Sheriff’s Commander Has Had to Stick to Her Guns

Kathy Kemp wanted the job, and she knew she deserved it.

But the Ventura County Main Jail is a men’s jail. Kemp is a woman. For some reason, some people in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department once considered that a problem. They don’t anymore.

“There were concerns that a woman couldn’t do that job,” Kemp said, still smiling six years later at the ridiculousness of that experience. “I think that’s been put to rest.”

It was not the first time Kemp had heard such questions about her abilities. And it was certainly not the first time she had laid them to rest.

As it turned out, Kemp wasn’t meant to run the jail--at least not for long: She was so successful that two years later she was promoted to manager of the department’s Major Crimes Unit, which handles all homicides and officer-involved shootings. A year after that, she was promoted again, to the rank of commander.

Being the highest-ranking woman in the history of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department has not always been easy for Kemp, who for the past three years has served as Thousand Oaks’ police chief. When she moved up in rank--as she often has in her 17-year rise to become the department’s first female commander--it was always because of her sex, say her detractors.

“It’s not always easy being the trailblazer,” she said.

But Kemp, a ski fanatic described by friends and co-workers as a tough leader with unusual motivational skills, deserves everything she has received, according to her many supporters who--unlike her critics--are willing to speak on the record about the 48-year-old Santa Paula native.

“I think the perception is that because she’s a female, she’s a token and she didn’t earn it,” said Sgt. David Williams, president of the Ventura County Deputy Sheriff’s Assn. “Maybe more so for Kathy than others, she’s had to prove herself every step of the way, from sergeant to lieutenant to where she’s at today.”

When Thousand Oaks was looking for a new police chief in 1993, City Manager Grant Brimhall said that Sheriff Larry Carpenter suggested Kemp from a short list of candidates.

Brimhall now works closely with Kemp, securing state and federal grants and discussing community-oriented policing--a philosophy Kemp has championed, according to Thousand Oaks business owners. He said her aggressiveness and talent as an administrator have greatly impressed him.

“Cmdr. Kemp is the consummate professional,” Brimhall said. “She has brought to this city a unique blend of steel and velvet.”

Kemp may have been a part of Thousand Oaks for only three years, but that is the longest she has been anywhere in her fast-moving career with the Sheriff’s Department, she said.

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And in that time, she has become a major part of the city’s social and political life, working with community groups and winning people over with her enthusiasm.

“The first time I ever had any interaction with her, we kind of had a run-in,” said Otto Stoll, who has worked with Kemp on such community organizations as the Boy Scouts and Many Mansions, an affordable housing group. “She thought I was wrong, and she was right, and neither of us was backing down.

“I don’t remember who was right anymore,” Stoll added, with tongue in cheek, “but I sure developed a lot of respect for her after that. Boy, she is tough. She doesn’t let anything stand in her way.”

Kathy Faulkner was born in Dallas in 1948, the only child of Bob and Faye Faulkner. Her father, a former Navy petty officer who worked in the aerospace industry, moved the family to Ventura County shortly afterward, and she graduated from Santa Paula High School in 1966. Her affinity for Santa Paula, which she still calls home, remains strong.

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Kemp graduated from Ventura College in 1968 with an associate’s degree in business administration. She married funeral director Gary Cullins the same year.

Looking to get into law enforcement, Kemp--then known as Kathy Cullins--took a job as a stenographer with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Los Angeles. But she did not enjoy the commute from her residence in Newhall to an office on Wilshire Boulevard, and in 1970 she went to work with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department as a secretary to the captain of the maximum security jail now called the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic.

She held that job for nine years, learning a lot about the inner workings of a jail, she said. She also learned that being a secretary was not to her liking, and in 1979, she graduated from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Academy.

“My father, bless his heart, really worked with me to get over the wall,” Kemp said, referring to the six-foot high barrier that all cadets must scale. It is traditionally a major obstacle to women wanting to become deputies. “He was really proud of me when I finally got over.”

Kemp worked in the custody division of the former women’s jail on Poli Street in Ventura for about a year--the “kind of jail where they rolled the doors shut,” she said--before being chosen for a special task force that introduced her to many of the department’s up and comers.

Among the people she met in the task force was Robert Brooks, who is now her boss as chief deputy of the East County Sheriff’s Services Division.

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The task force’s project was to develop the policies and procedures for the Ventura County Main Jail--the same jail Kemp was put in charge of 10 years later. But at that time, jail was the last place Kemp wanted to be--she longed for action in the streets.

“I wanted to be on patrol,” she said. “That’s why I became a cop.”

