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By JOHN F. MULLER Special to the Daily Press
Even though he’s now officially retired, “Officer Joe” Analco still feels like he has 10,000 children.
During the 20 years he spent as the local police department’s liaison to schoolchildren and community groups, the Santa Monica native made himself into something of a local legend. Through his imaginative and interactive presentations — along with his sidekick, Nacho, a talking parrot who could ride a bird-sized bicycle — Analco touched the hearts of children, students and parents alike across the city.
Recently forced into retirement by a knee injury, Analco is now creating himself anew. At 53, “Officer Joe” is taking classes in web and graphic design to pursue the passion of drawing that once led him to produce coloring books promoting safety tips for kids. He’s also able to spend more time with his wife, five kids and four grandchildren.
Once a troubled youth from a broken home, Analco spent his teen years at Olympic High School and hung out with kids who stole cars and thought of cops as enemies. But an early car-jacking arrest turned out to be a blessing in disguise when a cop told Analco the court would drop the charges against him if he joined the Marine Corps.
“I was kind of a knucklehead,” Analco says now, remembering his decision to join the Marines at 17. “I’m kind of glad it happened, because I could have easily been in big trouble.”
After four years in the service — 18 months of it in Vietnam — Analco joined the LAPD in 1973 on a bet and jumped to the Santa Monica Police Department two years later.
A couple of years as a patrol officer left him feeling unfulfilled, so Analco convinced his bosses to let him do some work with kids. Over the next two decades, that idea ballooned into a full-time job as a “school resource officer,” where Analco put on more than 525 presentations each year promoting empowerment, safety and community participation.
At the same time, he continued working as a police investigator — and occasionally had to arrest kids he had met in the classrooms.
Even in retirement, Analco says he’ll always be “Officer Joe” at heart.
Here, the Daily Press sat down with the local legend to ask him about his experiences, his career and his philosophy on life.
What was it like growing up in Santa Monica?
“In all honesty, I basically came from a broken home. My mom raised five kids, so right around junior high I was getting more in trouble in the sense of staying out late, getting in altercations for little things at school. I ended up getting into a group of kids in high school that were getting into deeper trouble, and I ended up going to Olympic High School to finish my education. I really didn’t have much respect for cops at that time because there were a couple of officers from Santa Monica that were a little heavy handed. I didn’t realize then that the heavy-handedness was more a cushion of caring than a desire to beat the hell out of me. They really did care.”
Why did you decide to start working with kids?
“Interestingly enough, after having children and realizing, you know, that each child — I mean I have five kids — is an individual. And then the other thing that hit me was that when I was a kid, who was there for me? And I looked at the school program that we had, and it was a great program — don’t get me wrong — but it was only elementary schools. That’s all they ever did. So I thought, ‘Gosh, if they gave me the leeway, not only would I do elementary, but I’d do the middle schools and high schools, and as they grew up they’d grow up with me’ and that’s the way I sold it. After doing it for a few years and falling in love with it and finding out that there were so many kids and families that were in need, I gave up the idea of ever getting promoted just so I could stay in the schools.”
How did your programs develop into what they became?
“Dick Berry (Analco’s predecessor) taught me how to get rid of all the macho crap. Like putting on talks to little kids about ‘Danger Stranger,’ and being able to laugh with them and not at them. Being able to get at their level of eye-view and not talk above them. I remember one time he had me in a jacket with a little propeller on my head to be a kid who was going to be the stranger. And I thought, ‘There’s no way I’m going to do this. I’m going to be Chuckle the Clown with his little bag.’ After doing it and the kids all laughed and everything. It hit me like, ‘OK, I’ve got to make a decision. Here, I’ve been a street cop, and I’ve been involved in shootings. I’ve done everything I need to do and now I’m playing Chuckle the Clown? I really got to research this.’
“About a month later I was about ready to go back and hit patrol and work as a burglary detective, but I did a show with Nacho, the parrot. There was this one little girl there who looked so tired, and her hair looked different, but I kind of blew it off. Later on a parent called me and … said, ‘Can you come to my daughter’s birthday with Nacho?’ I was like ‘What? This is it, people finally think I’m a clown, not a street cop.’ But my daughter told me, ‘Oh Dad, please go. She’s not feeling well.’
