The Retired Cop

  Case #65 - re The People vs Don Chanler ( A lesson for all trainees ) Don Chanler was the Question Cadet in our Academy class, class #226.  At the end of each long day, one of the staff instructors would come in and, prior to dismissing us for the day, would always ask if anyone had any questions about the day's classes.  There was only one cadet who would ever raise his hand.  Don Frickin' Chanler.  Chanler would immediately raise his hand and the staff instructor would resignedly call his name. Chanler would always ask obvious question, after obvious question, delaying our release for the day with ev-ery sin-gle point-less ques-tion.  As with all Question Cadets, only he was interested in what he had to ask.  Three years later, Don Frickin Chanler came to Carson with me, Mike Chacon and about 8 other people from our Academy class.  In Patrol School, we were not relieved to discover that he had not changed.  In fact he had gotten worse, be...

  Case #64 - re The People vs Greg Lemancha ( A synonym for cheap ) Then of course, there was Greg Lemancha. Greg was a former flight controller that was among the strikers fired by President Ronald Reagan. Once he became a deputy sheriff, he quickly found that the job had its perks. Cheap mattresses from Simmons, free yogurt from Yoplait and best of all, free food from McDonald’s. A typical day for Greg would be to log on after briefing, and bee-line it to McDonald’s for breakfast. After awhile, Greg decided that eating on-the-cuff once a day wasn’t enough for a growing boy in his late 40’s, so Greg came up with the Dayshift motto, “ Do it early, so you can do it again! ” Now Greg was eating his Egg McMuffins for free and 4 hours later his Big Mac combo for the same price. Not bad. Then Greg began instituting his Personal Rule of, “ Do it early, do it twice, do it three times for my lady and once more for my baby! ”, in which he ate as soon as he logged on, then half way ...

  Case #63 – The People vs Mike Kennard & Walter Zipusch (a backup plan to a backup plan, or fried eggs & sausage) In August 2007, Mike Kennard and Walter Zipusch were radio car partners. One hot day, they came across a man standing in the street. The two deputies came to the opinion that the man in the street was under the influence of P.C.P. (peperidine phencyclidine). This opinion was based on several objective physical symptoms which included, a blank stare, drooling, eyeballs bouncing up and down, profuse sweating, the odor of P.C.P and let's see... what else... oh yeah, he was butt-ass naked. Knowing how strong, violently unpredictable and impervious to pain people under the influence of P.C.P can be, Mike and Walter approached the suspect slowly and cautiously with their Berettas aimed at him. They also requested assistance from other units, and a Field Sergeant. A Sheriff's Department helicopter arrived over head and began to orbit. In his best authoritative...

  Case #62 - re The People vs Sgt Rocky Costa #2 ( Pleasant dreams ) One night, in around 1992, Sgt Rocky Costa decided to sleep in the bunk room. As he began to dream, a smile crept across his sleeping face. In his dream he was relaxing on a tropical beach, somewhere in the Pacific. A Viking boat sailed up and beached itself on the sand. A rather large, but attractive Viking lass jumped down from the boat and approached Rocky. Rocky was fearful and rolled on his side so he couldn’t see this Valkyrie maiden. As the Viking female warrior stood over him, Rocky turned his head to peek up at her. She suddenly smiled, tossed her sword, shield, and horned helmet away; removed her armor and clothing and let them fall to the sand. The strapping girl then cuddled up next to Rocky’s back, with one of her smooth Viking girl legs thrown on top of his tree trunk legs, and one of her sexy Viking girl hands tickling his belly. Rocky giggled in his sleep. Then the Viking girl began walki...

In the early 1980s, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had a different evidence storage system than they have had since the early 1980s.  Up until the early 1980s, the detectives handling a case were responsible for storage, disposition and tracking of evidence in their cases.  Each detective had a bin in the evidence storage room that they kept their evidence in and a ledger that they logged the evidence in and out in and put the disposition of in.  Carson Sheriff's station's Detective Jerry Kaono aka "Da Big Kahuna" aka "Da Flyin Hawaiian" had one such bin. In the early 1980s, the department decided to do an audit of the evidence being held at the various sheriff's stations.  One of the first stations to be audited was Lakewood station.  Quite a bit of evidence was unaccounted for. Heads rolled.  Detectives were fired.  Detective sgts were fired. Detective lieutenants were fired.  Same thing happened at another station.  Carson sta...

  On Nicknames My wife once asked me why a large number of my male friends and acquaintances are referred to by nicknames. “Oso”, “Rick the Hawaiian”, “Vic the SEAL”, Chinaman Dave”, “Little Dave”, “Big Dave”, “Mexican Dave”, “Dave the plumber”, “Cliffdiver”, “Bucky”, “the Count”, the “Rock”, “Code 4 Greg”, “White Shaft”, “Bosko”, “Chodown”, “Sexual Chocolate”, “Kianporiguez”, “Krakatoa”, “Brian the Bee Guy”, “Chip” (aka, “Okie”), “Cowboy”, “Spot”, “Seven”, “Red Dot”, “Spiderman” aka “Turtleman”, “Freddie Krueger” and  “Smilin' Bob”, were a few. In pretty much any group, made up mostly of men, you will find that nicknames are common. There are probably more guys nicknamed, “Tex”, in the military than in Texas. Most nicknames are a result of one of the following. - An adapted version of your actual name. “G8”, was so named, because nobody could pronounce his name and there were 8 letters in it, beginning with “G”. “Bosckovich, which has even more letters, but was at leas...