Kemp was assigned to the Camarillo Station from 1981 to 1983. Her marriage to Cullins ended in divorce about this time--a result, she said, of the demands of her intensified law enforcement career.

Williams of the deputies’ union, who now handles west county child crimes, said he fondly recalls his days on patrol with Kemp. She was a sharp-eyed deputy who saved him a number of times, he said.

Williams and Kemp were once called out to a domestic violence situation where a man was chasing his wife with an ax, he said. It was a rainy night, and as they were placing the man under arrest, the man asked if he could grab his raincoat from the closet. No problem, Williams said.

“Well, he opened the closet, and it turned out that he was reaching for a knife--a rather large one,” Williams said. “Luckily for me, Kathy came out with her gun and buried it in the side of this guy’s head. If it wasn’t for her quick thinking, I might be missing a hand right now.”

Although he was aware of Kemp’s intelligence and people skills from their days on patrol, Williams said he did not realize her talents for administration until she began to work for him as the union treasurer.

Some of those talents work against him these days: Kemp is now on the other side--at times representing management on grievance issues. But Williams said his respect for Kemp has only grown after seeing the way she attempts to resolve differences.

“She puts the real issues on the table right away,” he said.

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Kemp was promoted to senior deputy in 1983, and for two years she worked in the department’s personnel bureau, conducting background checks and internal investigations. She was then moved up to watch commander of the Ojai Honor Farm for about a year before being promoted to field sergeant in the east county.

In 1987, she assumed her first administrative appointment when she was made the sergeant for Moorpark, which, like Thousand Oaks, contracts with the Sheriff’s Department for services. Less than two years later, Kemp was named sergeant on east county patrol, which, among other things, allowed her to work on the police budget for Thousand Oaks.

It was about this time that Kemp received her bachelor’s degree in public administration from the University of LaVerne. It was also about this time that she married David Kemp, an officer with the Brea Police Department. He now works as a detective in Santa Paula, where he also serves as police chaplain.

“She’s very supportive of my career,” he said, explaining his decision to take a job with the Santa Paula Police Department instead of the Sheriff’s Department. “She wanted me to be known as Dave Kemp, not the commander’s husband.”

Kathy Kemp was promoted to lieutenant in 1989, only the second woman in the department to ever reach that rank. For about a year, she was watch commander for the west county before being put in charge of the county’s Main Jail in Ventura.

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As Thousand Oaks’ police chief, Kemp is in charge of 85 sworn officers and an annual budget of more than $11 million. She earns a base salary of $90,000 plus incentives.

Kemp is also the department’s chief ambassador in Thousand Oaks. She spends much of her time visiting churches and other local organizations as well as meeting with members of two new programs she developed in the city: Inter-Neighborhood Watch and the Citizens Academy.

She still visits crime scenes regularly, and her days at the office often last well into the night. “The joke is, I sleep in Santa Paula, but I live in T.O.,” she said. She has found, however, that there is really no other way to get the job done to her liking.

Kemp also finds herself doing a lot of explaining to Thousand Oaks residents, who tolerate little in the way of crime. Although the FBI ranks the city as the nation’s safest with a population of more than 100,000, residents still register many complaints as soon as any crime hits the newspapers.

To fight the roots of crime before they sprout, Kemp has worked with local officials from the city, the Conejo Valley Unified School District and the Conejo Recreation and Park District to set up an interagency approach for dealing with youth problems.

But her biggest efforts have been in reshaping the Thousand Oaks Police Department to move into the era of community-oriented policing. And local residents and business owners say they notice the difference.

“There’s a little less, ‘We’ve always done it that way,’ with Kathy Kemp,” said Dennis Carlson of Carlson’s Building Supplies, who worked with Kemp on a plan to begin bicycle patrols along Thousand Oaks Boulevard. “She’s willing to look at new ways of doing things, and she takes our suggestions seriously.”

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Brooks says it is the ease with which Kemp handles the many dimensions of her job as police chief that impresses him.

“In what is still typically a man’s world--law enforcement--she has really shown herself to be a leader,” he said. “She always has a positive attitude, but she can be all business when she needs to be.”

One problem of being the only woman in the department’s highest ranks is that Kemp has no one to talk to when certain things happen to her at work--subtle but important things all professional women face in the workplace, Kemp said.

But she has found an outlet in a group of successful women from the Thousand Oaks Rotary who meet for breakfast once a month and often discuss similar experiences. Their strength has helped her a lot, she said.

Kathy Kemp may not know it, but she has helped them, too.

“I’m really proud of her for having achieved what she has achieved, and I know others feel the same,” said accountant Judy St. John, chairwoman of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce. “She’s really looked up to.”