“So I did a show, and (the girl) was dying of cancer. And what really touched me was after I did the show and I was laughing with them, and the little girl said, ‘Officer Joe, Officer Joe,’ and I said, ‘Yeah honey, what can I do for you?’ ‘Would you pray for me? Because I know God will listen to Officer Joe.’ That was it. For as long as I could I’d be Officer Joe.”
What was the reaction like when you started your talks?
“It was very hard at the beginning, because middle school and high school would not let me go in there. They still had the opinion that police officers were the gestapo and they’d call you ‘pig.’ I’ll never forget the first time I walked on the high school campus at Samohi and they were yelling ‘Pig, pig, pig.’ I kind of just blew it off. Two teachers gave me a break and let me become a speaker in their class at Samohi, and two teachers at the middle school. From that break we built on doing a criminal justice class, juvenile law for middle school and criminal justice for high school. We began teaching them that, ‘Hey, whatever you want to know, I’m going to be honest with you,’ and it just opened up so many avenues … “In my career, I had so many kids getting a hold of me that wanted to be anonymous. Stuff about guns on campus, a kid who had the bomb on campus over at Samohi, guns over at Olympic. All those came after welcoming. Kids grew up and knew, ‘Hey, this guy’s a straight shooter. He can be soft, but if I screw up he’s going to arrest me.’”
Is there a replacement for you? “No. It’s sad that law enforcement has now gotten to the point where we’re going to reinvent the wheel. Now they have an officer stationed at Samohi and another one stationed at John Adams, but they have to be able to still go out and still do those programs for the other age groups. They have to be there for the stability of society.”
What kind of advice would you give to parents?
“I really think parents should really be involved in their schools. They really should be vocal. They shouldn’t expect the schools to make all of the decisions. They should be part of it. They should find out who’s making what decisions and how it affects their school and schools that their kids may go to. I’m surprised that some parents figure that, ‘OK, my kid goes to Samohi or John Adams or Lincoln, and that’s all I have to worry about.’ They should see the big picture. What if your child gets in trouble? What if they get transferred to Olympic? What kind of programs are there? Do they have support? Do they have the support from social groups, do they have the police department?”
Do you think there are kids that come into the world looking for trouble?
“Go look at a bunch of kindergarten kids. They don’t see color; they don’t see hate; they see acting out, and it’s only in time that the influence of the environment in school and the influence of the environment at home and their neighborhood and their community that they become directed differently. All race groups in kindergarten hug each other, put boogers on each other, everything. And then they get older, and you wonder, ‘How did these two, who were great friends, now start calling each other different racial names and hating each other?’”
How has Santa Monica changed since you joined the force?
“It’s so crowded, brother. There’s not as much stuff for young people to do. When I was a kid, we had Pacific Ocean Park Pier, and we had bowling alleys and we had sporting things that we could do. Unfortunately, now, kids can go play sports but if they’re not real good at it, they get cut. Our kids are growing up so fast. They’re not getting the time to enjoy their childhood.”
Did you establish any long-term personal relationships with the kids you worked with?
“Oh yeah, a lot of them. It’s funny. I knew I was getting older because there were kids that had graduated, married, and their kids were going through the system … Yeah, they still write me. I’ve been in different locations, not only here in California but in other states. It’s funny to have somebody come up to me and go ‘Oh my god, you’re Officer Joe!’ It’s a nice feeling.”
Did you see any kids that you worked with go into law enforcement?
“Oh yeah. There’s a lot who have. There’s one gang member who’s a deputy sheriff. He was in one of my criminal justice classes. And I’ll never forget, I was talking about gang members, how they’re nothing but punks … called ‘Will You Die For Me?’ I used him as an example. I said (to him) ‘Hey, you guys are all gang members, right, so let’s pretend you got shot. Can you do that? I mean, you’re man enough, you can do that.’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’ True story. I got it to where he was pretending he was shot, and I said, ‘Lay up here on the table in front of the class’ and so he did. I pretended to talk into the walkie talkie. They didn’t know but the teachers knew (that I was pretending). So I said, ‘I’ve got a shooting here,’ and then the paramedics came down. They checked him and they said, ‘Oh he’s dead,’ so we put him in a body bag.
