California police departments made a solid showing in a recent ranking of U.S. law enforcement agencies that have the most Twitter followers.

Not surprisingly, a police department whose city limits include the headquarters of such high-tech icons as Google and LinkedIn is among the most followed agencies on Twitter, according to the survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police Center for Social Media.

“We’ve embraced certain pieces of social media that we’ve felt we can manage effectively,” says Scott Vermeer, police chief of Mountain View as well as its assistant city manager for public safety. “We haven’t tried to do everything.”

Mountain View, the Santa Clara County city with a population of about 75,000, was ranked No. 2 among law enforcement agencies with 50-99 sworn officers, with 3,485 Twitter followers. Only the Naples, Fla. PD had more in that category, with 3,845 followers. Mountain View has 96 sworn officers.

Vermeer says his agency uses Twitter more for pragmatic purposes than for public relations, sending out information quickly to an audience that has specific interests. Updates on critical incidents, traffic jams, crime prevention tips — these and other types of bulletins are Tweeted regularly.

“We don’t use Twitter as a two-way tool to have a ‘conversation’ with our followers, but more to push information out,” says Vermeer, chief of police in Mountain View for 10 years.

In addition to Mountain View, other California police departments to make the Top 5 in the Twitter rankings are Greenfield, Sausalito, Arcadia, San Rafael, Modesto, Newport Beach, Sacramento and Oakland. The categories were based on an agency’s number of sworn officer (for complete results, click here).

In the category of 16 to 25 sworn officers, Greenfield was No. 3 with 1,312 followers, and Sausalito was No. 5 with 1,207.

In the category of 50 to 99 sworn officers, Arcadia followed Mountain View at No. 3, with 3,134 followers, and San Rafael was No. 5 with 2,803.

The Modesto PD has 5,453 followers on Twitter, good enough for the No. 2 position among agencies with 100 to 249 sworn officers, while Newport Beach was No. 5 in that category with 3,374.

Sacramento and Oakland made the top five in the category of 500 to 999 sworn officers, with Sacramento at No. 3 with 5,710 followers, and Oakland at No. 5 with 4,141.

Jay Johnson, chief of police of Newport Beach, says his department has embraced Twitter, Facebook and Nixle, the online notification system for law enforcement and government agencies.

“It’s all about communicating with our community,” Johnson says. “Everybody wants facts and news and information immediately, and if you’re not there to provide the information, people will try to fill it in for you.”

The Newport Beach PD, which has 140 sworn officers, recently Tweeted about a rash of vehicle burglaries, alerted residents about a DUI checkpoint, and offered suggestions on how not to be a victim of a crime.

The department’s use of Twitter, Johnson says, supplements old-school ways of getting information that still are in use, such as sending police explorers out to neighborhoods to hand out safety-related fliers. Still, social media tools like Twitter can’t be ignored, says Johnson, chief of police in Newport Beach for two years.

“It’s really an eye-opener, the influence social media has,” Johnson says.

Johnson says it’s difficult to measure the impact Tweets and other social media tools have had on crime rates, for example, but he has no doubt that such tools are bringing the police department and the community closer together.

Vermeer agrees. He views Facebook as more of a relationship-building and public relations tool than Twitter, which the Mountain View PD has been using since fall 2008.

“Although a lot of agencies are now using social media sites, it’s important to understand that they are different tools with different users,” Vermeer says. “As such, agencies need to use them individually and appropriately and not simply post the same thing to Facebook and Twitter every time. We strive to utilize the various social media sites as individual and distinct tools and then cater our message to the specific audience.”

Vermeer says he’s formed a group that will look into boosting the Mountain View PD’s presence on Facebook and to study, in general, how his officers can use social media to help them do their jobs more effectively.

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The Silicon Valley is known for its high-tech companies, the Champagne region of France is known for its premier bubbly, and the cities of Long Beach and San Jose are known for producing…police chiefs?

Yes — and many are of recent vintage.

There currently are 10 active chiefs who can thank the San Jose PD for helping them earn their stars, while six active police chiefs hail from the Long Beach PD (three from that agency recently retired: Tim Jackman, Santa Monica, December 2011; Anthony Batts, Oakland, October 2011; and Keith Kilmer, San Bernardino, March 2011).

