2 Police Chiefs Belong to a Select Fraternity

The saga of the tall, dark-haired lawmen sounds custom-made for the movies: two towns ... two badges ... two brothers.

Gary Pentis, 47, is Ojai’s police chief. His kid brother, Randy, 44, does the honors in Fillmore. They are the only brother act among California police chiefs, according to the California Peace Officers Assn. Between the two, they supervise more than 60 deputies who range over a 100-square-mile swath of rural Ventura County.

Jokingly known in the Sheriff’s Department as “the northern alliance” for the territory they control, the Pentis brothers are veteran sheriff’s deputies. At times, both have done undercover work; now they’re highly visible in the time-tested manner of small-town police chiefs, visiting schools and working the room at civic club lunches.

In Ojai, Gary Pentis walks from his office on Ventura Street to Java Joe’s, where he sips coffee and talks with locals about the never-ending traffic snarls and occasional crusades to save old oak trees.

One recent afternoon, he drove to a local middle school and sternly lectured 11 delinquent seventh-graders--all verging on gang membership--on the perils of a life of crime.

Now he’s planning an operation to target drivers who speed down the Ojai Valley’s narrow, tree-lined roads.

About 20 miles away in Fillmore, Randy also does the sort of police public relations that in larger cities is as quaint a throwback as an officer twirling a nightstick and walking a beat.

Named Fillmore’s chief in November, Randy Pentis puts on a patrol uniform weekly and cruises the city’s older neighborhoods, where he chats with third- and fourth-generation residents.

At community meetings, he rattles off crime statistics and listens to ideas from the crowd. Recently, he helped the city buy a surveillance camera to spot vandals in high-crime areas.

Each week, the two brothers meet for lunch, often at a Ventura sushi restaurant. They talk about the big-city problems that invade even the smallest of towns: gangs and drugs. More of their conversation, though, focuses on family. Gary Pentis has five children and his brother has three.

Once a year, the Fillmore chief surprises his two young sons with a trip to an NBA game in a distant city. Meanwhile, the Ojai chief races a souped-up Chevy truck off-road and raises money for Russian orphans.

As teenagers the Pentis brothers palled around, despite their age difference. After classes at Newbury Park High School, they would ride motorcycles together or shoot at tree stumps with a rifle. There were the usual sibling rivalries, but Randy looked up to his brother.

“Gary always talked to me about things,” he said. “If I had a problem with school or family or whatever, I could go to him. He was a voice of reason and he always took care of me.”

After high school, Gary went to San Diego State, where he earned a degree in public health. Unsure of his career path, he became a counselor for troubled children at group homes. Police officers he met on the job urged him to think about a career in law enforcement.

In 1978, he returned to Newbury Park and became a Ventura County deputy sheriff--a move that eventually inspired his younger brother to do the same.

Like Gary, Randy Pentis thought he would enjoy working with children. But while he was home on a Christmas break from Utah State, his brother told him the Sheriff’s Department was conducting an entrance exam. In 1982, with a degree in sociology, he became a deputy.

The pair ascended the ranks steadily, spending time at various assignments in the jail, patrol services and the detective division.

Working undercover for three years, Gary Pentis was instrumental in the county’s biggest drug bust--a 1993 seizure of $5.8 million in cash and $40 million worth of cocaine. A dozen reputed members of the Cali and Medellin drug cartels were arrested.

Randy Pentis, too, did the kind of police work that seems a world away from giving a noontime talk to the Rotary Club. For years, he worked on a special enforcement detail in Thousand Oaks that did everything from busting sex offenders in seedy bathrooms to solving gang murders.

By the end of the 1990s, both earned their present rank. Although officially sheriff’s captains, both were designated chiefs by their cities, which contract with the county for law enforcement services.

They don’t hold jobs that draw too many headlines, but that’s OK, they say.

“A lot of what we do is just help people solve problems,” Randy Pentis said, “and that doesn’t necessarily make the news.”