More Good Guys Than Bad Guys?
Before March runs out of wind, Culver City should have its fourth police chief in a little more than two years. To hear some tell it, this reputedly pure community has had more police chiefs than criminals in the last two years.
Moderately tall at six-foot-one, Mr. Bixby’s slim build is underlined by a prematurely bald pate. Inside that distinctive head lies a mind that at least will intrigue, if not engage, the search team for a new chief.
At first when he sits down with thefrontpageonline.com, he says only the felicitous words, about what idyllic shepherds the last two police chiefs were, how they gently exploded every morning with gifts that only could have been sent from heaven.
And then, as Mr. Bixby’s degree of comfort heightened, he unlaxed, humanized and seemed to genuinely be enjoying himself.
By many tests, he may be the model that the creator of police officering in America had in mind a couple of centuries ago.
A rigorous guardian of police rules, the rules are as inviolable to Mr. Bixby as the most arcane strictures of religion are to a pious person.
No stranger to readers of this newspaper, from his role in a lawsuit last summer through his temporary service in the understaffed office of the Chief Administrative Officer, to his last-hour promotion from lieutenant to captain just before Mr. Montanio sprinted out the door into the waiting arms of retirement in December.
With the promotion came a price that may have been more important to Mr. Bixby than to others. Off came the uniform. Now he would be coming to work every day in civilian clothes.
A Clothes’d-Door Session
The upside is that he can swim through his major league quality wardrobe and make matchups, possibly every day for the rest of his life — although, as previously noted, Mr. Bixby, the ultimate planner, does not wait until the last week, let alone the last day, to arrange the order of his apparel.
He is in charge of the Operations Bureau, meaning Patrol and Traffic, the heartbeat of the department. It is the largest unit in the Police Dept.
Even though his floodingly illumined ground floor office in the Police Station may feel like home, he has been on a road trip longer than any of his colleagues.
For three years, he drove across Los Angeles every weekday to the lovely City of Commerce where he was a principal officer at L.A. Impact, a county-wide group of law enforcement agencies on the prowl for drug law violators.
Days after he returned last July, Mr. Bixby was dispatched to City Hall where four months in the CAO’s office introduced him to the little-known nuances of the backstage apparatus of the city.
There is little doubt that with regard to the visible framework of Mr. Bixby’s life, the infrastructure for One Who Would Be Chief is assiduously in place.
Nothing is out of place, even a little.
The unanswered question of whether he is ready or fit to lead a department insiders say is crying for leadership is the jackpot puzzler.
Last time there were interviews for police chief, one quality candidate buckled in this round.
In Mr. Bixby’s case, this is one of several X factors.
From appearances, he could not have prepared more sedulously for the present opportunity.
Saga of Policeman Bill
In his Culver City schooldays, he probably was the kid who never let a single hair fall out of its pre-assigned position.
It is metaphorically brilliant that ever since he was six years old, Mr. Bixby wanted to be a police officer.
Policeman Bill was the cop who visited young Scott’s school. “He looked like the hero who came to save the day,” and that concept strongly appealed to the youngest of three brothers.
It did not escape the boy’s notice that Policeman Bill “looked sharp.” Man and boy, imagery is crucial to Mr. Bixby. He asks a visitor if he is familiar with the famous U.S. Marines poster, the one of the jut-jawed, square-shouldered, snappily uniformed officer whose eyes never veer left or right.
“Policeman Bill looked like that, very impressive,” Mr. Bixby said. “He was somebody people could look up to.”
It is equally instructive to know that not one time during the intervening forty years has he entertained even an amoeba-sized doubt that he should have selected a different career.
Almost true.
There was a forgettable moment in the early ‘90s. After his friend Capt. Darryl Wells transferred from the Police Dept. to the Fire Dept., a growing yearning stirred within Mr. Bixby. He was hankering for a new form of adventure. When the next Fire opening bobbed up, he took a curiosity-solving leap.
It was of short duration.
“I couldn’t wait to get back here,” he said, and the explanation was uncomplicated. He went from being in charge of his own activities each day on patrol to being a face in the crowd, a player on a many-player team. Nobody mans a patrol car in the Fire Dept. Everybody participates in teamwork. They travel only in groups, a lifestyle that Mr. Bixby found stultifying.
He loved/loves the fantastic degree of orderliness and imperturbable discipline that the image of a traditional police officer evokes. This is Beethoven’s Ninth and Elvis’s First rolled together, the sweetest tones human ears are capable of absorbing.
In the early scenes of the Space Age, when other boys dreamed of standing on the Moon or more, Mr. Bixby stood stick straight in his room and privately cradled a life less flamboyant.
But he would not trade one astronaut opportunity for something much more exciting back on earth, the blue-sky day when he would qualify to wear the dark, perfectly starched, impressively pressed, flawlessly tailored uniform of a police officer.
He did not want to be George Soros and run the world. He did not want to be John Glenn and look down on the world. He wanted to be a gatekeeper for his hometown, a kind of human mechanic who kept people and nature flowing in their ordained directions.
In the fullness of his mature years, Mr. Bixby surveys the landscape as far as his keen eyes can focus.
Metaphorically, not a hair is out of place.
The roadways show only green lights. Life scarcely could be more delicious in these earliest days of spring.
Just as it says in all of those happy-ending books, neither his lust for life nor his precious idealism ever has lost its lustre.
“I guess,” said Mr. Bixby, “you could say I am living my dream.”
