Deputy
Page 6
Then there’s the gas house. Our class would line up to go through this small building with two or three small rooms in it. There was some type of smog pumped into the building to make the visibility near zero. And we would have to enter one end of the building and find our way out the other side. The entire time they were pumping tear gas in the building. As you made your way in the line, you saw your fellow cadets exiting the building, falling to their knees and gasping for air. Some were vomiting as instructors sprayed their faces with a hose. This was great training because in a real life situation where tear gas or pepper spray is deployed, half the time you’re going to get a good dose yourself. It feels like your skin is burning and you’re not going to be able to breath, but you know your skin isn’t burning and you are going to regain full breath. It lessens the likelihood of panic when you already have experience being exposed.
I think we had a week or maybe two at the range. Most everyone loved the range training. Some may have liked it more for the relaxed atmosphere than the weapon training. Because of the inherent dangers involved with so many cadets shooting live rounds, every effort was made to make it a non-stress environment. The range staff had a priority on safety and instruction with the intent on everyone being safe and gaining skill in their shooting abilities with all types of weapons. So there wasn’t the yelling and screaming as in a normal day at the academy. They really did want everyone to gain proficiency in their shooting and pass the range qualification. Not being able to qualify with your duty weapon meant being disqualified from the academy. Even those that initially failed were allowed to remediate with some one on one training. These range masters were the best of the best and very good teachers. Not very many cadets were washed out of the academy because of not being able to qualify with their weapon.
Another phase in our academy training that was amazing was the driver’s training. The driver’s training division is located at the Pomona Fair Grounds. They teach vehicle and motorcycle driving skills not only to cadets of the department but also to other agencies. They have a pursuit course and it is stressful and fun, just like a real pursuit. You get to chase an instructor while a speaker inside the car is blaring a siren and you are broadcasting over the radio. The instructor sitting in the front with you is on your side. They coach you as to how to take the apex of the turns and emphasize when you should be on the breaks and when you should be on the accelerator. You put a lot of stress on yourself because everyone in the class is watching you, and you are being evaluated by the instructors. In Livingston County I had driven in more than ten high speed chases and I was not the best during the academy training, but it was great fun and I had no problem passing.
They had another driving scenario where you drive straight down a center lane and in front of you are three streetlights, each with their own lane. One straight ahead in your lane and one to the right and left of you. All three lights stay red until just before you get to them, and then one turns greens. While you maintain your speed, you have to steer into the green lane without hitting the cones that are separating the lanes. You run through this five or six times. If the light turns green in the center lane, all you do is continue driving straight. You have to fight the urge to try and anticipate which lane is going to turn green. I thought the hardest part of the course to pass was the driving in reverse portion. You have to negotiate this serpentine course of cones driving in reverse at what seems like too fast a speed. It’s probably only 20 miles per hour, but going in reverse negotiating cones puts the stress on. Passing the driver’s training is mandatory, and you will be allowed to remediate like the range. But also like the range qualification, if you can’t pass the driver’s training portion of the academy, you will wash out.
For our final role playing exams, which are a must pass, we went to Warner Brothers movie studios in Burbank. They brought in role players who dressed the parts of gang members and other criminal types. Volunteers posed as people involved in a domestic violence situation. There were several scenarios that you and your partner would have to handle. Right before the exercise, the instructors gave you the scenario that you were about to handle. They might have told you, for example, that you were answering a call of a domestic violence. The dispatcher told you that the husband threatened the wife with a gun. Then you were evaluated on how you handled the call, starting with how you approached the building and your interaction with the participants, victims and suspects. You were evaluated on your officer safety tactics. In some scenarios the role players were instructed to be somewhat uncooperative if you didn’t take control of the situation as you should. This was one of the final big tests before graduation. Everything kind of leads up to this day.
It was a long tradition of the Sheriff’s Academy to be held in East L.A. on Sheriff’s Road. In May of 1984, the academy moved from East LA. to Whittier. Our class was to be the last to start at East L.A. and the second to graduate from the new Whittier Academy. A select group of cadets were chosen to run carrying the flag from the old academy to the new location, a distance of about 15 miles. As of this writing, the Academy is moving back to East Los Angeles.
My first couple months were tough for me at the academy. Most cadets had a support team of family and/or spouse to help them out with meals, studying, and preparation of equipment. Just prior to starting the academy, my aunt and uncle said they were glad to help me get started and allow me to stay on their couch for a couple weeks, but it was time for me to get an apartment of my own, and they were right. My first apartment was on Berryman Avenue in Culver City. Culver City is best known as the home of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. It’s also still home to Sony Pictures Entertainment. My apartment was about 3 miles from the beach and Marina Del Rey. I loved the location. One of the reasons I wanted to come to Los Angeles was to be near the ocean.