Case #60 - The People vs Doug Fetteroll ( They see things differently on the East Coast ) In December 2008, OSS (the gang detail) had a search warrant scheduled.  The day before the warrant was to be served, I arrived at work and was getting dressed in the COPs trailer, which is adjacent to the OSS trailer.  I had a question for Detective Mark Wedel, of OSS, and walked next door to talk to him.  I wasn't finished putting my uniform on yet.  My shirt was untucked and unbuttoned, my boots were untied and my gun belt wasn't on.  I knocked, opened the door without waiting for a response, and walked into the middle of an OSS meeting.  Their new Sgt, Sgt Tonya Edwards looked me up and down, cocked her head back and raised an eyebrow.  Just as I thought Sgt Edwards was going to chew my ass for being out of uniform and barging into their meeting, I caught a glimpse of some gray, thinning hair coming into my peripheral vision from behind a cabinet.  Th...

Case #58 - The People vs Whatever Rich Prick Lived In That Fancy Ocean View Malibu Home ( a lesson in fire safety ) In the annual Malibu fire season of 2004,or maybe 2003 (they're all kind of the same), Dave Kluth, , me and the rest of the Carson COPs team were sent to assist.  That night we were assigned to keep an eye on a hillside neighborhood in Malibu that had been given a mandatory evacuation order earlier. For those of you that don't know, Malibu is beach community with a large population of the well heeled. We set up our little base of operations in the backyard of a multi-million dollar home that was situated on about an acre of land. The backyard ended at a steep hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  It was beautiful. One of the first things we did was check to see if all the doors and windows were locked.  They were... with one exception.  The rear sliding door had been left open about a foot.  We announced ourselves and went in to verify tha...

Case #59 - The People vs Jake Foley ( always go with your gut, unless you're Steve Sather, then always do just the opposite ) In October 2008, Detective Jake Foley was summoned to the captain's office. Never a pleasant experience... for him.  But this time, Jake wasn't sweating it.  Sure, he gotten into a lot of trouble when he was on patrol, about a 90% complaint to contact ratio. Right up there with Randy "Vesuvius" Dickerson, who had, coincidentally, been Jake Fowley's training officer. But those were the bad days.   Jake was a detective now.   These were the good days!  About the only contact he had with the public now was calling them on the phone to listen to them say they weren't interested in pressing charges anymore. So, with the possibility of a complaint out of the picture,what did that leave?  A routine case update?  A little periodic face time with the captain, so he knew he was a valued member of the team?  Ooooh, m...

Case #57 - re The People vs "Mr. Smith"  ( Who says shit floats? )   ( "Mr Smith" has requested I keep his identity anonymous.  Cry baby.)      Every year, the guys would get together for a 3-4 day river trip. I sometimes referred to these as "Gay old times on the river", because no women were allowed and the guys who went frequently wandered around, our secluded little camp, bare-ass naked. You never knew who you’d see walking around in the raw. It might be a guy with a 48” chest and a 32” waist, or a guy with a 48” waist and a 32” chest. That’s why we all stayed drunk, nobody wanted to remember the things we saw, and it’s why the smart ones didn’t wear sunglasses during the day. It gave you an excuse to keep your eyes closed and when you did have to open them, you could squint, so you'd see as little as possible.      One of the many river trip rituals was to take all the boats out into the middle of the river late at night, tie them ...

Case #56 - re The People vs Rocky Costa (lie down Sparky, roll over…good boy) When Rocky Costa was a Sgt on the Early Mornings shift, he was pretty big. He was no Fat Sam mind you. He couldn’t even give Fat Sam a run for his vending machine money, but he was still pretty big. One graveyard shift, some deputies jammed a duster (a guy high on P.C.P.) on Gardena Bl. and Figueroa St., right in the middle of the intersection. It was about midnight, and it was cold, but the guy was barefoot and shirtless and sweating his ass off. The deputies requested the Field Sgt respond. Sgt Costa responded along with me and my partner, Jeff Adams in 162B and about four other deputies. So there we were, eight deputies in a semicircle around the duster, with Sgt Costa at the apex of the semicircle. One deputy was giving commands to the duster, which the duster was ignoring. The other deputies were getting ready to swarm the duster and take him to the ground, when Sgt Costa told us to hold off. He walk...

Case #55 – re The People vs Dan Dyer (Dan the man becomes Dan the fireman) At the end of 2000 Dan Dyer made T.O. I’ve been waiting to get that slippery Dan “The Man” Dyer in this courtroom ever since he put those 2 stripes on, but the first incident I heard about was blown all out of proportion, and it didn’t seem fit to present. But now an incident has presented itself, that I think is a slam dunk case. In June of 2005, the 911 board lit up on the EM shift. It was a fire! Not just any old fire, no, this was a house on fire! The type of fire that heroes emerge from, medals are awarded for, and careers are made out of! The call went out, “Closest unit to roll Code-3, structure fire at 12345 S Bibbidyboo St. Is there a unit in one?” Dan the Man grabbed his mike and coolly announced, “169A2, Daniel J Dyer, band 1 on the Sgt’s list, in less than one.” This superfluous radio traffic caught the SRC radio operator off-guard for a moment, but she quickly recovered and advised, “Uhhh, ...

Case #54 The People Vs Wayde Farrell & Family (dolphins vs duffys)      On May 31, 2015, Wayde Farrell got into an on duty scuffle with a motorcycle. He was eventually medically retired from his various injuries. The injuries could be summarized as follows: His legs and arms were pretty frickin' useless and his back was jacked.      On October 16, 2015, four and a half months after the accident, Wayde turned 56 years old. His sister, Stephanie and her husband Patrick, took Wayde out for a ride around Huntington Harbor in a Duffy boat to remind him that he was a year closer to death. Also along for the birthday celebration were Wayde's wife, Michelle, the birthday boy's parents, Willie and Terri, and Patrick's mother, Donna.      For those of you who don't know what a Duffy boat looks like, just picture the African Queen, but instead of being powered by a steam engine, a Duffy is electric. If you are too young to be familiar with the...