Psychologist Is Gatekeeper to the Ranks at Sheriff's Dept.

By JULIE FIELDS

Oct. 4, 1993 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

From a windowless office on the first floor of Ventura County’s Hall of Justice, Randolph Nutter runs a psychological counseling service that serves 934 people, among them 588 sheriff’s deputies.

As the staff psychologist for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, it is Nutter’s job to help keep deputies mentally healthy and to prevent those likely to have psychological problems from being hired.

Nutter, 52, said he enjoys his job for its diversity and the chance to assist deputies with personal problems. But the same job that gives him the power to help his colleagues has made him a somewhat controversial figure in the department he serves.

“It’s kind of in the eyes of the beholder,” said Undersheriff Richard Bryce. “If he makes a decision that someone is unfit because of their current or past psychological condition. . .he’s probably not well-liked.”

Although he has worked as a probation officer in two counties, Nutter said he has never wanted to be a cop. He has, however, spent most of his professional life soaking up the atmosphere of law enforcement and trying to help officers deal with the strains unique to the job.

“I think I just wanted the association of law enforcement,” he said. “I enjoyed being on the outside, being on the fringes.”

Nutter joined the Sheriff’s Department about 1980, after working six years as a probation officer responsible for evaluating juveniles and adults for sentencing reports used in court.

Today, he spends the bulk of his time counseling deputies and their families and screening candidates vying for highly competitive positions with the department.

But his work also includes evaluating officers who have been involved a serious incident, such as a shooting, or who have demonstrated bizarre behavior on the job.

In screening would-be deputies, Nutter acts as the department’s gatekeeper, responsible for screening out the unstable, the immature and the overly aggressive.

“He holds the key,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Christopher Godfrey, who is in charge of the hiring process. “If you can’t get past him, you can’t become a sheriff’s deputy with this department.”

Nutter said his decisions are based on two computer-graded tests and a verbal interview.

During the written psychological exams, people often try to “out-psych the psych” and end up being caught in lies or scoring poorly, he said.

“There’s not much subjectivity to it. You either make the numbers or you don’t make the numbers.”

Although most of the psychological exam is objective, the verbal interview can count for a lot in borderline cases. In 15 to 45 minutes, Nutter said, he can get a good sense of whether someone was abused as a child, was violent as a teen-ager or is addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Currently, Nutter is in the midst of interviewing more than 50 would-be deputies for up to 30 spots for the first class in two years at the Ventura County Sheriff’s Academy.

About 70% of everyone who takes the psychological exam passes, Nutter said. Those who fail frequently try again and pass, he said.

Police psychologists are expected to predict the future mental state of recruits--who is likely to be violent, who has the ability to handle stress and who has a knack for problem-solving.

Moreover, the job has taken on greater importance over the years as police departments increasingly worry about liability risks.

“Just 10 years ago, the philosophy was--if you had a borderline individual in a psychological situation, you would lean toward giving them the benefit of the doubt,” Oxnard Assistant Chief Stan Meyers said. “Now, if you’re borderline--then you tend not to. . .give (the applicant) the benefit of the doubt.”

But determining who is likely to snap 10 years from now is an “artful science” at best, said Sgt. Mike Hyams of the Newport Beach Department, who serves on a statewide committee regulating police psychology issues.

“A lot of people think you can predict those things with precision, but I’m not sure things are that state of the art,” he said.

Nutter also conducts pre-employment screenings for Port Hueneme, Oxnard, Santa Paula and Santa Barbara, as well as the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.

Most of the departments that use Nutter to screen job applicants also send experienced officers to him for counseling when needed. Oxnard, however, gives officers the option of going to a psychologist in Los Angeles.

Two years ago, the Ventura County Deputy Sheriffs’ Assn. raised concerns that Nutter’s office was located too close to the department’s administration and that he held a virtual monopoly on psychological services.

As a result, Nutter was moved to a bigger office across a grassy quad in the Hall of Justice. And deputies were given the option of seeing another psychologist if questions were raised about their job performance.

Dave Williams, the current association president, said he no longer hears the sort of complaints that prompted a letter to then-Sheriff John Gillespie.

