First in a series
Re “Bringing Order Was Pedersen’s Charge and His Legacy”
[img]2543|right|Scott Bixby||no_popup[/img]Before the print on this story is much older, by the middle of this afternoon, Scott Bixby, a lifer in the Culver City Police Dept., officially is expected to become interim police chief.
Interim for a few weeks or months, until the City Council votes on a new chief to succeed departing Don Pedersen, and that new person is favored also to be named Scott Bixby.
Hometown boy.
Lifetime desire to wear a police officer’s uniform.
Never swerved in any other direction.
Nearly 40 years after his first involvement with the department as a teenager, Mr. Bixby told the newspaper he is as deeply in love with police work and the department as when he was a kid only dreaming of this day.
Mr. Bixby’s childhood dream was born the morning a uniformed member of the Culver City P.D. came by young Scott’s school. The cop’s task was to demonstrate, as they did to children in those long-ago days, that policemen (now a forbidden term) are your friends.
“When I saw the officer,” Mr. Bixby said, “he looked bigger than life. He looked like a hero and a protector. I thought to myself, ‘Wow, I want to be just like that when I grow up.’”
He did, and he is.
At 3 o’clock, the frequently united City Council will meet in closed session to make two decisions.
First call is to affirm Chief Pedersen’s obvious, logical choice as his successor, both temporarily and hopefully permanently.
Second call is to determine the presumably uncomplicated – if not abbreviated – process by which the next chief will be selected,
Tall, broad-shouldered, sociable, Asst. Chief Bixby knows and speaks to all.
Doubtless his mind and his personality are just what the cop doctor ordered – and what the City Council is seeking in an era of aggressive community involvement in policing.
(To be continued)
