When Wayne Byerley read on a police recruitment flier that “work and life balance” was cherished for Signal Hill employees, he knew it was the right place for him.
When the city’s newest Chief of Police interviewed for his job and told City Manager Carlo Tomaino that he won’t miss his 14-year-old’s track and field meets for city meetings, Tomaino replied, “That’s the right answer.”
Signal Hill City Council unanimously approved the appointment of Byerley as the new chief of police at its May 16 meeting. His first official day was May 23.
Previously, Byerley served as Captain of the Investigative and Administrative Services department for the Los Alamitos Police Department for three years.
Byerley started his career with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, where he worked for 32 years in various roles. He served as a Deputy Sheriff, Sergeant, Lieutenant and Captain.
Having worked for a large entity like the OC Sheriff’s Department and a smaller city like Los Alamitos, Byerley said the transition coming into Signal Hill has been easy and enjoyable. Signal Hill and Los Alamitos have nearly identical populations, only a couple hundred residents away from one another.
Byerley plans on bringing some of the same ideas that worked for Los Alamitos to his role in Signal Hill, starting with establishing a sense of pride. He wants the department’s motto “We’re committed to excellence in service” to be plastered on every cop car, business card and piece of stationary that officers use.
Though his office only has a couple of decorations—a fake plant he’s had for decades that follows him from office to office, an American flag made from wood that an OC resident gifted him and a small door hanger revealing his love for Lake Mohave—Byerley feels right at home in his new position.
More than anything, he’s enjoying spending time with his coworkers and fellow City staff. It’s a luxury he missed working for a county department all those years. Byerley said certain friends he would see every couple of years because of how large the department was.
“Everybody just seems to be here for the right reasons, their hearts in the right place,” Byerley said. “When you look at how they value community engagement, they value people from all walks of life. They do the flag raises … just to see how they make all the residents feel valued.”
As of now, Byerley said his main goal is to get proper levels of staffing in the department. The department is currently hiring for a dispatcher, police officers and a police recruiter. Pay for these positions range from $58,000 to $109,000.
“I want to focus on bringing people on board that are connected to the area … Because a lot of times officers will come here, get their basic training out of the way and then they’ll look to another agency,” Byerley said. “I really want the department to be a destination career, not a feeder system for another department.”
To do this, Byerley said the department needs to connect more closely with the community. He tells his officers to think of every interaction as possible recruitment, and wants police at food distributions, baseball games, college games and community events.
Although he didn’t have Signal Hill on his radar for a career opportunity, the city has always been in the peripherals of his life, having grown up in Lakewood. He attended a driver’s permit course where he learned how to drive going up and down the hills of the city.
Byerley also attended multiple explorer’s meetings with the Signal Hill Police Department, where they spoke about the responsibilities and opportunities of joining local law enforcement. Over four decades later, he’s returned to the place that taught him so much.
“I really want the department to be a destination career, not a feeder system for another department.”
Chief Wayne Byerley
Byerley knew he wanted to be in law enforcement ever since he was attending Lakewood High School. Pushed by a desire to make a difference and serve, his ultimate goal when he joined law enforcement was to “take bad guys to jail.”
Years later, he had what he calls “a major paradigm shift” which changed how he viewed his career.
While working for the OC Sheriff’s Department, his mom was diagnosed with cancer. His schedule became hectic as he helped his mom go to and from appointments and deal with the side effects of chemotherapy.
Byerley said when he would call his job to let them know he wouldn’t be able to come into work, he was faced with two different supervisors who had drastically different responses. Sometimes, he would be answered by a supervisor who had no patience or understanding of his situation, often telling him that he needed to give a more advanced notice.
Other times, Byerley would call and speak to a different supervisor who had the same response each time: “We’re here for you, do whatever you need. We’re going to make it work.”
Three months later, Byerley’s mother passed away and he was faced with a choice.
“I thought to myself, I can still do police work, do all that hard-charging stuff. But if I don’t pursue leadership and try to promote within the department, then that first guy that I called into, that’s going to spawn in the organization,” Byerley said.
“And I wanted to promote, I wanted to make a difference. That way when somebody else is going through a crisis, when they call in and they need support for work, they get it.”
Byerley has carried that mindset with him in every leadership role he’s had. He considers himself a “servant leader,” whose job it is to support and help everybody else.
Byerley said that community trust is also very important to him. In 2018, a former sergeant he briefly worked with at the OC Sheriff’s Department testified that Byerley told him to delete copies of citizen and inmate complaints against the department.
Byerley explained that he followed protocol of removing “duplicate records” that somehow were in the wrong database. Once correcting the database, he felt it was appropriate to delete the files that were in the wrong place, but had since been moved into its correct spot.
He said a “former disgruntled employee” alleged that Byerley was acting out of the bounds of protocols. The OC Sheriff’s Office did not comment when the Signal Tribune called regarding the incident.
Byerley said he doesn’t have plans of leaving Signal Hill anytime soon, and though he didn’t want to give an exact answer, he said he expects to spend “at least a few years” with the department in order to really create change.
Kristen Farrah Naeem contributed to this article.
