35-YEAR LAPD VETERAN RETIRING KEY IS 'RESPECT FOR VICTIMS, FAMILIES'.

Byline: RICK COCA

Staff Writer

Mike Coffey listens to dead people.

Working the last 19 years as a homicide detective in the LAPD's North Hollywood Division, the 59-year-old Simi Valley resident considers the ability to listen -- to the living and the dead -- as the key ingredient in cracking a case.

"When I go to a homicide scene, I try to see what the dead person is trying to tell me, as bizarre as that might sound," Coffey said. "I'm sitting there trying to see what was this person doing just before they died."

He's worked 410 homicide cases, the names of victims and suspects and the details of the crime scenes filling three black notebooks.

He's solved an impressive 82 percent of his cases -- an accomplishment that earned him the reputation as a detective's detective.

But after 35 years on the Los Angeles Police Department and nearly two decades in homicide, Coffey is retiring.

"His respect for his victims, his respect for their families, his respect for the value of life has always come through," said Deputy Chief Michel Moore, the top-ranking officer in the San Fernando Valley. "It's hard to imagine LAPD without Mike Coffey."

Coffey was born and raised in the Valley, graduating from Crespi Carmelite High School before enlisting in the Air Force and serving in the Vietnam War.

He joined the LAPD in 1972, a rail-thin blond with just 135 pounds on his 5-foot-8-inch frame. After one too many wrestling matches with emboldened drunk-driving suspects, Coffey decided to bulk up, adding 40 pounds through exercise and diet. The mano-a-mano faceoffs with drunks ended soon after.

Today, the gray-haired Coffey maintains his solid build by jogging five miles a day and lifting weights.

A deeply religious man who occasionally prays for spiritual help in solving cases, Coffey has spent a career defying the Hollywood stereotype of the hard-edged detective.

"It's not so much being a tough guy," he said. "That's not part of this game at all. ... It's not a male thing, it's not a female thing. ... It's just being able to show a little knowledge and aggressiveness and determination, but to respect the people you're talking to, no matter what you think they did."

And they've done a lot.

As lead detective and head of his division's gang unit, Coffey has investigated drive-by shootings, home-invasion robberies that turned deadly, drug deals gone awry. He's viewed thousands of corpses but has never found it easy to witness so much pain and suffering.

"You just have to do it; you have a job to do," Coffey said.

"Your responsibilities are to the deceased, so you're just going to have to bite the bullet and stick in there. Especially with the child deaths, it's awfully hard to see."

The very first homicide case he investigated involved a young boy who accidentally shot his brother with their father's gun.

His last investigation was the day before Christmas 2006, when a man beating his live-in girlfriend was fatally stabbed by the woman's 17-year-old son -- a case ruled a justifiable homicide.

"That was Christmas Eve," Coffey said. "Nobody had even eaten dinner yet. The spirit of the holiday is shattered and the whole family is shattered."

Homicides during holidays are not uncommon, Coffey said, adding that the one thing he could never get used to as a detective was "call outs" -- those calls that come at the most inopportune times, beckoning the detective to a newly discovered crime scene.

He'd get call outs at 3 a.m. while fast asleep or during his children's birthday parties - and often during major holidays.

But it was there he'd do some of his best work, "listening" respectfully to the dead -- a tangible experience he could draw on later, putting faces to crimes, seeing firsthand a potential murderer's work -- pieces of a puzzle fixed in the senses -- to be solved later.

Coffey's son, Eric Coffey, himself a six-year LAPD patrol officer with the Devonshire Division, said his father is so serious at a crime scene that those working under him him use a code word to announce his arrival: CHAOS.

"It means 'Coffey has arrived on scene,' so get yourself together," Eric said with a chuckle. "He has a strict way he wants a murder scene to be set up."

Coffey was surprised when Eric announced that he wanted to join the force. But once he did, the two grew closer.

"He tells me little tidbits on how to do things better," Eric said.

As for Coffey, he says it was 35 years well spent, particularly his time heading up homicide, doing his best to honor the lives of those no longer living.

"What can be more important than solving the death of a human being?" he said.

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) LAPD Detective Mike Coffey, appearing outside the North Hollywood station, is retiring after 35 years on the force.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

(2) Homicide Detective Mike Coffey, second from the left, is retiring after 35 years on the force. This 1972 photo was taken when he started his career.