Dean Scoville - A Badge, a Gun, an Attitude: 25 Years as a Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff

The author, Lean Dean, 1983.

Jefferson, North Carolina

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e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-3078-6

2017 Dean Scoville. All rights reserved

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Exposit is an imprint of McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
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Dedicated to the love of my life and the mother
of my talented and compassionate son.
Id hate to contemplate where I would be
without your support, patience, and forgiveness.

Thanks to Jolynn Coronel, Elena Smith, Lynn Helbing, and Michele Carey for their invaluable assistance in midwifing this book. And to all the good cops I have worked with and known for inspiring me to start it in the first place.

Its been said that there should be no such things as lawsthat good men dont need them, and bad men wont abide by them.

As the sentiment sums up my own take on the matter, it also marks my career as an administrator of the California Penal Code as a damn curious one. Yet how, why and whether one should be pounding the streets (or felons) are necessary concerns for those who don a uniform, badge, and firearm. In wrestling with these questions, answers can be more difficult to pin down than suspects.

My experiences in law enforcement helped shape not only my perceptions of the vocation, but also my perceptions of those with whom I came in contact through my work. The ambassadorships of those individuals disabused certain personal prejudices, even as they helped to reinforce others. More than a few of my conclusions regarding the profession and its liabilities are equally owed to them.

Those conclusionsand many of the factors that precipitated themare the primary focus of this memoir.

Experience should be the trump card in commentary proceedings on law enforcement. Not the Monday-morning quarterbacking of what some cop did by journalists, nor whether those actions conformed to the expectations of some self-proclaimed community activist. Just a knowledgeable assessment of what actually occurred within the context of any peculiar episode associated with the profession, and of the performance executed by the person trained to do it.

Throughout my career, I was witness to situations that ranged from humorous to heartbreaking, salacious to gory, and none that left me lacking for subjects to write about. In writing this memoir, I have strived to use archetypal incidents to illustrate my personal viewpoints and to offer ammunition to those who would rebut law enforcements critics.

What follows is my summation of a profession that affords trial by fire baptisms from an officers first day to his lastit is the nature of this career that no segment of society is immune from contact with law enforcement, and there is no volatile social issue that does not impact it.

Looking back on generations of law enforcement practitioners, mine was the first to get accustomed to the near universal deployment of ballistic vests, portable radios, and mobile digital transmitters; the one responsible for changing things for the worse (Rodney King), and the better (less lethal weaponry); the last to perform the job without its every move being tracked or recorded. If I could have chosen, I might well have preferred to have started my career a decade or so beforein an era that had its own unique threats, but still afforded the good, aggressive street cop the opportunity to perform the job as his conscience saw fit.

But even within the 25-year span of my career, I found enough wiggle-room to make the challenge workwhich is more than I could anticipate if I were to start the job now. Still, I revisit that period with as much objectivity and candor as possible. I suspect few will find fault with my honesty.

Chronologically, my story begins with my joining the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department as a cadet in its Training Academy in the early 1980s. It follows my graduation to custody; tracks my subsequent transfer to patrol; then charts the balance of my career as I work a variety of assignments thereafter before being promoted to supervisor, where I spend the last 15 years flitting against the unreasonable persons glass ceiling like some brain-fried moth. It wraps with my time at POLICE magazine, after my retirement from the sheriffs department, a period when I authored the highly successful Shots Fired column that profiled officer-involved shootings as experienced by the officers themselves.

In some instances, I have lost contact with former co-workers and was unable or unwilling to secure permission to use their names. In others cases, I was reticent to mention names for fear of stigmatizing their family members. For this reason, I have changed the names of the vast majority of people mentioned in this book. Two notable exceptions are my second training officer, Lynn Helbing, and Deputy Brad Higgins, who helped save my ass in a shooting. Both have given permission to use their names.

Spiritually and philosophically, this memoir finds me transitioning from a slacker critic of law enforcement to an admirer of its more ardent practitioners. It also details how along the way I found myself bitten, punched, shot, and backstabbedmore often than not in the literal sense. And while I might piss and moan along the way, I ultimately come to appreciate how I have profited from my misadventures more often than not.

And that is perhaps the main thing that I want the reader to consider: The silver linings that we encounter, not just within our beleaguered careers, but in life in general.

Because without them, wed really be screwed.

Be Someones Hero

Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department recruiting slogan

I dont recall any youthful fantasies of becoming a cop. Sure, Id played cops and robbers as a kid. Id also played cowboys and Indiansbut nobody was going to find my ass falling off a horse at a dude ranch anytime soon. This, coupled with questionable childhood associations, generally maladaptive behavior, and an inability to function as a team player, marked that choice of profession a low-percentage gamble for me.

But I am nothing if not a gambler, and so it was that shortly after entering college I began to give law enforcement serious consideration.