What is a good cop to do?

In the present masked-face environment, his relatively tiny voice is drowned out by angry people who may find it elusively challenging to spell c-o-p.

Scott Bixby, the chief of the Culver City Police Dept., for the last two years, wrings his hands this morning in frustration.

At 55 years old, having logged 37 years at the station on Duquesne, he can remember bygone days – how to say this diplomatically? — when the department was not quite regarded as highly as it is today.

The Boy Scouts and the Police Dept. almost are interchangeable, say supporters of Mr. Bixby’s accent on transparency and community involvement.

Regular people are invited inside the Police Station almost as if it were a retail outlet, another Starbucks. Not quite, but it is on the way.

After the recent cop-involved killings, it was either natural or predictable that heavily partisan community curmudgeons would call for closeup citizen inspections of Mr. Bixby’s department.

Naturally, the chief and all around him resist the call.

“The minority of what we do is what people thing we mostly do,” said the chief. “After watching the national news, people will go out there and abuse our authority because of what they have seen on television. Those instances (of cops apparently gone wrong) are rare.

“All of the officers I have been involved with in my 37 years,” said Mr. Bixby, “are out there trying to do the right thing. They got into this profession for the right reasons.”

(To be continued)