Remembering Rose (apologies for the lengthy introduction to set the stage how my interaction with Rose first began):
My first meeting ...
Back during Sheriff Sherman Block's term, the courts were facing a serious backlog of drug cases. The County jail had filled up to the point where the Federal court was seriously looking at a consent decree to deal with the jail overcrowding issue.
A working committee was formed consisting of Assistant Sheriff Dick Forman, Deputy DA Steve Kay (who along with Vincent Bugliosi prosecuted the Charles Manson case), Michael Judge (later to become the L.A. County Public Defender), and a fellow from the ACLU. They met regularly at the Hall of Justice and eventually determined that the choke point was the crime lab.
I was invited to these meeting as the Sheriff's crime laboratory director and eventually was directed to find a way to speed up the turn around time to test drug cases. Kay and Judge agreed that if they knew the results of the analyses at the time of arraignment, they could set up a version of "let's make a deal" to have the defendant plead out and thus lower the incarnation rates. The trick was to have the test results over to the DA's office within 48 hours.
We went to work back at the lab and came up with a scheme to have evidence curriers stop at police and sheriff's stations each day and to run the evidence to the lab, ASAP. Lab personnel would immediately conduct the tests on the drug cases and fax the results to the DA's office. For a ”proof of concept” we agreed on using Inglewood municipal court and target those agencies who arraigned their drug cases at that court. Judge and Kay were assigned there. As experienced criminal litigators, they could negotiate a fair and usually the best deal for the defendant who the theory went would plead guilty to the charges thus cutting back on the number of inmates in custody and awaiting trial.
So we set it up and it worked. Now we need a way to fund a county-wide effort. The US Department of Justice had several grants available for Los Angeles County. Sherman Block, as Sheriff would oversee where the funding went, but he had to keep the L. A. City and independent cities happy.
We started to hold meetings in a conference room at the County’s central jail to discuss how to divide up the federal dollars. Naturally, the city, county, and independent cities had different ideas about how to best spend the funds. L.A. City's idea was to have the City Attorney condemn properties where drugs were being sold. The independent cities wanted to use the money to fund a county-wide communications systems and the County (the Sheriff's Department) supported the effort to rapidly turn around drug cases.
Those meetings were my first experiences dealing with Rose. Jackie Goldberg also was involved as well as a deputy city attorney. Our county representative was LASD Commander Billy Hinkle who was generally unable to effectively argue with the mayor's representative, Rose Ochi. Rose would beat the living daylights out of us each time we met. But eventually, we managed to come up with a scheme to divide up the funds and everyone got something. But it was painful being beaten up by Rose each time we met.
Fast forward to the early 2000s: We figured out a way to build a new crime lab on the CSULA campus to house the LAPD and LASD labs along with the college's criminal justice department. For some reason, all the planets lined up and the project was going reasonably well (although CSULA was often a pain to deal with). Sometimes, I get these crazy ideas and this was one of them: I proposed an idea to create a forensic science institute, to be named the California Forensic Science Institute. I reasoned that an institute affiliated with a university would have an easier time getting Federal funds for in-service education and research. I pitched the idea to the CSULA administration and they liked it. Jim Kelly, dean of the College of Health and Human Services was our point of contact.
One day Jim came to see me. He had a sheepish look on his face. He told me that the university had found a candidate for the executive director of the new institute, but I had veto rights if I disapproved. If I didn't care for the person, they would find someone else. And who was this mysterious person? It was Rose Ochi. Rose had told Jim that she perceived some bad blood between us. With little thought, I told Jim that yes, I had dealings with Rose and recounted how she regularly whupped us at the negotiating table. However, I told Jim that I'd sooner have Rose on our team than against us. So CSULA hired Rose who became the first executive director of the CFSI. We became fast friends and I learned what a fine choice we had made.