Altadena Sheriff's Captain Talks Crime, Community, and More

On July 6, I sat down with Sheriff's Department Capt. Steve McLean, along with his second in command, Lt. Roosevelt Johnson, to speak about their first year over the Altadena Sheriff’s Department. Some of their answers were both refreshing and reassuring.

Regular readers of this column might recall my with the captain in November. I felt it was time to check in once again.

Although I had a set of questions that I wanted to ask of them, we loosened it up to just have a candid conversation among men. Here is part of our conversation.

GM: It has been a little over a year now as the local Sheriff’s over Altadena. What do you both think about our town?

Captain: It has been 14 months now, and I will tell you what I think displays the true character of Altadena. Just a week ago, a little girl died in a car accident, and the outpouring from the entire community was astonishing.

I have been in law enforcement for over 31 years. I have never seen a community as a whole step up to the plate as they did to support this lady. There were elected officials, teachers, mothers, parents, families, kids, and all across the board people stopped by in droves in order to contribute to the welfare of this mother. I have never seen anything like this in my life, and to me that represents true character of this community … this is Altadena.

From my personal prospective, I have felt very welcomed by this community, and I feel very much a part of this community. It’s all good.

Lt. RJ: I love this community. It’s a beautiful place, and the people up here are beautiful and genuine. They truly care about this community and are very passionate about the things that go on here. You see that when they mobilize about things that go on here.

We also see this in the neighborhood watch groups and other meetings that we attend. When they are passionate about something they will come out.

Captain: Unfortunately it takes something like the death of this little girl to pull the community together as we have seen several times now.

Lt. RJ: In the time that we have been here, even though there have been several personal attacks about what the Captain has done in this community, the overwhelming majority of the people wholeheartedly support everything that the Captain has done in the community.

When he started here 14 mounts ago Altadena was leading the county in burglaries and thefts, and the things he has implemented has really turned around the crime rate here. He has in turn galvanized the community to the point that they are helping us as a law-enforcement agency to solve these crimes. As a result of this the Captain can now say that the crime rate is amongst the lowest in the county. To go from the highest in the county to the lowest is a significant improvement.

GM: There was an incident where a member of the community stood up at a Town Council meeting and made several harsh criticisms about you and the department where you appeared to have been very agitated about what the young man stated. Can you speak about this?

Captain: Well, I’m not going to allow someone to make those sorts of allegations in an open forum without responding. That’s how simple it is. However, in hindsight, I may have responded differently. The public does have a right to voice their opinions.

GM: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being best, how would you rate your performance?

Captain: Just recently there was a survey passed out to a cross-section of the community evaluating the performance of the Sheriff’s department, and over 50 percent of the people turned in the survey, which was a significant number of people. 84 percent of them stated that they were happy or very satisfied with the job we’re doing.

At the August Town Council Meeting, there will be a PowerPoint presentation about how the community feels about us and it (the presentation) will speak for itself.

Lt. RJ: Since I am a friend and a colleague of the Captain, I can say that he is not the type that will toot his horn, but I can say that it is extremely rare that a Captain will show up to nearly every event that he is invited to attend by the community. I don’t recall even one time that he has turned down an opportunity to meet with the people

GM: How do you change the past perception about law enforcement in this area, because certainly the public image has not always been all that good, for a reason?

Captain: It is not as important to say all the things that we have accomplished but to let them [the people] see the change. It is more important to let them see the change rather than hear the change. They cannot discard the fact that you don’t see the gang members hanging on the corners as much anymore.

You can’t discard the fact that our burglaries have gone down as they have. I’m not the type that goes around shouting about how I do my job, that is the community’s job.

Often times when you turn up the heat on crime, and we are effectively doing our jobs, you will get more complaints and criticisms from the community, but compared to last year the complaints are down while at the same time arrests are up and overall crime is down.

That means that there is balance. What I tell my deputies to realize is that you can be proactive but at the same time you can do it with respect and dignity. I think we are getting a lot better at doing this.

My philosophy is this: I don’t care if you are dealing with a gang member or a pastor, but do it with respect. We are not going to lower ourselves down to the lower mentality, but we are going to stick with our core values.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t get it wrong at times, but I do think we have gotten a lot better at it. That was my complaint with the guy that spoke against the department at the council meeting: I was thinking that he really needs to do his homework, because his allegations did not represent the department.

GM:  What has been your biggest challenge overall, either personally or crime-wise?

Captain: The two biggest challenges we have are the thefts, number one, and the  strategies of the gang members has changed, number two. I’m not sure if the overall economy has something to do with it but many thefts are occurring, not only in Altadena, but also all across the region. Also across the nation thefts are increasing.

It is easier for people to see an opportunity to swipe something off a car seat or go through an open door and take expensive flat screens, computers, laptops, cell phones, iPads and other gadgets and sell them.

As far as the gang members they are no longer concentrating on drugs and guns and that sort of stuff, but are into more lucrative and profitable selling of stolen goods. These are our two biggest challenges. We have to modify our strategies based upon what the criminals are doing.

Although we did have a rash of shootings over the past year, we did take down a certain gang, so that activity is very much down while thefts are up.

GM:  And finally, Captain, National Night Out is Tuesday, Aug. 2, this year. What are your plans for National Night Out this year and how can we do some sort of advance promotion for this event for you this year?

Captain: First of all the purpose for this event is for Law Enforcement to stand up against crime in our communities. That has been its purpose since its inception.

Secondly, I was a bit disappointed at the turnout last year. It was a very small turnout, and that was a bit concerning. However, this year the event will be held at Farnsworth Park, which is a more centralized location. We are hoping to get more of the community out this year and to participate in the event.

We will have quite a display of our resources and what we provide to the community along with things for the family to be entertained while they are there witnessing the display. We will have a flyer that promotes the event and spells out what it displays.

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As we concluded our conversation we spoke about several other things. He expressed what he called the long-term versus the short-term solutions that fit into his law enforcement philosophy.

“In the short term we can arrest the criminals, but in the long-term we need to get to the kids early when they are facing problem and put them on the right path. This requires better parenting and the entire system working together. You can’t wait until kids are in Junior High and High School to start helping them but you have to start during the early years where you can put them on the right path.” 

There was more, but such things were much deeper than we had the time to fully discuss.