“He gets in there, and he realizes that there’s no zipper on the inside. There’s formaldehyde smelling, and I said, ‘Just lay there.’ He said, ‘Are you going to close this all up?’ And I said, ‘I’ll just close it up just a little bit.’ He had six or seven friends there, and I said, ‘Robert, you can get out in a minute, but I need one of your friends who’s willing to come in and lay in this body bag and take your place.’ Not one of them would do it. Not one. He said that turned his whole life around. Right after that, he started working hard, and one thing led to another and he became a sheriff. A lot of kids I talked to became sheriffs … It makes you feel good — I’ve got somebody else to take my place.”
What’s different about Santa Monica when the sun goes down?
“Oh gosh. You’ve got to remember that’s where the sewer meets the sea. Everything in the world, the freeway brings it in, and it’s dark and you have a bustling tourist town that draws really good tourists, but it also draws in the trouble. If somebody wants to make a living illegally, take the property of others, breaking into homes, doing stuff like that, they’re going to look at the most prosperous places. Santa Monica, to them, would be one of those prosperous places.”
What was the funniest thing that ever happened to you on the job?
“Oh brother, there are so many, but I remember there were a couple that dealt with Nacho (the parrot). We had a captain that would cuss at the bird, thinking she’d pick it up, and surely enough she picked up the S-word for shit. And I was out doing a bird show for kids on safety, and I’ll never forget, I got to the point where I said to Nacho, ‘OK, your feathers are on fire, you’re in trouble, they’re going to take you to El Pollo Loco in a minute, you’ve got to do what?’ She goes, ‘Shit!’ And I go, ‘That’s right! Stop, drop, and roll!’ So for three months she was on hiatus. We had to break her of that word … “I even did a TV show with puppets for a while, can you believe that? ‘On the Go with Officer Joe.’ ‘Hey kids!’ that type of thing. We actually had kids writing to puppets or calling to speak to a puppet. And I put out a newsletter for teachers. I realized that teachers are good at their programs, but they didn’t want to get that involved. They wanted to look the other way, and they didn’t realize how dangerous that could be. School administrators, even to this day, I’m still shocked at how many things are covered up, or they’ll call in and get some militant speaker to speak, and there’s nobody else to balance it out.”
How has your outlook on law enforcement changed during your time in the police department?
“When I first started, to me anybody to be arrested was a pinhead and they would go to jail. I wasn’t really concerned about the juvenile population. It was just working night watch, being the macho cop and putting crooks in jail so the city would be safe. After 10 o’clock there were only two (kinds of) people out there: Predators and victims. But once I got involved in juvenile crimes and working in the schools, I realized that there were so many other things that influence the increase or decrease in juvenile crime. When I was leaving before I got hurt, we had a hold on it. We had three school resource officers, we had me who had been in place long enough that people would call, we had ‘WeTip,’ which gives kids and parents the opportunity to call in anonymously and give tips. I felt those were the positives. The negatives were some of the changes in the leaders in the school district and the school board. It seemed like there were people with other agendas than the kids. I don’t know if that’s right to say, but that’s what I felt.”
What’s the biggest challenge facing the police department today?
“The biggest challenge is developing public relations that not only reach out to the schools, but to the people so they feel confident enough to discuss any problem. (Police need to) maintain a positive image within their community so that they will always be respected and not looked down on. Every year you hear some other misconduct and everybody suddenly puts you all in the same package. Every city, every law enforcement agency must work extremely hard to keep those doors open.”
How has the force changed since you went into it?
“When I came on, the old timers were already upset because of how the Miranda ruling had restricted them in their investigations … And now, from the Rampart scandal to the movies and everything else, people are very questioning of their law enforcement agencies. Even look at the court systems. If they know that their client’s guilty, they’re going to try to make the police department look like they screwed up. So, if the evidence is screwed up, my client can’t be guilty. O.J. Simpson. Look at the Scott Peterson trial right now. Let’s blame it on the police. Let’s blame it on everyone else. And that’s the other thing. No one is willing to take responsibility for their actions.”
How would you like people to remember you in Santa Monica?
“I hated to leave, but I know it’s time for someone else. That’s why they give you badges. Badges have serial numbers, and serial numbers mean you can be replaced. In another few months, nobody will remember what I did … I would really like them to think of me as someone who really did care. It’s not that I wore a blue uniform, that I made so much money, or my rank. It’s that I really did care. That I tried my best with the skills I had in order to reach out to others.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 23, 2004. Read the original PDF.