Apple Valley police chief bows out

Scott Johnson began arresting bad guys 36 years ago and never quit.

Johnson, 56, retired this month after a decade as Apple Valley's police chief. He said he chose his career because he likes helping people and working outdoors.

Even as chief, Johnson continued to get out of the office. He collared three bad guys in 2007, two in one day. And a few months before his retirement, he was up to his old tricks.

On Sept. 16, the chief was listening to police radio in his office and heard about a Target shoplifter fleeing with a 22-inch flat-screen TV. The Target, at County Road 42 and Cedar Avenue, is about a quarter mile from the cop shop in City Hall. A woman shopper in a minivan called police while following the man and reported that he had stashed the TV in some bushes.

Johnson ran outside to his black, unmarked Crown Victoria and sped off. He found the 6-foot-tall thief with dreadlocks cutting across a roundabout.

"I jumped out of the car and said, 'You are under arrest!' I told him to get on his knees" and cuffed him, Johnson said. The woman shopper caught up and identified the suspect as the TV thief.

Johnson's 38 years in law enforcement (two as a teenaged dispatcher) are "almost unheard of," said Dakota County Sheriff Dave Bellows, who worked under Johnson as a young cop in Lakeville.

"Scott never liked computers, but he realized it was the future and he learned it. There's not much on a computer he couldn't do," Bellows said. "He's also one of smartest people I ever met."

Johnson, who grew up in Burnsville, spent 24 years with the Lakeville police. In that time, he also was a Lakeville volunteer firefighter, became an amateur pilot, got married and became the father of three kids, one of whom is a Faribault police officer.

He earned a master's degree in public administration from Hamline University in 1997. The next year he became police chief in Mendota Heights, and from there he moved on to Apple Valley, a city of about 52,000, in May 2001.

This year he was paid $112,000 to manage a $7.7 million budget and 48 sworn officers. Capt Jon Rechtzigel will serve as acting chief while the city seeks a permanent replacement.

In the years ahead, Johnson is looking forward to spending more time with his young granddaughter in Arizona and another grandchild on the way.

The most traumatic incident in the careers of Johnson and Bellows occurred when they responded to a call late one night in May 1985. They were seeking a man who was wearing only boots and a ski mask. Police were told he also might have a gun.

As the partners chased the man in a mobile-home park, "he turned around and pointed a gun right at my chest," Johnson said. "I heard a shot that sounded like a .22 caliber. Dave and I returned fire and killed him."

Lakeville's chief at the time told reporters the 30-year-old man's weapon looked like a Luger but turned out to be a toy metal cap gun, according to newspaper reports.

"I was devastated," Johnson recalled. He and Bellows saw a counselor and went back to work.

They beat the odds because statistics show only one of four officers in fatal shootings are still cops five years later, Bellows noted.