Sins of Their Sons Weigh Heavy on Police Officers

The veteran LAPD detective has seen other people’s sons do terrible things.

But nothing in his professional experience could have prepared him for the arrest of his own son, Kevin C. Heschong of Simi Valley. The 19-year-old, barely out of high school, is facing trial on assault charges in connection with a fatal stabbing March 2 during a birthday party fracas in West Hills. He is free on $20,000 bail.

For officers sworn to uphold the law, few things are as embarrassing or heartbreaking as seeing a son or daughter on the wrong side of those laws. It is a subject few officers feel comfortable discussing with outsiders.

Former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates is an exception. He knows firsthand the frustration, embarrassment and confusion that follow when a loved one turns to crime.

“It’s a tremendously traumatic thing for a police officer,” said Gates, who at one point disowned his son. In his 1992 autobiography, Gates wrote at length about his pain and sense of helplessness as his son abused drugs and racked up a rap sheet of minor arrests while Gates rose through the ranks of the LAPD.

Be it coincidence, trend, a quirk of geography or merely a sign of the times, the courts in the San Fernando Valley recently have seen more than their fair share of serious felony cases involving the sons of police officers.

This month, four sons of officers have been in court here. Brothers Brett, 28, and Chad Pelch, 27, sons of LAPD Sgt. Dennis Pelch, were convicted of multiple robbery and kidnapping charges for their roles in holdups in which bank managers and their families were taken hostage overnight, then forced to open vaults at banks in Northridge and Canyon Country.

And two officers’ sons, Heschong and Bryan Zoltan Dyer, 18, son of an Oxnard police officer, are among five young men charged with assault in a fatal stabbing at a party in West Hills.

Other recent examples of police kids gone wrong include a serial rapist who claimed to have multiple personalities, an assortment of bank robbers, an alleged rustler, even a convicted murderer.

The worst case, perhaps, is that of a convicted bank robber with a genius IQ now serving a life sentence for helping his stepmother set a smoldering fire that killed his father, a retired LAPD sergeant who had won a Medal of Valor for rescuing people from a burning apartment building.

Many of these cases wind up in the Valley’s courts because police officers and their families have clustered in the suburban communities of the San Fernando, Simi, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys.

The Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement agencies do not track the cases involving officers’ children. There have been no studies, so much of the information that guides the LAPD’s peer counselors and mental health experts at the department’s Behavioral Sciences Center is anecdotal.

But when a police officer’s child gets in trouble, people pay attention.

“We are held to a higher standard as police officers,” says Lt. Anthony Alba, an LAPD spokesman. “Our children would be thought to be held to a higher standard, too. For example, when the minister’s child gets in trouble, everybody on the street knows it. The same is true for the police officer’s child.”

The role of police officer is demanding, all-consuming, and carries its own pressures, which also apply to the officer’s family.

Some law enforcement parents can’t help but “play cop at home,” and some children “feel the need to be extra bad” to fit in with their peers, said police psychologist Kris Mohandie, who oversees the LAPD’s Behavioral Sciences Services, which provides counseling for officers and their families.

Officers “deal with rules all day long,” he said. “They deal with setting limits and people constantly pushing those limits. Then, when they get home, they want things hard and fast when kids need room to grow.”

The children, particularly as they grow into adolescence, “sometimes feel rejection from their peer group because of what mom or dad does for a living. They feel they have to be bad to make friends.”

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Of course, many children also follow their parents into law enforcement. “That’s the flip side of the coin,” Mohandie said.

When a family member winds up in court rather than at the police academy, an officer’s loyalties come into conflict.

“It’s an almost impossible situation you’re put in,” said Gates. “You have to keep your perspective. You love your relative, normally you do, and you want the best for them. Certainly, I loved my son, but he was wrong. I believed he should be treated like everyone else.”

Some fathers, such as Howard Davis Sr., a retired Beverly Hills officer, feel compelled to stand beside their offspring, using the skills they have spent their careers honing in an attempt to save the child in trouble.

Davis, who acted as a defense investigator on his son’s case, even wanted to sit next to him at the defense table, but the judge wouldn’t allow it. When his namesake was convicted of committing a string of 1993 rapes in the western San Fernando Valley, the father’s tears flowed freely, followed by these words:

“The void will never be filled in my life.”

The son, who claimed to suffer from a multiple personality disorder, is serving a 340-year sentence for sexually assaulting four women and a young girl. Police had dubbed him the Valley Pickup Truck Rapist. Davis claimed the assaults were the work of an alter-ego named Leo, who was named after his cat.

Other fathers, such as Dennis Pelch, an LAPD sergeant, find themselves accused of crossing the line as they become caught in the tangle of competing loyalties; Pelch was suspended for 33 days for improperly assisting his son, Brett, during a nationwide manhunt.

The father denied any wrongdoing. Pelch was not in court this month when a San Fernando Superior Court jury delivered guilty verdicts against both his sons.

Gates and other officers who find their children skirting the wrong side of the law search for answers. In his book, Gates described his guilt and sense that somehow he had not done all he could as a parent. Had he missed too many soccer practices, he wondered. Had he provided too many material rewards? What caused his son to turn to drugs and a life of petty crime?

“Police officers work very hard,” said Gates. “They work very hard to be with their families, even though the job causes them hardships in that regard.

“The hours a police officer has to put in is a big part of it,” Gates added. “He’s going to bed when his child is getting up, and he comes home after the child has gone to bed. There’s the stress of the job, and the stress of home life, both on the child and on the police officer parents.

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“It’s difficult for a police officer to be there when the child needs him. The child often is neglected.”

Another factor, he said, is that an officer father’s faith in authority can feed a teenage son’s rebellion.

“The police officer is trying to uphold the law and set the standard for the community. I think there’s some rebellion on the part of kids because their father or mother holds them to a higher standard.”

And, noted police psychologist Mohandie, “Police officers are like everybody else. They have kids and some of the kids they have get into trouble. Because they’re police officers, and the public has such expectations, when the kids do get into trouble, they are thrust into the spotlight. People tend to overreact to it because it is such a discrepancy from what people expect from a law enforcement family.”