.”

Brooks mingles with the troops in his own way, attending everything from academy graduations to training sessions to picnics and socials to retirement dinners.

“I do think it’s important to mix it up with our troops, to get to know them by name and by face,” said Brooks, who acknowledged it can be difficult when heading a department with more than 1,300 employees. “I find by jumping in a patrol car, I might only see a couple of deputies. But if I’m out there at our group settings, I’m seeing them in groups of 20s and 30s, not just one or two.

Brooks is also a sheriff who sternly believes inaccessibility breeds mistrust. As a result, he stresses an open-door policy, and what he terms “an open e-mail policy,” inviting deputies to air grievances and share ideas with him directly. And returning calls, usually on the same day, from deputies and community members alike, is a must, he says.

Notes Kitzman: “I’ve only been [union] president a few weeks, and I’ve already talked to him six times, and at least one of those was in person. If that type of communication keeps up, we can resolve anything in short order.”

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Supervisors commend Brooks, crediting him with forward thinking and what they see as a genuine desire to make the department stronger, more efficient.

“He’s really put a new face on the Sheriff’s Department,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said. “He’s an up-to-date, current sheriff. In the past, we’ve had more rural sheriffs, and he’s from an urban area. That’s important because most of our problems are in urban areas.”

“Generally speaking, I am impressed with him,” Flynn added. “The officers respect him, the community respects him. I’m proud of his job.”

Brooks is also the first sheriff to be elected since the powerful and controversial Proposition 172 became law.

Under the proposition, the Sheriff’s Department receives two-thirds of a half-cent sales tax set aside for county law enforcement agencies. The extra $28 million each year has made the sheriff less accountable to the Board of Supervisors, which in past years has approved every dollar added, or cut, from the department’s budget.

The result is a sheriff who does not need to consult the board before making many fiscal decisions.

A recent flap arose when the sheriff began producing a newsletter reporting on issues within the department at a time when the Board of Supervisors was unable to fund a similar newsletter. Supervisors learned about the newsletter after the fact, Flynn said.

“I think sometimes you forget to tell people what you are going to do, and that’s a weakness,” Flynn said. “He needs to go around, visit supervisors more often. Now he has that money, and he needs to consult with us more.”

One thing Brooks hopes he can do before turning in his badge is prove himself to his mentor, Carpenter, whom he calls a legend.

“The bar has been set so high,” Brooks said. “It’s only once every so many generations you get to help pass a Proposition 172, or build a new jail. “

So Brooks is striving to create a legacy of his own. He has an idea of how he wants to be remembered.

“My legacy, I hope, will be that I wanted this to be a better department,” Brooks said.

Profile of Bob Brooks

Occupation: County sheriff

Age: 49

Residence: Thousand Oaks (Ventura County resident since 1961).

Family: Married to high school sweetheart, Debbie, for 29 years. They have two sons, Jeff, 23, and Brian, 19.

Education: Graduated from Thousand Oaks High School. Received a bachelor’s degree in public administration from the University of Redlands and a master’s in management from Regent University in Virginia.

Career: Joined Sheriff’s Department in 1973. Brooks ascended rapidly through the ranks and spent the past five years as chief deputy in charge of east county patrols. Hand-picked by former Sheriff Larry Carpenter, Brooks ran for sheriff uncontested. He plans to seek at least one more term.

Organizations: Serves on the Salvation Army advisory board, Simi Valley’s Crime Task Force and the California State Sheriff’s Assn. Training Committee. Also served on the board of directors of the California Peace Officers Assn.

Hobbies: Skiing and basketball.