Is there something special in the coffee at these law enforcement agencies?

Cynthia Renaud, a Long Beach PD veteran who became police chief of Folsom in May 2011, and Eric Sills, who spent nearly 28 years with the San Jose PD before becoming top cop of Soledad in February 2010, say there are many reasons their respective agencies have churned out several chiefs.

Both cite their former departments’ high standards for education and advancement, the ability of officers to engage in a variety of police work, and the exposure of officers to diverse communities, among other reasons.

“The Long Beach (PD) embodied the philosophy, ‘The police are the people, and the people are the police,’” said Renaud, 42, who spent 20 years with agency — the last five years as a commander — before taking the top spot at the Folsom PD.

“I was able to develop a skill set and the expertise to handle all crimes, and also to understand how to become part of the community I served, and to work closely with the community,” Renaud said.

In addition to Renaud, current police chiefs with backgrounds at the Long Beach PD are:

* Frank McCoy, Oceanside
* Gary Morrison, Carlsbad
* Jay Johnson, Newport Beach
* Jorge Cisneros, Huntington Park
* Jeffrey Craig, Victoria, Texas

Renaud said the breadth of experience she got in Long Beach helped make the transition to chief of police go smoothly. Among her assignments in Long Beach were patrol, field training officer, vice detective, sergeant in charge of the vice detail, and internal affairs.

“The department has very positive professional peer pressure to be the very best you can be,” Renaud said. “While I am so proud of the Folsom Police Department, I am equally proud of the Long Beach Police Department family that raised me.”

Sills recently assumed police chief duties of neighboring Greenfield in addition to running the Soledad PD, which has 17 sworn officers (Greenfield has 14).

In the much-larger San Jose PD, whose 1,000 or so sworn officers patrol a city of nearly 1 million, Sills rose to the rank of captain in charge of the special operations division before leaving to run the Soledad PD.

“What really struck me about (San Jose PD) is they really establish guidelines for promotional testing and advancement within the department,” said Sills, 54, who has a master’s degree in international management and world studies.

“Some of these written tests were more intense than tests in graduate school.”

An emphasis on education, as well as rigid requirements to move up the ladder, are hallmarks of the San Jose PD, Sills said, which helps explain why the agency has helped develop the following active police chiefs, in addition to Sills (not to mention 17 retired police chiefs from the San Jose PD):

* Scott Seaman, Los Gatos (Current president of Cal Chiefs Board of Directors)
* Tuck Younis, Los Altos
* Diane Urban, Hayward
* Ruben Chavez, Livingston
* Meynard J.R. “Junior” Gomez, Redwood City
* Manuel Martinez, Daly City
* Walt Tibbet, Fairfield
* Pete Decena, San Jose State University
* Ken Tanaka, West Valley-Mission Community School District

“You’re getting guys with a little more education than you typically find at most other police agencies,” Sills said of the San Jose PD.

Sills said officers in the San Jose PD routinely are rotated out of positions after a certain amount of time to give them a broad range of experience in specialized units. This versatility as an officer, he said, is perfect background for those seeking to rise to the rank of police chief.

Renaud said there’s one thing the Long Beach PD didn’t do to prepare her for her job of running the Folsom PD, which has 70 sworn officers — far fewer than the 900 or so sworn officers in Long Beach.

“We have a mounted unit here,” she said with a laugh, “and I had to learn how to ride a horse.”

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The “Largest Police Foot Pursuit in the World” can add another superlative following this year’s running of the famous law enforcement relay race through the Mohave Desert:
“Hottest.”

With temperatures approaching 110 degrees, the Baker to Vegas 120-Mile Challenge Cup Relay on April 21-22 was a scorcher, zapping the strength of many runners who had to seek out medical treatment.

Happily, though, no serious injuries were reported during the much-anticipated event that attracts several hundred runners from law enforcement agencies throughout the state and nation, with a sprinkling of teams from overseas.

Torrance Police Sgt. Robert Watt knows his way around the event as well as anybody.
Watt, 44, ran been running or managing a team of runners from the Torrance PD for the last 18 years, and although Torrance is not one of the original teams when the event began 28 years ago, the agency has been fielding a squad of runners since 1987 — making 2012 its 25th-anniversary year.