“Certainly, there was a problem when he was the only game in town, but now that that’s not the case,” Williams said. “I don’t see that we have a problem.

“I think all of the concerns of that letter were addressed,” he said. “I have heard from a lot of people that really find Dr. Nutter to have helped them.”

Despite the changes made over the past few years, Sgt. Kenton Rainey, who is back at work after being placed on stress leave for nine months, believes the potential for a conflict of interest exists whenever a department employs a full-time staff psychologist.

“He’s on their payroll and you’re supposed to reveal your deepest feelings to him,” said Rainey, one of 11 black deputies who filed a claim in 1990 alleging racism within the department. “He’s being paid by them. How can he be your advocate?”

Nutter said such concerns are irrelevant because all counseling sessions are strictly confidential. All of Nutter’s files are kept in three locked filing cabinets, and the department administration is not told the names of people he sees.

In contrast, psychological evaluations ordered by the department are not confidential.

“We’re paying the bill, we’re sending the individual, we want the information,” Bryce said.

Bryce said worries about confidentiality or conflict of interest are a matter of perception, “and in the war of perception and reality, perception always wins out.”

Over the years, Nutter’s work has made him a well-known figure in local law enforcement circles. Officials with departments he works for say his psychological profiles are accurate and his counseling is reliable in times of crisis.

“He’ll tell you if you have someone who’s going to be an aggressive or assertive person in the field versus having someone who just wants to put in eight hours a day,” said Santa Paula Police Cmdr. Bob Gonzales.

At the same time, Port Hueneme Chief John Hopkins said it’s difficult to measure the work of someone who deals with the mind.

“The only way I’m going to know if he’s doing an adequate job is by failures, and they would have to be psychological failures,” Hopkins said.

“We don’t have any crazies running around here, so I guess we’ve been clearing them out,” he said.

Nutter, who stands 6 feet 5 inches tall, said he enjoys water skiing on the weekends, playing racquetball and reading.

He maintains a private office on Ralston Street in Ventura, in addition to the roomy office at the Ventura County Government Center, from which he is available to the nearly 1,000 Sheriff’s Department workers.

The latter is decorated with an eclectic mix of plaques, commendations, gifts from sheriff’s officials and framed pictures.

Charles Manson’s crazed stare greets visitors on one wall. The portrait was enlarged from a 1968 booking mug of Manson taken in the Ventura County Jail. Manson and his followers had been arrested at a beach near Point Mugu for child endangerment.

“The eyes are just real piercing,” he said of the Manson close-up. “They appear like they look right through you. It’s just a real cold stare. I get a lot of comments about those eyes.”

On another wall hangs a picture of Nutter shaking hands with retired Lt. Col. Oliver North. It was taken when North gave a speech at a hotel in Ventura.

The stereotypical psychoanalyst’s couch is missing, but a multicolored model of the human brain rests on his oversized desk.

Nutter describes himself as a conservative, saying that may be one reason he has much in common with the traditional image of the strait-laced, all-American cop.

“I’m a little to the right of Lawrence Welk, I’m so boring,” he joked.

But those who have known Nutter for many years insist that his polite, soft-spoken demeanor belies an off-beat sense of humor.

“He’s a low-key kind of guy until you get to know him, and once you get to know him he’s a kick in the pants,” said Gonzales, the Santa Paula police commander who took several psychology classes from Nutter in the 1970s through the University of La Verne.

Nutter, who lives with his wife, Jennie, in Ventura, was born in Riverside and grew up in the desert town of Corona. He played on the high school football team and later won a football scholarship to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

His first exposure to psychology and police work came during college when he worked part-time in a maximum-security prison and in the most serious ward of a state mental hospital.

“I got to know real hard-core people. People that would kill you in a minute,” he said. “I enjoyed probing their minds, trying to figure out why someone would do these ghastly things and hurt people like that.”

He later earned a master’s degree in psychology from Pepperdine in 1973 and a doctorate from United States International University in San Diego.

Nutter got into police counseling by accident when a friend of his--a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy--was gunned down during a holdup at a coffee shop in the late 1960s.

“I found out I had a kind of a gift for listening and helping these guys,” he said.