San Diego cop, murder-scene artist, grand jury foreman: This resume is one of a kind

Rick Carlson boasts an impressive resume: retired San Diego cop, murder-scene artist, pet-coffin builder, theatrical set designer and author of an unfinished screenplay about San Diego during the days of bordellos, gambling joints, Wyatt Earp and other colorful characters.

Now he can add one more job title to the list: county grand jury foreman.

His face may not be familiar to the public. But true devotees of TV soap operas may recognize his hands.

For several years Carlson acted as a “handgun model” for the soaps when they needed a shot of a gun being fired.

In his 35 years on the police force, including eight on the homicide squad, he never fired a shot — not even at a guy who leveled a shotgun at him before responding to a command to drop it. But he blasted several people on “Days of Our Lives” and “Generations.”

Now 63, Carlson will lead a 19-member grand jury (all of them retirees) as they prowl through the workings of local government looking for inefficiencies, mess-ups and maybe even a scandal or two.

That is, he’ll be doing that when he’s not acting as the guiding force for San Diego’s 4,000-square-foot police museum, providing antique cars for TV shows and movies being filmed in San Diego, and spending time at his cabin in the mountains.

“I’m busier now than when I was working,” he jokes.

He took to painting as a stress-relieving activity during his days on the homicide squad. He would come home after a day of looking at murder scenes and paint through much of the night — capturing the horror, surprise, and sometimes oddball expressions on the corpses.

He had a one-officer show, “Murders, He Drew,” at a downtown coffee shop and gallery. He even sold one of the paintings to a lady from Beverly Hills who had her own fascination with violent death.

He collected suicide notes and, with names deleted, published them in a slim volume called “I’m In The Tub, Gone.” The title was taken from one of the more poignant notes. He’s thinking of a second volume: notes from celebrity suicides.

Like all members of the grand jury, he’s a volunteer. Under the county system, names are vetted and then a drawing is held. The foreman is named by the presiding judge of the Superior Court.

Some of the jury’s topics are standard, some are suggested by aggrieved citizenry. It’s all hush-hush until the annual report is published.

The work is four days a week, with occasional field trips on Friday — $25 per diem, mileage and a parking place near the courthouse. (Indictment of criminals is done by a separate jury, named by the district attorney.)

Carlson moved to San Diego with his family in 1956. He attended San Diego City College and did a hitch in the Army before joining the Police Department in 1969. He retired in 2004 with the rank of detective.

He has seen San Diego grow from a politicaland cultural cul-de-sac at the bottom of California to the state’s second-largest city.

“In the 1950s, it was very small-town, very much a good-old-boy syndrome,” he said. “Now it’s a big city, which has benefits. It’s more modern, but it’s also brought problems.”

He’s researching the varied career of Agoston Haraszthy, the Hungarian emigre who became the county’s first marshal in 1850, grew grapes in Mission Valley, built his own jail and entered deals with the Bandini family, Mexican landowners who had lived in San Diego for generations. Haraszthy later led a failed attempt to split California into two states — a true San Diegan, suspicious of the outside world.

In the early 1900s, San Diego was wide open with vice, corruption, murder and an occasional morality campaign. Some 136 prostitutes were rounded up and sent to Los Angeles on the civic theory that their trade would be welcomed in that sinful place.

“Two of them promised to reform and so they were allowed to stay,” Carlson said.

Chinese merchants were murdered mysteriously. One cop was buried up to his neck by criminals but managed to dig his way out, commandeer a horse and chase the bad guys. Respectable citizens avoided downtown after dark.

“At one time, being in downtown San Diego was said to be more dangerous than being in the Bowery in New York,” Carlson said.

The museum (4710 College Ave., near San Diego State University) is a repository of 150 years of San Diego law enforcement history: pictures, badges, guns, newspaper clippings, mug shots, Carlson’s paintings and more. The old-time pictures bespeak of a police force where officers had to be quick with their fists. That includes the female officer assigned to patrol La Jolla before World War I.

“He’s my favorite,” Carlson, said pointing to Frank “Dads” Northern, standing with the 13 other officers who made up the force in 1897, every one of them with a serious mustache. Legend holds that the police chief saw Northern, then a construction worker, chase down a purse snatcher; the chief hired him on the spot.

“His first day on duty he made 16 arrests and got in seven fistfights,” Carlson said.

A Canadian by birth, Carlson has long since become a San Diegan — with the hometown chauvinism that is commonplace here. “I love San Diego,” he said. “I can’t see why anyone would want to live anywhere else.”

tony.perry@latimes.com