“In past years, the event was more casual, but it’s become more competitive – although it’s still a lot of fun,” says Watt, who oversees sex crimes and cases involving juveniles.

Work starts as early as October to form teams of runners and volunteers for the 120-mile race, which is held in March or April. But for Watt and others, all the training and logistics that are involved is well worth it.

“This race is not only a great way of building relationships and camaraderie between departments, it’s also an excellent reminder of the importance of physical fitness in law enforcement,” said Jim Redman, chief of the El Cajon Police Department, which teams up with the La Mesa PDs to field a squad of male and female runners.

“We have a support staff who do a great job of keeping us safe and catching us if we fall,” Redman said. “This year we encountered 100+ degree heat and several rattlesnakes (rattlesnakes have the right of way).

“We’ve been running this race for several years now and one thing has always been a constant: regardless of where we place, we are proud just to have been in the race.”

The Baker to Vegas relay starts 25 miles north of Baker on Highway 127 and ventures to Shoshone, Ca., before heading northeast on Highway 178, then across the state line into Nevada on Highway 372 to Pahrump, Nev., then southeast on Highway 160 to the finish inside the Hilton Hotel Convention Room in Las Vegas.

Start times are staggered based on a team’s expected performance; the slower teams begin running at 9 a.m. The Torrance PD got a 5 p.m. start this year — not late enough to escape the blistering heat.

“The conditions during the first few hours were brutal,” said Watt, who as captain of the squad did not run but was responsible for just about everything else. “I don’t know how the runners did it. The guys were really feeling the effects of the heat.”

There were only 19 teams when the race debuted in 1985; now, the event is limited to 270 teams that are divided into numerous categories. Each team has 20 runners who complete one leg that ranges in distance from four miles to nearly 11.

For the third year in a row, the Torrance PD team finished first in its division of between 150 and 300 sworn officers, with a time of 15 hours, 14 minutes and 26 seconds. That works out to an average pace of 7:37 over 120 miles. Torrance PD has about 225 sworn officers. Like Redman, Watt — an ice hockey player all his life who runs 9-minute miles — says the Baker to Vegas relay is much more than an athletic competition.

“It’s two-fold,” he says of the event’s continued popularity. “It not only promotes physical fitness, but it promotes teamwork and camaraderie. We’re all working together to accomplish something. The team-building is amazing.”

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Susan Manheimer recalls looking at the portraits on the wall of the numerous police chiefs who preceded her as top cop of the San Mateo Police Department when she was named to the post in May 2000.

Her smiling picture, in bright color, stood out from the black-and-white portraits of sober-faced male ex-police chiefs.

Someone suggested that a nameplate below her picture be put up to read, “The First Female Police Chief in the History of San Mateo.”

Manheimer thought about it for a second.

“Um,” she said. “I don’t think that’s really necessary. It’s pretty obvious!”

Throughout her entire law enforcement career, Manheimer has been very obvious —- as in a standout, from her early days pounding the pavement in some of the seediest sections of San Francisco to blazing a trail for other female officers through her leadership roles at Cal Chiefs.

We recently caught up with Manheimer by phone as she sipped a Diet Coke during a break at, appropriately, a women’s leadership summit at which she was a featured speaker. Manheimer’s 18-month term as president of the California Police Chiefs Association ended last in March of 2011 but she continues to be a well-respected voice in law enforcement throughout the state.

In the 12 years since she became top cop of San Mateo, the number of female police chiefs in the state has grown to 21, up from only four in 2000. Those numbers, as a percentage of total chiefs (there are 337 in California), are above national averages, but there’s still plenty of room for more females to rise to the top of the state’s police agencies, says Manheimer.

For now, Manheimer — who turns 56 today — is thrilled with the progress women have made in California law enforcement.

“I advise all females to embrace a ‘can do’ attitude, as in ‘Can you back up your partner?’ or ‘Can you protect the community?’” Manheimer says. “They have to have an ‘I’ll show you, I can do it!’ attitude. They have to be great if they want to succeed.”

Fewer than 2 percent of San Mateo PD officers were female when Manheimer was recruited as chief after a 16-year career with the San Francisco PD that included walking a foot beat in the tough Mission District as a police decoy (she was robbed 25 times) and taking down drug lords in sting operations.

