Longtime Police Chief Hangs It Up : Law enforcement: I. E. (Bill) Betts’ 17 years on the job is the longest among the 47 in the county who currently head a city department.

SIERRA MADRE —  When they nameE. (Bill) Betts police chief, the Sierra Madre City Council wanted to end the merry-go-round of two-year chiefs who took the job in the tiny city as a stepping stone to jobs elsewhere.

The lawmakers sought someone who would stick around, someone with roots in the city. They got him. After 17 years as chief--and a total of 29 1/2 years in the Police Department--Irvin Eugene Betts is calling it quits.

Betts, 63, officially retires Dec. 23, but he closed his office door for the last time as chief Friday. He had held a record, of sorts. Among Los Angeles County’s current 47 city police chiefs, he had been chief the longest.

During his time with the department, Betts watched it grow from 12 officers to 20. He provided police protection for an expanding city--from 8,000 residents to 11,000. And he oversaw officers in a town that unfailingly recorded the second-lowest crime rate in the state and usually zero murders annually.

“You’ve got to find your niche,” the smiling chief said last week.

Staying power runs in Betts’ blood. The apple-cheeked chief said his father quit farming three months ago, at age 87.

Betts has been married for 42 years to his wife, Joan, the 15-year-old girl he met in an Idaho church nearly half a century ago.

And, truth is, Betts might be retiring as a bus driver, a job he held for eight years in Pasadena, if it hadn’t been that someone suggested he try a stint as a Sierra Madre reserve police officer. A year later, he got hired as a patrol officer.

“I got caught up in it,” Betts said.

For a Nebraska-born boy raised on an Idaho farm, California was exciting when he came in 1949, Betts said. With white and thinning hair, he still has a farm boy’s twang and blushes when talking about himself.

Longevity and loyalty are his accomplishments, he said.

“I wrote down some of the things I’ve been involved with,” Betts said last week, consulting a long yellow legal pad with a short list of handwritten items. “But they seem dull and unimportant.”

Betts acknowledged that some folks in town criticized him, namely those wanting more services. But with a small budget--currently $1.2 million annually--and only three police cars, he said he met that challenge as best he could.

An interim chief will be named Wednesday from among a list of retired former chiefs, Mayor Clem L. Bartolai said. City officials will take about three months to hunt for a new chief.

Meanwhile, Betts said he has traveling to do and secret activities with his Masonic lodge.

“My wife said, ‘Good, now that you’re retiring you can paint the house,’ ” Betts said. “But I don’t have the time.”