It’s All in a Day’s Work : Sheriff’s Dept.: Deputies go about their duties, with the Kolts report having little effect on the performance of their jobs or their interactions with the public.

No sooner had the sleek commuter train slid out of the Imperial Highway Station in South Los Angeles on Wednesday than Sheriff’s Deputy Allen Makarow noticed veteran passenger Steve Collins, and the two men greeted each other like old friends.

A six-month study had just criticized the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for a “deeply disturbing” pattern of brutality, prejudice and lax discipline. But here in the air-conditioned, insular world of the Blue Line, the review by Special Counsel James G. Kolts seemed to inflame no animosities between riders and the deputies who patrol the trains.

Collins said the Kolts report had little effect on his opinion of the Sheriff’s Department or of Makarow, the dark-haired deputy he chats with daily.

“I know a few people will go overboard from time to time,” Collins said as the train sped past empty railroad cars and warehouses on its morning journey toward Long Beach. “But it shouldn’t reflect poorly on all of them.”

As for Makarow, a trim 15-year veteran who hopes to become a full-time spokesman for the department, he wouldn’t comment.

But across the county in West Hollywood, Deputy Dave Olipa and his two partners on bike patrol were far from reticent. And like many other deputies and civilians interviewed, they said the report was having little effect on their daily interactions.

“We got more reaction after Rodney King,” said Olipa, who pedals up and down Santa Monica Boulevard in black biking shorts, a white polo shirt and bright green helmet. “The merchants love us.”

One of his partners, Deputy Chris Hicks, said the deputies he knows hope to avoid violence rather than seek it out.

“He’s got a family. I’ve got a family. We don’t want to get hurt,” Hicks said. “Ninety-nine percent of us out here do a good job.”

Downtown, in the Blue Line tunnel beneath 7th and Flower streets, Deputy John Mitchell agreed.

“I don’t see where that report is indicative of the Sheriff’s Department as a whole,” Mitchell said. “The problem is, people don’t know where to draw the line between what is actually harassment” and what is doing the job.

Although most deputies and civilians interviewed dismissed the report and praised the department, one notable exception was Clint Davis, a 25-year-old black law clerk riding the Blue Line from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles.

Davis took a break from reading his Bible to say that even if only a small number of “problem deputies” have been identified, the department deserves blame for keeping them on the job.

“If those few aren’t weeded out,” Davis said, “then everyone should be held accountable.”

Davis also said he was prone to accept the report’s findings because he has been a victim of harassment by sheriff’s deputies.

“I myself have a BMW and have been stopped and asked if I sold drugs to get it,” Davis said, adding that his parents have witnessed similar abuse in Compton.

But elsewhere on the Blue Line, Deputy Rick Sudik faulted the report for failing to understand the facts of life on the streets.

“If you arrest the same people on a regular basis, with the complaint system the way it is, they now know how to ding us real good,” Sudik said.

Similarly, Hicks, the West Hollywood deputy, said his job’s realities received short shrift in the report.

“I used to work Lynwood,” said Hicks, in reference to a sheriff’s station cited for its high number of excessive-force complaints and allegations that it is home to a white-supremacist gang of deputies.

“Unless you work down there you don’t realize what you’re dealing with. These guys claiming brutality? Their (criminal) records, they run on forever.

“Have the judge come on a ride-along and see how he deals with it,” Hicks continued. “I’d love to see how he stops a man who’s drunk from fighting with you.”

Minutes later, Hicks, Olipa and a third partner, Deputy Paul Terrusa, stopped in at Stabile’s Automotive for a quick hello on their bike patrol. The auto repair shop’s owner had nothing but praise for the three, who once guarded his business “all night long” when a large garage door popped open on Santa Monica Boulevard.

“I see what they go through and they’re polite,” said Bill Stabile Jr., who sees both the color and the seamy underside of the thoroughfare from his shop. He said that working late at night in his office, he has overheard deputies counseling the prostitutes outside and urging them to start their lives over.

“At night, I close the door and I hear what’s going on and they don’t even know I’m listening,” Stabile said.