Now, 14 percent of San Mateo’s 120 sworn officers who patrol the city of 100,000 are female, and the department is much more ethnically diverse, says Manheimer, whose impetus to get into law enforcement came when she was 27 and was robbed in the company of her daughter, then 2 years old, in the Panhandle area near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Now, 28 years later, she’s still passionate about policing and the role cops play in protecting and serving their communities.
Manheimer was recruited to leadership roles in the CPCA by Fremont Police Chief Craig Steckler, who she calls a key mentor. She joined the board of Cal Chiefs in 2002 and served as third vice president in 2007 before being named president in March 2010.

Cal Chiefs has played a vital role in developing female officers and law enforcement leaders mainly through its annual Women Leaders in Law Enforcement Training Symposium, says Manheimer.

“The symposium has jump-started women who are looking for potential leadership positions,” Manheimer says. “Women tend to put their heads down and do their jobs and are not as focused as much on their career track. We help push women to step up to the next level.”

Females bring different skill sets to the job of policing, Manheimer says, including a tendency to be mediators. She recalls responding to domestic violence calls and wild family fights and using a calming tone that helped defuse potentially volatile situations.

“You absolutely have to be able to handle yourself and take a suspect down when required, but female police officers tend to bring to the job our natural ability to disarm, engage and relate to a diverse group of people,” Manheimer says.

Changes in policing, such as an emphasis on proactively forging ties with the community, make it vital for more women to get into law enforcement and develop into leaders, according to Manheimer.

“There are more shades of gray to police work now, such as dealing with non-criminals including the mentally ill and the homeless and juveniles, where a more creative and collaborative social-worker-type approach as a cop is needed,” she says.

Manheimer, who grew up in the Bronx, is a governor’s appointee to the State Advisory Group for Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Crime Prevention and serves on the San Mateo County Community Corrections Panel, and the USF Law Enforcement Leadership Board.

She has a son, Jesse, a first lieutenant in the Marines who currently is stationed in Afghanistan, and a daughter, Sarah, 31, a former prosecutor who now defends law enforcement personnel. Her husband, Michael, is an accountant.

“An accountant and a cop,” Manheimer says with a laugh. “We have all the bases covered in our family.

“Seriously, though, the support of my family, my city and my department has been critical to my success — no great things are ever accomplished without the help and support of others.”

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Last summer, Gary Hampton was thinking about retiring after a 28-year career in law enforcement.

Suddenly, his phone rang.

At the time, Hampton was chief of police of Turlock, a small-town community of about 70,000. Hampton had been top cop there since 2006.

Now, he was being asked if he would be interested in returning to the agency where he spent a decade honing his law enforcement skills.

The Tracy Police Department wanted Hampton back – this time, to be its police chief.

In August 2011, Hampton accepted the job.

Now 50, Hampton is in the process of relocating to Tracy — a city of about 81,000 in San Joaquin County — after a decision he says wasn’t too difficult to make.

After all, he says, it’s always good for the ego to be recruited for such a job. More important, though, Hampton sees his homecoming as an opportunity to give back to a community that gave so much to him when he was developing his skills as a police officer.

“I’m not the same when I left Tracy, and it’s not the same organization when I left, but just like me, the core character of the department hasn’t changed a bit,” Hampton says.

He isn’t alone in returning to manage a police department where he once worked as a lower-ranking officer. In fact, Inglewood Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks soon will join him as a member of the unofficial “Homecoming Club” for police chiefs.

Seabrooks, chief of the Inglewood PD since 2007, will return in May as chief of the Santa Monica PD, where she spent 25 years as an officer, rising to the rank of captain. In doing so, Seabrooks will become the first woman to hold the position of chief of police of the Santa Monica PD, a department with nearly 450 employees and a budget of more than $70 million.

Seabrooks, a 30-year law enforcement veteran, served as interim chief in Santa Monica in 2006 during a brief transition period.

Hampton views his return to Tracy as a challenge made a little easier by some familiar faces. About two-thirds of the command staff and 40 percent of the entire department still are on board since when he left the Tracy PD in 2003, he figures.

Hampton, who grew up in Antioch, began his career in law enforcement as a reserve officer with the Antioch PD when he was 21.

