Story by Donald H. Harrison; photos by Michael Mantell
SAN DIEGO – It was the kind of memorial service that the late Sheriff Bill Kolender would have enjoyed. There was lots of humor and plenty of the camaraderie that he was credited with fostering among law enforcement agencies.
Civilians and uniformed officers from both the Sheriff’s office and the San Diego Police Department, which he previously had served as chief, packed the 1,500-seat Bob Hope Theater on the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar base on Friday, Nov. 6, to hear tributes to Kolender, who died Oct. 6 from complications from Alzheimer’s Disease. He was 80 years old.
Following a color guard ceremony by members of different law enforcement agencies, tributes were delivered by former California Gov. Pete Wilson, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, and two top law enforcement officials now occupying the positions he once held: Sheriff Bill Gore and San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman. Also on the large stage were retired KNSD news anchor Marty Levin, who emceed the event, Rabbi David Kornberg of Congregation Beth Am, who gave the invocation, and Rev. Herb Smith of the Christian Law Enforcement Fellowship. Both Kornberg and Smith wore their police chaplain’s uniforms differentiated only by the kippah on Kornberg’s head.
With Kolender’s fellow Jews Dumanis, Zimmerman, Levin and Kornberg all on stage, there was bound to be several references to one of the stories that Kolender enjoyed telling over and over, that his father, who owned Admiral Jewelers on lower Broadway, was disappointed when Kolender, at age 21, signed up to become a police officer, telling him, “Velvel (Kolender’s Yiddish name), that’s no kind of job for a Jew.”
But when Kolender just 19 years later became the youngest police chief in San Diego’s history, at age 40, and reputedly the youngest big city police chief in the nation, his father relented. In fact, he kvelled for the next 13 years as Kolender not only ran the San Diego Police Department but won for it a national reputation with his commitment to community-oriented policing.
Former Gov. Wilson, who was San Diego’s mayor when Kolender was appointed police chief, described “community-oriented policing” as having officers getting out of their squad cars and talking to people in the neighborhoods, to the principals of schools and to merchants in the strip malls and asking if there are any problems that need solving. He quoted Kolender as saying: “If we never get out of the car, and just drive by, they’re never going to tell us.”
Kolender left the police chief job to work briefly for the Union-Tribune Publishing Company, when it was owned by the Copley Family, but soon answered a call from Gov. Wilson to serve in Sacramento as head of the California Youth Authority. Wilson revealed that it was not the first time that he had tried to recruit Kolender. Before Wilson became mayor in 1971, he had served as an assemblyman from the 76th Assembly District, in which Kolender then resided.
After Kolender gave a rousing talk to the Downtown Kiwanis Club of which Wilson was a member, Wilson, impressed, asked the law enforcement officer if he would consider running to succeed him in the state Assembly. Kolender, with thanks, declined, declaring he already had the job he loved. Kolender’s promotion to chief came in 1975.
In 1994, Kolender decided to return to San Diego from Sacramento to run for Sheriff, an election that he won easily. He went on to be elected three more times but had to cut his last term short because of his increasing memory problems. He was succeeded as Sheriff by Bill Gore, who told the audience that he had practically grown up with Kolender. Gore’s father had been a lieutenant with the San Diego Police Department and “Bill became like a son to my mom and dad.” He quipped that his parents had more pictures of Kolender around the house than of him. “It’s an issue but I’m working through it,” joked Gore, who during his career had served as special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Diego.
In addition to community-oriented policing, Kolender was known for promoting collaboration and cooperation among law enforcement agencies – a policy that Kolender with his slight speech impediment called “colloboration.”
“He connected with people, treated everyone with respect,” Gore said.
Gore said that Kolender had a self-deprecating humor, and a way of defusing tense situations with a light hearted joke. There was a time he told a City Council committee that he had bad news and good new. The bad news: Crime was up. The good news: “We’re making a profit.”
And Kolender could poke gentle fun at fundraisers like Father Joe Carroll of the St. Vincent de Paul Center. “It was so cold that someone saw Farther Joe with his hands in his own pockets.”
San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman noted that on Kolender’s way up through the police department ranks, he served as president of the Police Officers Association, providing him with labor’s perspective which he kept in mind when he became management.
“If he met you once, he knew your name,” said Zimmerman, adding that he also made a point of learning about your family and he would keep himself updated on their welfare.
In one of Zimmerman’s famous undercover cases as a young police officer, she pretended to be a student at Patrick Henry High School and ultimately busted 72 students for purchasing drugs. While doing this, she took classes like every other student. After the busts were made, Kolender called her to his office, rose from behind his desk, indicated a piece of paper for her to look at—her grades—and deadpanned, “What the hell is this ‘C’ in algebra?’
She started to justify herself about being somewhat busy buying the drugs before she realized he was putting her on.
Another time when she visited Kolender’s office, he introduced her to two relatives, saying that not only was Zimmerman a female cop but was a Jewish female cop. The relatives asked why she wasn’t finding herself a nice Jewish husband. Zimmerman said she told Kolender that she gets enough of those kinds of questions from her own family; does she need to hear it from his too?
District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis brought with her to the podium a Bill Kolender bobble head doll. She remembered the 1994 campaign in which Kolender was running for sheriff, and she was running for Municipal Court judge. During one contentious campaign event in which candidates were being questioned, she recalled Kolender leaning over to her and whispering: “I hate this shit.”
In a subsequent campaign, Dumanis was elected as district attorney, and she and then-Sheriff Kolender revived a playful controversy over who is the chief law enforcement official in San Diego County – the sheriff or the district attorney? Whenever the two would appear together, they would each lay claim to the unofficial title.
She quoted Kolender’s motto: “Take your job seriously, not yourself seriously” and a corollary: “Check your ego at the door.”
Once when she, Kolender, and then County Assessor Greg Smith were all being sworn in together for new four year terms, Kolender said in a stage whisper. “Oy, we only need a few more and we can have a minyan.” Smith also is Jewish.
She remembered another motto of Kolender’s “Happy wife, Happy life,” and said even as Kolender had applied this wisdom to his wife Lois, she too has applied it to her wife Denise.
She closed by conceding that the “top law enforcement official” honor belongs to Kolender, not only in San Diego County but now in heaven.
By the time that former Governor Wilson was introduced, much had already been said, prompting Wilson to open his talk with “Are there any questions?”
But the former San Diego mayor, U.S. senator, and California governor got into the mood and added a few more Kolender stories. He told of Kolender one time appearing at a school in an African American neighborhood, where one angry student told him in no uncertain terms how bad life was in his neighborhood.
Kolender responded: “You thing you’ve got things tough? What about me – a Jewish cop with a lisp.”
He recalled another time when Kolender saw a police officer with his tie crooked. He said the chief cinched up the patrolman’s tie, telling him “you need to be neat, people need to know you’re serious.”
As if on command, many hands in the audience immediately felt the knot at their necks – just checking.
Wilson took the occasion to urge San Diego residents to vote for a charter amendment that would state the first call on the city’s treasury should be for public safety – which he described as the “most important responsibility of all the many” borne by city government.
He turned to Dumanis and another point, and said; “I’m not even Jewish, Bonnie, but he is a super mensch.”
A benediction was followed by a video produced by the Sheriff’s department that showed Kolender illustrating the many roles a Sheriff’s deputy plays, and then segued to images from Kolender’s funeral, images that brought lumps to throats and tears to the eyes of many in the audience.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com Any comments in the space below should include the writer’s full name and city and state of residence, or city and country for non-U.S. residents.