After moving in, I met with the apartment manager in his office. He was man in his late 70’s. I’ll never forget our conversation that day. I told him my story, and my history of working for the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department out of Geneseo NY I asked him if he knew where that was. He turned to a picture on the wall behind him. It was an aerial view of a lake with no cottages on it. He told me that was a picture of Conesus Lake before there was one cottage on it. I’m not sure, but it had to be taken in the 30’s or 40’s He told me at the time, but I can’t remember now. He had once lived near the lake. Come on, that’s serendipity. What’s the chance of that? So this would be my home during my academy times. A one bedroom apartment with a mattress on the floor and a kitchen table with four chairs.
I found out that famed Golds Gym was about a five minute drive from my apartment in Venice. Rumor had it that all you had to do was show your L.A. Sheriff’s badge and you got a membership for free. I showed up at the counter and met the owner and professional bodybuilder Pete Grymkowski. Wow, this was amazing! Pete Grymkowski: winner of Junior Mr. USA, Junior Mr. America, Mr. America, Mr. World. He and two other partners had bought Golds Gym in 1979. Pete Grymkowski was from Rochester NY, and here I was talking to him. He gave me my membership right on the spot.
I had been reading bodybuilding magazines since I was 15 and started lifting weights. I poured over every magazine to learn all I could to assist me in gaining weight and size. I traveled to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to see a professional bodybuilding competition. And now here I was at the mecca of bodybuilding. I was trying to work out and not be too star struck by who was working out in the same gym that I was in. Lou Ferrigno, before the Hulk. Actor Carl Weathers. It was an amazing time. I felt I was living the dream.
Class 221 started the academy journey in January of 1984 and graduated in May of that same year. It was a ceremony filled with speeches and gathering of family for pictures. I was so proud to have Mom and Dad fly from New York to be present for and celebrate my graduation. My Aunt and Uncle were there too. We had a great time. My mom and dad found the house on Glendower Avenue where my mom had lived as a very young girl. They rang the buzzer, and
the owner let them in to see the house. He was some music producer. I don’t remember his name now, but that was really something.
JAIL ASSIGNMENT
MY FIRST ASSIGNMENT was Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. Ah, the worst of the worst; just where I wanted to be! This place—a dungeon, to say the least—housed over 6,000 inmates. The hardcore awaiting trial, the hardcore that had not been processed yet and were sent to other facilities. The hardcore who had been sent from state and federal prisons for more trials or to testify in someone else’s trial as a character witness, but actually moved down from prison to do a hit. This was a county jail where serial killers could be housed here for years as they awaited trial. They ran drugs, produced their own alcohol and carried out gang hits in this jail. Pretty amazing place.
Your first few weeks in this place as a trainee were high stress, to say the least. After a few weeks, a group of us were told we would be sent to the Wayside Honor Rancho because a new jail was opening there. I was pissed off. I didn’t want to be sent to a lightweight place, I wanted to stay here at the dungeon. When our training officers found out we would be transferring to the north jail, they gave it to us hard. As if it could be any harder as far as I was concerned. I was already working on the side of Central Jail they considered the easy side.
My training officer had called me out for a donning of the fire pack drill about five times one day. Later in the day, this giant of a deputy called me into the control booth of the floor. It was just me and him. He had won powerlifting competitions and had been a police officer from another state. He said to me, “Yates, you were a cop for five years. Your training officer is a pussy. Next time he gives you any shit, tell him to fuck off. You don’t have to take his bullshit.”
I thanked him but decided to stay on the humble path, at least while I was on training. This deputy who had the talk with me was a badass. Because of his size, some large inmates had expressed an interest in taking him on one on one. Legend has it he did, and kicked their ass without much reporting. I didn’t see any of that firsthand. So in a few weeks, about 30 of us were off to our new jail assignments at the Wayside Honor Rancho in Valencia, California, about 30 miles north of downtown L.A.
This jail facility was amazing; it was a small town itself. The shooting range was located on the property and a working farm. They had a dairy farm where the inmates worked taking care of and milking the cows. There was a pig farm where the inmates worked, and an equestrian center. There were acres of fields with all sorts of crops. When I arrived in 1984, they had three jail facilities: minimum, medium and max. Armed deputies worked the main gate controlling all traffic coming and leaving the facility. They had their own laundry facility. I was assigned to minimum security compound. This turned out to be the best assignment. It was comprised of barracks like you saw in the show Hogan’s Heroes. There was a row of 8 barracks on one side of the compound, and a row of 8 barracks on the other side of the compound, and in between was a green space with a road in front of each row of barracks. The center sidewalk led from the main office to the mess hall at the center of the compound. There was an upper compound that had five more barracks. Each barracks held about 120 inmates. At any given time the count was around 2,000 inmates. This was an open compound and it was just like a little town. There was a baseball field, chapel, woodshop and mess hall. All open barracks, no cells.