After a year, he was hired on by the Pittsburg PD, where he spent a decade.

Hampton then joined the Tracy PD, where he rose to the rank of captain over a decade-long career with the agency that ended in 2003. Hampton feels he really developed as a law enforcement professional in Tracy, where he also forged deep ties to the community. He and his wife raised two daughters through elementary and junior high schools there.

Hampton left Tracy in 2003 to become police chief of Oakdale, a smaller town of around 20,000 with 21 sworn officers. He left Oakdale in 2006 to become police chief of Turlock in Stanislaus Country until deciding last year to return to the top post in Tracy.

“I felt I had done all I could as police chief of Turlock, accomplishing the goals I set out to achieve and was considering working in the private sector in the field of risk management when I was contacted about the chief position in Tracy,” Hampton says. “I knew the chief at the time was leaving, and saw (the job) mostly as an opportunity to give back to the community.’

Hampton says he’s remained close to a core of friends and neighbors in Tracy. Also making his homecoming smooth was the fact the he and the city manager share a vision for the police department and the community.

“When you get started running a new agency, there are long hours and lots of weekends spent working, but the relationships I have in the police department and city have really helped,” Hampton says.

The Tracy PD had 77 sworn officers when Hampton left in 2003, and grew to 94 before budget tightening reduced the ranks of sworn officers to its current 85. The city also has become more diverse, Hampton says.

Still, though, the Tracy PD – and Hampton — at heart are the same.

“I plan to finish my career in Tracy,” the returning police chief says. “I figure I have five to seven years left.”

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A woman sitting on a curb rambles about men in white suits.

An agitated person in a park yells at a passerby and tells him to leave.

“Why are you in my park?” she demands.

These scenes are from an award-winning instructional video for police agencies about how to manage field encounters with persons with mental illness.

The 15-minute training video was jointly produced by the Orange and Santa Ana Police departments and the Mental Health Association of Orange County.

In February, the police agencies were honored with a “Media Champion Award” for their roles in the video.

For Robert H. Gustafson, who is closing in on his eighth year as police chief of Orange, the award was doubly sweet: it followed, by a few months, a Transformative Leadership Award he won for a series of training sessions he arranged for his officers on how to interact with people with mental illness.

“The Orange PD has a very long history in being at the forefront of mental health training for its officers,” Gustafson said. In the 1970s, the agency had a crisis intervention specialist position that lasted until 2007, when budget cuts forced the department to get creative in maintaining its leadership role in dealing with the mentally ill.

That’s when Gustafson decided to institute a series of training sessions with an outside behavioral specialist.

When officers confront a person with autism, schizophrenia or another mental illness, special techniques are needed to bring the confrontation to a peaceful conclusion, according to the training video, “Close Encounters: Managing Field Encounters with Persons with Mental Illness.”

An officer should turn his or her traditional training on its head and dial down an authoritative air and not shout commands at mentally ill individuals, and instead listen carefully and try to have a conversation with the subject, the video suggests.

The video describes the TACT method when encountering a person with mental illness — for Time, Atmosphere, Communication and Tone.

According to the video, an officer should take his or his time and give the person time to vent, among other things. An officer also should maintain space and move slowly to maintain a calm and controlled atmosphere, communicate calmly and slowly and try to get the subject to focus on the officer’s voice, and maintain a tone that is non-confrontational, respectful, patient, attentive and reassuring.

The video also reminds officers that they may feel a loss of control over a situation, that a mentally ill person may not recognize them as a figure of authority, and that they should ask the subject if they are hearing voices — and, if they are, what the voices are saying.

The “Close Encounters” video is for distribution to police agencies statewide, says Gustafson. The idea for the video came up six or seven years ago, he said.

Last fall, Gustafson was honored for bringing in behavioral specialists from a local hospital to speak to Orange PD’s 167 sworn officers about effective strategies in dealing with the mentally ill. Orange Police Cpt. Dan Cahill arranged to have a reserve police officer, Darren Smith, to bring in his autistic son to describe to officers what it’s like living with autism — and how best to confront someone with autism on the streets.

Special training in dealing with the mentally ill results in better communicating between officers and subjects, and it also reduces tension during encounters, according to Gustafson.

