Former sheriff writes second book
For The Madera Tribune
Former Madera County Sheriff John Anderson released his second book, “Someone Once Said,” which will be available on Amazon.com on March 1.
Former Madera County Sheriff John Anderson returned to Madera last week to mourn former Madera County Sheriff Ovonual Berkley and also to talk about his new book.
“It’s based on my experiences of 53 years as a police officer,” Anderson said. “This is a book about supervision.”
Anderson’s book, “Someone Once Said,” is a book based on quotes and is available on Amazon.com for pre-order and will be released March 1.
“I use quotes from the Bible to Rodney King,” he said. “We start out with how to be a first-level supervisor, then we go to being a manager (lieutenant or captain), then to a leader (Chief of police, sheriff or chief of highway patrol).”
Anderson started his law enforcement career in Williams, his home town.
“I spent 35 years with the CHP with every rank. Then, 16 years as the sheriff,” he said.
Anderson wrote the book to try to help those in law enforcement officers move up in the ranks.
“My concentration on getting my degrees wasn’t so much on police work, but on management,” he said. “Most of these are quotes about management, but they deal with law enforcement managers and leaders. I saw these things happen and a lot happened on patrol.”
Anderson spent 16 years as the Sheriff of Madera County after transferring to Madera from Redding.
“I was the chief of nine counties, from Tejon Pass to Modesto, 15 area commands,” he said. “I had lieutenants and captains working for me. I came here in 1985 and retired in 2000 when I was elected Sheriff. Before that, I was in Redding as an assistant chief and we had 15 counties. I did that for four or five years.”
Over his time as the Sheriff, Anderson notes that the only real problem he had to endure was the tribal stand-off at the Chukchansi Casino.
“In my 16 years of being here, the only problem we had was at the Chukchansi Casino where the tribal leaders were fighting trying to take it over,” he said. “I shut them down for a year. In my 16 years, the four or five months messing with Chukchansi was the only problem I had. We had the usual police stuff, but nothing like that.”
In 1999, Anderson released a book, written with Marsh Cassady, entitled “The Newhall Incident.”
“Back in 1970, we had four officers killed,” he said. “There used to be a restaurant and had four officers killed there. I wrote a book about that, in about 1999 or 2000. It was printed after I became Sheriff. That had some notoriety because it was about an incident when four officers were killed at once. Up until that time on patrol, we thought we were the best and knew how to make car stops. We found out that night we weren’t as good as we thought.”
Anderson’s “Someone Once Said” is written mainly for law enforcement officers.
“This is for police officers who want to be sergeants, police officers that are in management that want to learn a little more and police leaders,” he said. “They can pick up something. I found out stuff while I was doing the research. This is not all personal. A lot of the things was I saw other departments doing. It’s what other departments did right and did wrong.”
