Assistant chief Lanny Brown took care of people, not just
business
Gilroy – At age 4, Lanny Brown peered up at the rough-edged, soft-hearted ex-sergeant who lived next door, and decided he wanted to be just like that – minus the edge.
Today, with 31 years of experience, 21 in the Garlic Capital, he’s hardly hard-boiled. Colleagues call him an overgrown kid, the blue-eyed jokester who takes people – but not himself – seriously. In a bruising profession, he’s kept a sunny outlook, balancing law and order with the human heart.
“For a police officer, I’ve never seen anybody that has such a gentle personality,” said Joann Kessler, assistant executive director of the Garlic Festival. Brown served as president of the Festival in 1995. “He looks for consensus. He doesn’t have to have his own way.”
When Brown steps down this July, he’ll vacate a brand new office in a department he’s seen from every angle. He’s guarded kids as a school resource officer, tamed traffic from the seat of his motorcycle, shut down gangs and taken command with the Critical Instant Response Team, Gilroy’s brand of SWAT.
“He wears a ton of different hats,” said Sgt. Kurt Svardal, who’s known him since 1992. One of those hats is a baseball cap that reads ‘PIT Master’: PIT for Pursuit Intervention Technique, or how to handle a high-speed chase. Behind the wheel on a training course, Brown steered between the cones, three times. He likes to joke about it, said Svardal, “but then, he’s never done that out on the street.”
Trash-talking aside, Svardal says he’ll miss him.
“He’s been dedicated to every job he’s taken on,” he said, “and as a boss, he gives you both direction and freedom. It’s going to be a huge loss.”
When he first came to Gilroy, Brown said, “it seemed like a department in transition.” Commanders were butting heads – and splitting the PD. In time, Brown said, the department stabilized, and geared up to quash gangs in the ’80s and ’90s, forming an Anti-Crime Team to lock up the leading thugs. Today, teen gangster wannabes are still making trouble, said Brown, but the gangs have lost their former influence.
“It’s something you don’t just go out and take care of in a year – it takes a long-term commitment,” Brown said. “Being part of that felt really good. Now, not only the department, but also the community is in a better place.”
Brown was a key proponent of the new police building, said former city treasurer Michael Dorn, who praised Brown’s honesty and professionalism.
“He really pushed for the larger station, which he’s taken some heat on,” Dorn said. “But this isn’t for him. He knew the police officers needed more space, something that would last a generation or more.”
Unfortunately, Dorn added, “He had an office all picked out, and now he’s not going to move into it!”
On issues such as the new building, when the police department has come under fire, Brown has earned a reputation as a straight-talker who’ll listen to concerns, and admit mistakes.
“He’s not going to sugarcoat things,” said Capt. Scot Smithee. “He’s the kind of person that stands up and says, ‘Yeah – we screwed that up.'”
Second only to Chief Gregg Giusiana, some were surprised by the news that he would retire. Many saw him as a future chief. Brown himself said he would have applied, if Giusiana had retired a year or two ago. But Giusiana is still going strong, Brown has maxxed out his retirement benefits, and with the new building nearing completion, the assistant chief says it’s a natural transition point.
“He’s done a lot in his career,” said Svardal. “How he would have been as a chief … I don’t know if we’ll ever know that.”
Svardal struggles to name the quality that defines Brown. Dedication is the closest word he can muster. He describes how once, a month before a grueling Best in the West competition, Brown, then a captain, stepped up to join the team, competing in strenuous obstacle and weapons courses.
“You wouldn’t find other captains stepping up to the plate like that,” said Svardal. “He went above and beyond. Not only that, he beat out three of the guys on our team.”
The only thing he hasn’t mastered, his colleagues joke, is the computer. A decade ago, Smithee recalls, he and Brown took a computer class, where an instructor urged them to play around on the computer. ‘You can’t hurt anything,’ she said. Within minutes, Brown’s screen began to flicker apopletically, before it bleated pathetically and died. Wheeling it away, the instructor said, ‘Whatever you do – don’t touch anything!’
“Now, if we want to know if a computer’s durable, we put it the Lanny test,” said Smithee, chuckling. “If Lanny can figure it out without breaking it, it’s durable enough.”
In the past, he’s served as Garlic Festival president and a member of the Luigi Aprea Parents’ Club; today, he sits on boards for the YMCA and Rebekah Children’s Services, and is vice president at Gilroy’s Rotary Club.
It seems mundane to say he’s nice, but he is, genuinely, a nice guy. Decades ago, said Smithee, he wanted to teach, but hadn’t gotten his feet wet. Brown offered to let him help teach a police academy class, then gave him half his paycheck at the end of the night.
“He connects with people,” said Svardal. “He deals with them and their needs.”
Next year, Brown says, he’s not rushing into another job. Instead, he wants to take a breather and consider his options. That is, if wife Elizabeth will let him.
“I get to be the dutiful house husband that gets the long to-do list done,” he jokes. With two sons living at home, Nicholas, 16, and Nolen, 12, “the laundry has to be done. Dinner has to be made. The house has to be clean.”
Brown also has two adult sons: Adam 24, living in Marin County, and Gavin, 22, living in Fayetteville, Ark., as well as Adam’s 6-year-old son Donovan, “the cutest grandson in the whole world.”
No matter what his title – assistant chief or house husband – Brown can’t retire from Gilroy itself.
“I’m part of this community,” he says. “I love it. If asked, I’d do anything I could to help out.”