“I’m very proud to have received both awards,” he said. “I think police officers like to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves, or those who are in some cases bullied by others. It’s part of our job and our calling.”

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Chowchilla Police Chief Jay Varney picked up his office phone.

“There’s always something to do when I’m at my desk,” the 29-year law enforcement veteran said.

Recently, Varney got to do something out of the ordinary for most police chiefs: respond to a crime in progress.

He happened to be in the right place at the right time when, at around 2:30 p.m. on March 21, he spotted a Cessna 172 flying erratically on its final approach to Chowchilla Municipal Airport, which is located only about 1/3 of a mile from the Chowchilla Police Station.

Varney had just finished a late lunch that day and was pulling into the PD parking lot when he and a public works employee on the scene spotted the plane. It appeared to be flying way too low as it approached the runway.

Varney, chief of police of this rural town of about 17,000 in Madera County for eight years, hopped back into his car and headed to the airport.

He was concerned about the safety of the pilot.

“The plane was pretty wobbly and the plane had been gliding and then it suddenly powered up,” Varney, 51, said. “Up until this point, it had been a business-as-usual day. I drove to the airport to determine the status of the plane. I had concerns about the way it was being flown.”

On the way, Varney called for backup. When he arrived at the north end of the runway, he saw a man standing by the plane, which was parked outside of a hangar. The man was spraying white paint over the plane’s identification numbers.

“That was a clue something was up,” Varney recalled.
The police chief approached the man, who later would be identified as Lonnie Blackburn, 46, a licensed pilot.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Varney asked him.

“I landed for fuel.”

“So, you also just decided to paint over the numbers on your plane?”

Varney kept asking questions. Blackburn kept being evasive.

Soon, Chowchilla PD Det. Charles Scott, Officer Tyler Hormel and Sgt. Jeff Palmer arrived and took over the investigation so Varney wouldn’t be the officer of record for the incident.

After all, he is the police chief.

It turned out that Blackburn had allegedly stolen the private plane in Paradise and flew it to Hollister before landing in Chowchilla. Varney’s officers found a cash register with $50 inside the plane — believed to have been stolen from a business in Hollister.

Cops also found traces of marijuana, although Blackburn was not suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

After about 30 minutes of questioning, Blackburn was arrested at the airport on suspicion of grand theft and of taking a vehicle without permission, and was brought back to the Chowchilla PD. Blackburn then was booked into Madera County Jail and was held in lieu of $35,000 bail.

“If we hadn’t have seen the airplane, and if no one had called in reporting a suspicious plane, he (Blackburn) probably would have flown off and gotten away,” Varney says.

Being the police chief of a small department (14 sworn officers), it’s not uncommon for Varney to be more hands-on than most police chiefs when it comes to day-to-day crime-fighting. But being instrumental in busting a suspected plane thief doesn’t happen every day, Varney says.

“It was pretty crazy,” he says. “When all of this is done and I’m sitting on a beach enjoying a soda, this is one of those things that I’m going to look back on and laugh about.”

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When Joseph Kreins arrived at the Sausalito Police Department every day during his tenure as police chief from July 2001 to December 2004, he’d glance at the wall and say two words:

“Hello, Dad.”

The smiling face of his father, Edward, is among the former police chiefs whose portraits hang in the station’s lobby.

The Kreins made history as the state’s first father-and-son team of police chiefs of the same city.

Recently, a second father-son duo achieved that same rare distinction when Andrew Bidou became police chief of Benicia, another waterfront city in the Bay Area, in January 2011. Bidou’s father, Pierre, served as police chief of Benicia for 16 years before leaving the department in 1992 to go into city politics and to pursue other ventures.

The four men say being police chiefs of the same cities is cool and a source of pride. They also say that because law enforcement has changed so much over the last few decades, their jobs have little in common beyond the title.

“This is not my father’s world,” says Joe Kreins, 55, police chief of Novato, in northern Marin County, since 2004. “It’s a different world.”

And, perhaps even more surprisingly, both sons say their fathers didn’t push them into policing — and that they never plotted to run the same law enforcement agencies their fathers did.

It just kind of happened, they say.

