The Kindest Officer on the Force

The air at Los Angeles International Airport was heavy with fog as Hubert Scott followed several dozen police officers into a windowless boardroom to talk with them about his son, Tommy Scott, the first LAX officer to die in the department’s 59-year history.

He wanted to meet the people his son called “partner.” He asked several officers for their names, grabbing one and holding him in a tight embrace. Then he turned to Tommy’s classmates, his trainees, his commanding officers.

“Thank you for taking this opportunity so I could see your faces. We feel now, my wife and I, that we are part of this august body,” said Scott, a retired Lockheed Martin manager.

As he prepared to bury his son, Hubert Scott talked Wednesday with the officers about the power of faith, the Baptist faith in which he and Tommy’s mother, who died in 1990, raised their boys, Hubert Jr., now 37, and Tommy.

“I would like to be with you for moral support. Excuse me for stammering, but I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances,” said Scott, standing beside Tommy’s stepmother, JoAnn Carter-Scott.

The smartly dressed, graying father reminisced about how Tommy looked as he lay in his crib, with a chubby, contented face and a wide grin that he carried with him into adulthood.

“I called him my great big bundle of joy,” Scott said. “I taught him a long time ago it’s all right to hug a man.”

Officers pulled tissues from their dress blues and wiped their eyes with suit sleeves. Many had attended the Rio Hondo Police Academy in Whittier with Tommy Scott. Others had learned the intricacies of airport policing from the former lifeguard.

They gathered to share stories and gain some measure of comfort from others who knew the upbeat 35-year-old Tommy Scott -- popular not only with peers but also with superiors, who made him the LAX police force’s unofficial ambassador.

That he died outside the world’s fifth-busiest airport is not lost on his fellow officers, who report for work each day at what is considered the state’s No. 1 terrorist target.

“I equate this to a small department in a small town built around a nuclear reactor,” said Officer Jeff Shelton, one of the many officers that Scott trained. “We always figured our catastrophe would be a terrorist attack. We didn’t think our catastrophe would be the death of one of our officers.”

On April 29, a pedestrian commandeered Scott’s patrol car on Lincoln Boulevard, dragging him along as he struggled for control of the steering wheel. The car hit a fire hydrant, killing Scott.

William Sadowski, 46, has been charged with murder, including murder of a peace officer during the performance of his duties and murder during a carjacking -- circumstances that would make him subject to the death penalty if convicted. He will be arraigned May 26.

Authorities are investigating information that Sadowski may have been plotting to carjack a vehicle, drive it onto the airfield and possibly into an airplane, according to law enforcement sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

On Friday, thousands of friends, family and police officers attended a funeral service for Scott at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels downtown. He was buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.

Officer Tommy Scott wasn’t big on pretense.

“Call me Tommy,” he told a reporter recently at the start of a four-day tour of airport police operations.

Scott kept a photo gallery of his work on a computer. There was a shot of a large knife next to a bag of coins that a passenger used in an attempt to conceal the weapon from an X-ray machine. There was a rudimentary drawing left behind on an airplane of a head labeled “Bin Laden” with the word “Bang!” written below.

Several frames later, an empty airplane idled on the airfield with its doors open. A mechanic left the cargo jet running and “went to work on another plane,” Scott explained, saying he waited at least 40 minutes before the mechanic returned.

For 15 years before he joined the airport police, Scott worked for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, part of the time as a lifeguard at Celes King Pool. He saved two children from drowning during his time with the department -- where he quickly became a manager.

“Swimming was sort of like second nature for him,” said LAX Officer Chris Johnson, a longtime friend who also worked with Scott at the parks department. “Everything and anything that had to do with water he would do.”

Scott dedicated himself completely to anything he did, working overtime as an airport police officer, but returning whenever he could to be a lifeguard at city pools. He was single and lived in Los Angeles a few miles from his parents.

A car buff who played basketball, Scott came to the airport in 2001 after turning down a job with the Los Angeles Police Department, saying he preferred LAX police because he “wouldn’t get transferred.”

And he knew how much his job mattered.

He spent his days patrolling the airfield, the airport’s horseshoe-shaped road, the terminals and the perimeter, often with trainees or visitors in tow. He encouraged participation, asking a reporter at the airport’s shooting range: “Don’t you want to try it? Come on, you can do it.”

On a recent chilly day, Scott gave several weary passengers directions to the food court in the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

After lunch, he pulled his patrol car over to talk with a woman who often leaves food and water for a fox that lives in the sand dunes.

At a roadblock on the airfield, he flagged down workers driving tugs and other vehicles to check airport identification and driver’s licenses. He chatted with the driver of a lavatory truck, despite the truck’s overpowering stench.

Scott had a high profile at several major events at LAX, including being first on the scene last fall when a flashlight exploded in the Bradley terminal. He directed officers to evacuate the crowded building and solicited the cooperation of hundreds of passengers.

“When you’re doing a good job, it shows,” he said.

Even after back-to-back appointments with the unit that follows taxis and limousines, the security detail that implements federal regulations, the training department, the airport police bike patrol and others -- leaving little or no time for lunch -- he was ready for more.

“Any questions?” he asked. “What did we leave out?”

At the Rio Hondo Police Academy, Scott would ask questions everyone else shied away from.

“At the end of the day, he would always want to get more out of class, and he would raise his hand and say, ‘It’s Scott again,’ ” recounted Officer Hans Bergmann, who often was Scott’s partner on patrol at LAX.

His energy was well known in the close-knit department, which at 310 officers, is about 3.5% the size of the 9,000-officer LAPD. His presence was particularly noteworthy at morning roll call, when officers would be struggling to wake up.

“He would slam the door open real wide,” fellow training Officer Cliff Perrier remembered, “and yell, ‘Good morning, all!’ ”

But this week, roll calls have been somber. On breaks, officers have visited a flower-filled shrine for Scott on Lincoln Boulevard, telling passersby that they’re not saying Scott was the kindest officer on the force because he’s gone -- he really was.

“No one had any animosity about him at all,” said Officer Arthur Juliano, who often ate lunch with Scott.

As his face reddened, Juliano said, “These are tears not only of respect, but of sadness. They are tears of laughter and funny things.”

Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.

*

Scott’s family has established a scholarship fund in his memory. Donations can be made at any branch of the First Federal Bank of California, payable to Airport Police F.B.O. Tommy Scott.