Robert Vernon, assistant chief of police of the Los Angeles Police Department, orders 6,000 police officers onto L.A. streets every day. He tells officers to mobilize battering rams during drug busts, to guard visiting dignitaries, including the Pope and the President, and “to protect and to serve” (the LAPD motto) the public. He relishes being on the scene, making crucial command decisions.
Such decisions can be risky, and although Vernon stands six feet, three inches tall and weighs 210 pounds, he realizes he is not in control of touchy situations. Speaking about his police work in general, he says, “Honesty and integrity are the only things I have going for me. If I can maintain my integrity, I can get by.” Vernon remembers one crisp winter afternoon when, in a football stadium, of all places, his integrity was put to a difficult test.
Chief Vernon should have known some of the football fans would be in a mood to party—and to fight—when the game ended. Vernon was among 88,000 fans who had cheered the Los Angeles Raiders to a 30–14 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in an American Football Conference title game. The Raiders were going to the Super Bowl! The contest had been intensely physical, with three scuffles in the first three minutes and a Raiders’ penalty for roughing the kicker. A couple of days earlier one Raider linebacker predicted the team would win using their three P’s strategy: “pointing, pushing, and punching.” He had been an accurate prophet.
As the game ended, thousands of delirious fans rushed the L.A. Coliseum field to tear down the goal posts. A private security force composed of burly ex-football players could not stop them. But they tried, pushing and throwing punches. Their actions only incited the crowd.
“That got the fans really mad,” Vernon recalls. “They not only got the goal posts, but they decided they were going to teach these guys a lesson. So they began putting the boots to the private security guys. We had to call out our troops to rescue them.”
Chief Vernon was off duty that day, enjoying the game with his 24-year-old son, Bob, Jr. He saw the fans pouring onto the field, but figured the ex-football guards would let the fans have the goal posts. Father and son walked to the car, unaware of the melee. Twenty minutes later the distress call crackled over Vernon’s radio outside the stadium: “Officer needs help.”
“Did you hear that, Dad? Let’s go help him.”
They ran back to the Coliseum, where the celebration had turned into a war. At the foot of the stands, Chief Vernon saw two officers pressed against a chain-link fence. More than 100 angry fans surrounded the two policemen.
The crowd had thrown beer on the officers and challenged the two to arrest them. The police had finally arrested two men, and the enraged crowd decided to rescue their handcuffed friends.
“The officers were trying to resist,” Vernon says. “Now there was a free-for-all, and those officers could have been killed. A mob can do weird things—things that no individual would ever think of doing.”
For a moment, Vernon thought strongly about leaving the scene. Thoughts of compromise gripped him: No one knows you’re a cop. No one even knows you’re here on the field. You are off duty. You’ve got a son with you. He’s not armed.
“All kinds of thoughts went through my mind,” Vernon says. “Rationalizing thoughts of keeping quiet. I’m ashamed to admit that [I had those thoughts] … but I was frightened.”
Instead of turning, though, Vernon stepped between the crowd and the besieged officers, as did his son. Vernon began talking as fast as he could. “Now you guys, you don’t want to go to jail. You don’t want a record, do you?” The assistant police chief began pointing at individuals, trying to break the mob psychology. “Sir, I know you don’t have a criminal record, and neither do you.”
“Are you a cop?” someone asked. “Yes sir, I am, and I’ve got a gun right here, too.” The mob mood cooled temporarily, but later rekindled. One fan shouted from the pack: “Come on, let’s get them! They can’t possibly take us all on.”
“For a few minutes we went round and round,” Vernon says. “I could see the temperature rise and fall. Fortunately, God was with us. Something caused them to settle down. And they turned around. They not only left, but they let us take the prisoners that the officers had arrested.”
The temptation to flee the scene taught Vernon an important lesson about standing for one’s convictions, a lesson he often tells Christian audiences. “[Christians need to] take a public stand with God, no matter what the cost. We [also] need to take a stand for our faith and have the courage to say, ‘I’m a Christian.’ If we are to have revival in this nation, that’s what Christians will have to do.”
Vernon, 53, keeps in shape for his duties as operations director by running three-and-one-half miles most days and lifting weights at the Police Academy gym. His sandy blond hair has thinned little during 34 years of police work. Though Vernon usually works just with his deputy chiefs and commanders, once a month he sits in on detective meetings or rides in a police squad car with a beat officer, to “be at the scene of the action.”
As director of operations, he processes paperwork and speaks to business groups and city councilmen about police policies. But the officers and the public are his main concern and ministry.
Vernon is one of six police chaplains in the LAPD. When he finishes work at 5 P.M., officers can find Vernon waiting in his office to offer spiritual counsel. During his weekends he is a teaching elder at large at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, speaking at youth conferences and churches nationwide.
For Vernon, integrity is crucial in all aspects of police work, whether in the field, behind a desk, or speaking to the city council. He refuses to misrepresent the truth before the city council, “even if it hurts my interests. Several members have told me, ‘We don’t always agree with you, but at least we know we can trust what you say.’ ”
So the same words apply again: “Honesty and integrity are the only things I have going for me.” For this Christian and police officer, that seems to be plenty.
By James Vincent, assistant professor of communications at Moody Bible Institute.