“If you would have told me a few years ago that I’d be police chief of Benicia, I would have laughed,” says Andrew Bidou, 43. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”

Pierre Bidou, 74, joined the Benicia PD as a patrol officer in 1964 and worked his way up to chief of police in 1976. At that time, Andrew, the youngest of six children, was just 7 years old.

While his father was establishing a stellar career that included investigating two deaths that eventually were identified as the first of seven confirmed victims of the Zodiac Killer, who struck in 1968 and 1969, Andrew was enjoying sports and going to school.

He decided, right after high school, to join the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.

In 1989, two years into his Marine Corps service, Bidou became an officer with the Newark Police Department — where he worked his way up to captain. In 2000, he and his wife moved back to his hometown of Benicia to focus on raising a family. From there, Bidou commuted about 60 miles each way to his job in Newark.

When the position of deputy police chief of Benicia became available in 2008, Bidou jumped at the opportunity — mostly thinking of his wife and two children, and on making life a lot easier for all of them.
He wasn’t, he says, focused on following in his father’s footsteps. But he did just that when he was appointed Benicia’s chief of police on Jan. 25, 2011.

“What Andrew did, he did on his own,” says Pierre Bidou, who lives in Benicia and meets his son every week for dinner. “He’s a dedicated professional, a caring young man, and he’s very smart. I’m very proud of him, and am very proud of what he’s done.”

Andrew Bidou not only wears the same hat his father last wore more than two decades ago; but he’s also the boss of his older brother, Christopher, 48, a sergeant with the Benicia PD. Another brother, Matthew, 53, is a retired correctional officer with the Solano County Sheriff’s Department.

Andrew says his job is very different from when his father was police chief. There’s much more community outreach, more problem solving, and, at a time when social media is all the rage, there’s a more proactive and visible aspect to the job – for example, ongoing “Coffee With the Chief” meetings with residents of Benicia, whose population has grown to about 30,000 from about 5,400 in 1963, a year after his father joined the Benicia PD.

“The community expects a lot more from its police department than just putting the bad guys away,” says Andrew Bidou, he oversees 36 sworn officers compared to about 30 his father used to administer.

A father’s pride

Edward S. Kreins, 77, began his law enforcement career with the Hayward PD in June 1956 and took his first position as chief of police with Sausalito in 1966, serving as the department’s top cop for nearly three years. He went on to positions as police chief of Pleasant Hill and Beverly Hills, where he later served as city manager. Ed Kreins, who now lives in Nipomo, retired in 1990 but has remained active in law enforcement-consulting roles for cities and school districts.

Joe Kreins says he planned to go into marketing — not law enforcement. But when he was 23, and working at a bowling alley, he paid a visit to the Sausalito PD to say hello to friends he met through his father — and was encouraged to fill out an application.

His fiancée filled the application out for him, launching a 32-year career in law enforcement that included 16 years with the Concord PD before he became police chief of Sausalito in 2001. It was a homecoming for Kreins, who was a police officer in Sausalito from 1980 to 1985 before joining the Concord PD.

Both Joe Kreins and his father served roughly three-year terms as top cops of the same law enforcement agency.

Ed Kreins says he encouraged his three sons to pursue whatever careers they wanted.

Oldest son Paul, 59, is a professional bowler and bowling consultant after a stint in professional baseball, and youngest son Ed, 54, also went into law enforcement, recently retiring as a captain at the Beverly Hills PD. As a law enforcement consultant, Ed Kreins says he occasionally taps the expertise of Joe and Ed — and that he was proud when Joe became police chief of Sausalito.

“I thought it was fantastic,” he says. “I was very proud of him, and told him not to criticize my old policies too much.”

Ed Kreins recognizes how different his son’s job is as police chief compared to when he was in charge. “Back then,” he says, “we pretty much had a ticket book and badge and went to work, learning by the seat of our pants.”

Now, police officers are more educated and undergo extensive screening and training, and are technologically savvy as well as a lot more community oriented, Ed Kreins says. He believes the job of police chief is more demanding today than it was when he managed a department. Budget tightening has only added to the challenge of managing personnel and other duties, he says.

Still, in many ways, being police chief of Sausalito — a low-crime city patrolled by 25 sworn officers — isn’t too tough, Joe Kreins says.
“It’s kind of like being the chief of Disneyland,” he says with a laugh.
But when problems rise beyond the goofy and mickey-mouse levels, Joe Kreins sometimes will consult his father.

