OWENS, FORMER POLICE CHIEF, DIES

Robert Owens, Oxnard's longest-serving police chief who oversaw some
of the city's most violent times and pushed for a closer relationship
between the Police Department and the community, has died. He was 74.

Owens died of natural causes in his sleep at his home in San Antonio,
said son Steven J. Owens of Ventura. Owens recently had surgery to
remove blood clots in his brain but had quickly recovered, friends said.

When Owens began his 22-year career in Oxnard in 1970, it was a
pivotal time in law enforcement. The President's Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of Justice in 1967 pushed for sweeping
reforms of police departments across the country. Owens welcomed the
opportunity to change. He aggressively sought to recruit college
graduates, implement community policing and pushed to create a
crime-analysis unit -- none of which were common practices at the
time, law enforcement officials said.

"His legacy lives on," Assistant Chief Charles Hookstra said. "This
department was built on community policing, and that's Bob Owens' doing."

Owens was hired in Oxnard after serving three years as police chief
in San Fernando. Prior to that, Owens had served in the Los Angeles
County Sheriff's Department for some 13 years. Owens received his
bachelor's degree at USC and his master's in business administration
from Pepperdine University. He retired in 1992 and moved out of state
to teach criminal justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

He is survived by his wife, Linda Owens; son, Steve Owens, and
daughter, Olga Leatherbury.

Owens ran his department with a welcoming, laid-back attitude,
colleagues said, yet he was not afraid to speak his mind and took
some controversial stands.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, when gang activity was rising
in the city -- rapes and aggravated assaults were at twice today's
levels -- the City Council proposed hiring five gang-unit officers.
Owens refused, Police Chief John Crombach said.

"He might have crossed a city councilman, but he was of the opinion
we didn't need the five additional officers because everybody was a
gang officer," Crombach said.

Owens also supported the legalization of drugs and opposed the death
penalty. A few years after his retirement, Owens debated Greg Totten
of the Ventura County District Attorney's Office, who argued for the
death penalty, on National Public Radio.

Totten, now the county's district attorney, said that he respected
Owens while he was chief and that the debate did not change Totten's
perception of him.

"The two of us had a very friendly debate," he said.

Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks said he remembers Owens' intellect.
He likened Owens to a college professor because he abandoned his
police uniform for a suit and smoked a pipe.

"He'd be quoting studies and academic research," Brooks said. "He was
very well-read."

Although Owens retired from the Police Department 14 years ago, he
still kept in touch with several people from the department, not
hesitating to call the watch commander on duty when he read about the
police in the paper.

"He was Oxnard blue, through and through," Crombach said.

The Police Department is planning a public ceremony honoring Owens at
10:30 a.m. May 31 at St. John's Lutheran Church, 1500 North C St.,
Oxnard. His family has asked that in lieu of flowers, people donate
to the Oxnard Police Foundation, c/o David Keith, 251 South C St.,
Oxnard CA 93030.