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Home  Random Extras The Passing of a Champion
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The Passing of a Champion |
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Written by Zamna Avila
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Friday, 13 November 2009 |
Palos Verdes Peninsula’s Rudy De Leon played different rolls in the lives of many people. He was an instructor, a man of his community, an organizer, a political appointee and the first Latino captain in the Los Angeles Police Department.
“He was somewhat of a public figure but we didn’t think of that,” said his son Rudy De Leon II. “I had the greatest dad in the world.”
Rudy De Leon senior died Oct. 19 of natural causes.
“He has been an inspiration to generation of police officers and a symbol of reform for the department,” said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in a statement released soon after his death. “From his years as a young officer to the peak of his career, Rudy exemplified what it meant to be a member of the LAPD.”
Rudy De Leon was reared during the Great Depression in Watts, then largely a Latino community. He and his siblings sold their mother’s homemade tamales door to door. His father and uncles raised chickens and pigs and grew vegetables on a vacant lot next to his home.
At 15, Rudy De Leon took on boxing, a sport he showcased in the Navy during World War II, when he won a Golden Gloves championship match. An article about sports in the LAPD drove him toward law enforcement. He entered the police academy in 1947. Only three members of minority groups were part of that 135-person class.
He was assigned to a new gang detail as a rookie, where he covered the Central, Hollenbeck and Highland Park divisions.
In 1967, Rudy De Leon helped found the Latin American Law Enforcement Association, known as La Ley. The group’s goals were non-political. Instead, members sought to become a resource for administration when problems arose, an outlet that provided local scholarships and sponsored study groups to help minority officers move up the ranks.
Rudy De Leon was assigned to the Hollenbeck station in 1971, when he became the first Latino Captain in the police department.
Although he worried about the stereotypes that might have become part of the assignment in the largely Latino Boyle Height neighborhood, he learned to love his place of work.
While there, he instituted ride-alongs for non-departmental employees, such as custodians and clerks, so as to encourage a broader understanding of the officers’ and the civilian employee role in the LAPD. He also refitted the station’s basement to enable the local children in the community to learn boxing from professionals.
His son witnessed the enthusiasm toward the station employees and the community when he stopped by to visit after returning from Vietnam.
“I hadn’t met anybody in my entire life who could remember everybody’s name like he could,” Rudy De Leon II said. “It was just as important for him to introduce me to the guy pumping gas as it was to introduce me to a lieutenant.”
It was that enthusiasm that led the younger De Leon to follow his father’s footsteps.
One such story included a time when a group was protesting at the station chanting the words “Down with the pigs!” After Mr. De Leon senior went to speak to the protestors, the chant continued, “Down with the pigs! … But not you Rudy.”
“The one thing that encouraged me the most was my dad’s stories,” said De Leon II, who now is an assistant squad police officer III plus I for the LAPD Mounted (horse) Unit. “I thought it would be so nice to have a job where you could have fun.”
Although, De Leon II did not tell his father about applying for the police academy, his father met his decision with support.
“There’s a lot of hardships to the job and he knew all that … but he was always proud that I followed his line of work,” he related.
About the same time he made captain, Rudy De Leon also became the first minority instructor at Fullerton Community. Later instructing in two other community colleges, including Harbor College in Wilmington. He was a Kelly Key Club founder at Harbor College, and a proud supporter of the local Boys and Girls Club.
“By teaching I was always learning,” said De Leon senior in an interview for the LAPD Historical Society newsletter.
His career also included an appointment in 1978 to the Parole Board in Sacramento, where he served in the first parole hearing of Charles Manson. He was a special assistant to Attorney General John Van de Camp in 1980, where he served for about 8 years and was selected as an ombudsman for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Mr. De Leon is survived by his two daughter Cynthia Spanbury and Regina De Leon, his two sons Rudy and Steven, nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
La Ley president Armando Perez said he is lobbying to have the Hollenbeck station to be rededicated in his honor.
“He was a great man,” Perez said. “We’d like to continue to pursue (the dedication) of the Hollenbeck station in Rudy’s honor (and) we are working with (Councilman) Jose Huizar.”
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