Says the second-generation police chief: “He’s always been a great mentor and someone there to listen to and to bounce ideas off of.”

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By Leslie McGill

Brooks Douglas, former Senator from Oklahoma and a military veteran, had an inspirational message of forgiveness during Wednesday’s breakfast session at the California Police Chiefs Association’s Training Symposium. Brooks and his sister were only teenagers when  two men attacked Brooks’ family, raping his sister and shooting all of his family members, leaving them for dead. Brooks and his sister survived, and his journey of trying to seek judicial justice, champion the rights of victims and finally of forgiveness were very moving.

US DOJ COPS Director Barney Melekian told attendees at lunch that everyone talks about having to “do more with less” when in fact that is not the case. When law enforcement agencies have had to  cut up to 15% of the budget over 3 years there is a loss of capacity of what the agency can do. Between 10,000-12,000 police officers nationally have been laid off, he said. Departments don’t do “more” with less. You can’t sustain your current business model with a 14 percent reduction in budget. What Melekian sees happening in policing over the next three years are: Greater use of technology; greater use of civilian employees; alternative delivery of non-essential services and regionalization and consolidation of agencies. As a result, the need for community policing is even greater.

Special Olympics Athlete Stephanie Hammond shared her story of how participating in Special Olympics has changed her life and given her confidence. She thanked Cal Chiefs for their support of the program through the Torch Run. She assisted in presenting Scotts Valley Police Chief John Weiss with the Northern California Special Olympics Award for he and his department’s outstanding efforts in supporting Special Olympics and raising funds to make it possible.
 
Outgoing President Dave Maggard handed over the gavel to incoming President Scott Seaman last night at the Installation Banquet. Dave highlighted some of the accomplishments and growth the association has had over the past year, which included our involvement in the roll out of realignment and our continuing fight for first line funding, developing our strategic plan, creating a news blog and social media strategy as well as revised website and adding additional staff.
 

Maggard presented the Joe Molloy Award, the association’s most prestigious, to Chief Ken James of Emeryville, not only for his work in helping get the Open Carry bill passed, but for also for his tireless efforts on all of the firearms legislation the association has dealt with as chair of the CPCA Firearms Committee for many years. Assembly member Anthony Portantino received the association’s Legislator of the Year award for his sponsorship of the bill and his leadership in getting the bill through the legislature and onto the Governor’s desk.
 
Scott Seaman laid out his plans for next year, which included working with newly installed 1st Vice President Kim Raney on continuing to implement the strategic plan, continuing the fight for front line law enforcement to deal with realignment and continuing to engage with our partners and elected officials. President Seaman encouraged all members to get engaged and involved in Cal Chiefs to help us make this association even stronger. Their shared actions will strengthen our advocacy. Members can help by participating on a committee, by taking an element of the strategic plan and helping give it shape, by being a mentor or be mentored, by supporting each other, sharing our best practices, and benefitting from the energy and commitment of our retired colleagues.

To read more about Seaman, check out this article at Patch.com.

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By Leslie McGill

New chiefs attending the Cal Chiefs’ Training Symposium were able to attend a training session Tuesday geared specifically to their needs on “What New Chiefs Need to Know.”

This panel presentation was designed to guide newer chiefs though situations and issues they may encounter their first year and how best to handle them. This course was just one of four offered Tuesday.

In addition to great training opportunities offered in the morning, the afternoon was devoted to a trade show where chiefs got to see the latest in police product technology, products and training.

Police Chiefs were treated to a demonstration of the FLIR Mobile Surveillance Tower during the trade show. The Skywatch Tower by FLIR is in 120 cities nationwide including many in California. These towers rise to a two-story height, and provide a great high-level surveillance platform. Many attendees took the opportunity to ride the cab of the tower during the demonstration.

Another new product on display by US Armor was a lightweight ballistic vest holder designed to go over a duty shirt. Body armor is inserted into the vest, which is then worn over the officer’s shirt, reducing heat. These are just a sample of the more than 130 different products and services that were on display at the show. Cal Chiefs is proud to offer to its members the opportunity to get up close and personal with the tools that will help improve their safety and job performance.

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