Fifth in a series

Re “Cops Becoming Educated by Degrees”

How the Culver City Police Dept., and police departments elsewhere, have changed since the early 1980s when soon-to-retire Officer Jim Raetz was a rookie.

The reason: “You have to look at how society has changed,” Mr. Raetz said, “and those changes were bound to spill onto us.”

The hard-boiled Army sergeant of the storied Chief Ted Cooke era has given way to the gentlemanly ways of much softer spoken Scott Bixby, who became chief a year and a half ago.

Mr. Raetz joined the force when Mr. Cooke was in his prime.

What was the atmosphere like?

With a slight grin inching up his still youthful face, Mr. Raetz said that “it was a different place, obviously.”

The grin was widening fast. He was about to relate a story about Mr. Cooke’s unbending style of governing.

It was said that not only was nonsense not tolerated by the chief, sometimes common sense wasn’t either.

“We didn’t take complaints from the citizens probably as they should have been received,” said Mr. Raetz, who will step to the sidelines in December. “The policy at the time, which now is quite interesting, was that if a person was arrested or given a citation, you could not make a complaint until your case had been adjudicated.”

A cooling-down period.

“You could come back in six or eight weeks,” Mr. Raetz said, “when you have won or lost the case and complain about what the officer said or did.

“That,” he added, “doesn’t occur anymore.”

(To be continued)