Each inmate had a green jumpsuit and in the front left breast pocket they had to have their yellow barracks card which had the barracks number they were assigned to stamped in black. So deputies would go into the barracks and check to make sure only those assigned were inside. Inmates would roam to other barracks to steal during the day when the inmates were out at work assignments. The inmates would be out working the field jobs, dairy farm, pig farm, equestrian center, range, and would return in the afternoon. As the inmates would return, they would all be searched most of the time. They would either be searched by the deputies assigned to the field crews or by the compound deputies depending on the size of the work detail. Some of the fields bordered the 5 freeway, and drugs would be dropped off in the fields to be picked up by the inmates out on the work details to be brought back to the compound to be used or sold.
We would actually make drug arrests in the compound for heroin, cocaine and marijuana. For minor violations, like being in the wrong barracks, they would get a ticket. The violation would be marked on the back of their card, and the ticket turned in to the office. At a later time after the count time, the inmates would be called down to the Sergeant’s Court. A sergeant would sit at a desk in the office acting as a judge. The inmates would be called up to the desk, the charge would be read to the inmate, and he could give his side of the story. Usually the inmates were given extra duty either in the kitchen or some other clean-up crew.
For serious violations or repeat offenders, the inmates could be assigned to what was called the nickel crew. Group 5 was basically a chain gang. The inmates would be walked to a location to perform some hard labor or to clean up along the freeway by the jail property. Sometimes they actually would be marched out to a field where they would break rocks. The only difference from the old type chain gangs you saw in the movies was that the inmates weren’t chained. This was the early 80’s, a different time. It wasn’t too many years later because of the optics and changing times, Group 5 discipline crew was discontinued.
Some of the jobs at the ranch as it was called were filled by Correction officers. A classification of county employee that had been discontinued, but in the early 80’s there were many still working. They wore uniforms that looked like jail deputy uniforms, but the patches said “Correction Officer” instead of “Deputy Sheriff.” New deputies assigned to the different work crews would work with a corrections officer who had worked in these positions for many years. The deputies would work their mandatory jail assignments until they went to patrol. If an inmate in the compound committed a serious crime which might include using or selling drugs, assault with a deadly weapon, or battery on a peace officer, they would be handcuffed and basically arrested as if they were on the street. They would be taken in the back of the police car to the maximum (max) jail located a few hundred yards up from the minimum compound. This was a hard celled jail similar to Men’s Central Jail in downtown but on a smaller scale. The deputy would write the police report and the inmate would be charged with the additional crime. A jail detective would file the charge or charges with the court.
So originally I was pissed off for being transferred from the Central Jail out to the ranch, but it turned out to be a great thing. Going from a lock down dungeon with stink and no windows to this open compound, fresh air and sunshine. If you have to work in the jail, this was ideal. I was working a foot beat similar to a small town. We made drug arrests, assault arrests, all sorts of arrests. We became proficient in the same forms we would be using when we got out to patrol. I actually felt like a real cop working the minimum compound assignment.
Twice a day, there was a count time. Once in the morning and once in the evening when all inmates had returned from the field jobs. All the inmates would line up in rows in front of their barracks while the deputies called in the count to the office over their radios. Many times the count would not match what was currently recorded at the office. The inmates could be standing out in the sun in this formation for an hour. Usually an inmate that wasn’t on the current count would be located. They might have been transported to the max jail, taken downtown, or still at their work assignment. The inmates and deputes would be out in this formation until the count was cleared. A deputy would broadcast from the main office and you would hear over the speakers in the compound, “Count is clear, count is clear.” this would signal to the inmates that they could return to their barracks or otherwise head to Sergeant’s Court or extra duty jobs.
Every once in a while there would be an actual escape. They could get out during the night by cutting through the fence or not return while they were
out working a field assignment. Most of the inmates assigned to the minimum compound were in on lightweight misdemeanor charges and didn’t have much time left to do. So the incentive to escape and risk being charged with escape which would get you another year locked in a hard cell was too high. Like the deputies, inmates realized they were in the best place they could be if you had to be in jail, so even they didn’t want to mess that up. But escapes would happen, and the compound would be locked down and a big search would begin. Hound dogs would respond, a helicopter would fly overhead and many times the escaped inmate would be found in one of the fields or on a road nearby.
We had our little town within a town: the minimum compound and the other two jails, medium which was also an open compound with barracks, and maximum hard celled jail. The Wayside Honor Rancho had a police car that patrolled the entire property. The position was filled by jail personnel that had previous patrol training. There was another vehicle that was filled with jail deputies used to transport prisoners between jail facilities at the ranch and also to other jails in the county.
During visiting the correction officers operated buses bringing the visitors from the parking lot at the main gate up to the jail facility where the visiting center was, a distance of about two miles. Deputies were assigned on foot and patrol cars to monitor people coming on to the jail facility to visit inmates. Even though there were warning signs everywhere, four to five people every weekend would be arrested and taken to jail for bringing drugs and/or weapons on to a jail facility, which was a Felony. They would be booked at the nearby Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Station. People would actually drive on to the jail property to visit an inmate and be arrested for Driving Under the Influence.