After 85 years, the end of a blue line

A Brennan has been in the department since 1923. The youngest, Deputy Chief Gary Brennan, is retiring.

By Joel Rubin
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 4, 2008

It was the end of a long day, at the end of a long, distinguished career, and the cop sat surrounded by memories.

Gary Brennan, a 34-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, glanced around his office -- at the boxes of files stacked on top of one another and the dozens of wrapped-up photographs and plaques that once hung on the walls. Most of it, he knew, would be packed away in a garage or attic.

Brennan, 57, needs only three photographs to remember what he has accomplished and why he gave so much of his life to the department.

The black-and-white images all look roughly the same: rows of cadets the day they graduated from the Los Angeles Police Academy. In one sits a young, ambitious Brennan. In the second, his father. In the third, a great-uncle.

Every day since 1923 at least one Brennan has worn a badge for the LAPD. On Friday, the youngest among them walked out of the department's headquarters for the last time, probably bringing an end to the legacy that has also included a brother and other relatives.

"That man has bled LAPD for a long time," said Lt. Paul Vernon, who served under Brennan in several assignments. "And he did it in a way that was a service to the communities he worked in and the cops he led."

Since graduating first in his recruit class and his first assignment as a rookie patrol officer in the city's Newton Division in 1974, Brennan held 28 positions in the LAPD, touching down on nearly every aspect of policing -- including stints in vice squads, the anti-terrorism division and internal affairs. He served under several police chiefs and was identified early on as a smart, level-headed officer as he rose steadily through the ranks.

In 2002, Chief William J. Bratton promoted Brennan to deputy chief -- the third-highest rank in the department and a higher rank than any of his relatives achieved -- and placed him in a newly created position at the head of the department's detective bureau.

Bratton credits Brennan with raising the stature of the bureau, which had long been run by lower-ranking officers and languished in "second-class status." He improved diversity among detectives and made strides in the department's work solving sex crimes and cold cases, Bratton said.

"He is the consummate professional," Bratton said. "Every day you got 100% from him."

For Brennan, not every assignment was as rewarding as others. All in all, though, there are no regrets.

"Most people who do this work do not do it because they want to get rich, or because they are badge-heavy, or to have the opportunity to kick ass and take names," he said.

"It is an opportunity to do something worthwhile. To do something that not everyone can do, something that not everyone even wants to do, and if done well is something that can make a difference. It has been all of that. It really has. It has been the perfect job."

Brennan has been at the center of several major challenges and milestones the LAPD has faced. In 1991, only days after the Rodney G. King beating, he was put in charge of the department's internal affairs investigators.

He easily recalls the heavy responsibility he felt to thoroughly investigate one of the department's darkest moments. He was keenly aware that an accounting of the beating was needed not only to expose department shortcomings but also to counter what he thought were harsh, unfair depictions of the department by the media.

"They were all kind of wide-eyed -- like I was -- thinking, 'Whoa, this is a big deal,' " he said of his investigators. "I remember telling them that this is the kind of investigation that only comes along once or twice in a person's career, and we have to do this right.

"To be honest with you," he continued with a self-deprecating laugh, "I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I knew it had to be done."

Then, in 1993, Richard Riordan was elected mayor on a campaign promise to add 3,000 officers to the 7,600-member department in his first term.

Then-Chief Willie L. Williams, who had bluntly dismissed the possibility of adding so many officers so quickly, put Brennan in charge of the training division and charged him with turning a surge of raw recruits into street-ready officers.

Brennan called it "one of the most challenging and important jobs" he held in the department. He recalled with a wistful smile the tight-knit band of officers who worked with him at the Police Academy during those hectic years, when the number of classes each year increased and the size of each class swelled from about 40 to 100.

But the assignment Brennan will hold onto most tightly is one marked more by little victories and mundane moments than by anything extraordinary. For more than two years in the mid-1990s, he was a captain in charge of the gritty Southwest Division, bordered by the 10 and 110 freeways.

There he spent countless hours in meetings with community groups, trying, he said, to build an element of trust between police and residents that had long been missing. Those years were as much about listening as acting, Brennan said.

He knows it was an assignment -- and a sensitivity -- that his father would have appreciated.

Lt. Pat Brennan, who retired in 1976, instilled in his son the desire to be a cop. He never came home at night with stories of violent encounters or dangerous stakeouts, though Brennan would learn later that his father had been in plenty of sticky situations. Instead, his father emphasized getting to know the people being policed and playing it straight with them. "I have felt a responsibility to my father and my great-uncle Bill," he said. "I have felt a responsibility to live up to the kind of men and police that I believe they were."

Brennan admits to a twinge of regret that he didn't do more to encourage his two now-adult children to follow his path, but he's quick to say how proud he is of them. Sitting in his office, looking out the window as dusk turns to darkness, he seems at peace with the idea of calling it a day.

There is, after all, the new home to find with his wife somewhere along the California coast that will allow the longtime surfer some waves every day. There are the fishing and hunting trips to plan. And the fiddle lessons.

"I had a motto that 'work is life and life is work.' I got a little carried away," he said. "I need to figure out how to gain as much satisfaction in life without work as I have achieved with this job. I'm looking forward to that as much as I think I am going to miss this."