DPS vet of 43 years, Santa Cruz, ready to retire

In 1974, Department of Public Safety Commissioner Albert Santa Cruz donned a Mississippi Highway Patrol uniform. Now he leads and fights for the agency that began shaping him 43 years ago.

The Gulf Coast native, a man of few words until you get to know him, has worked his way through the ranks to the top. Feb. 1 will be his first day in an arguable lifetime not to be employed by the state. He said he's been thinking about retirement for a while, but now it's time.

Gov. Phil Bryant has not yet named a replacement for Santa Cruz, and offered glowing words about his service.

"I am grateful to Albert for more than 40 years of service to the state. No one cares more than he does for the men and women of the Department of Public Safety and the Mississippi Highway Patrol," he said. "During his tenure, DPS has seen the opening of a state-of-the-art crime lab, two classes of trooper school graduates added to the ranks of the Highway Patrol, a pay raise for uniformed personnel and six consecutive championships in the National LawFit Challenge. I wish him the best upon his well-deserved retirement."

There's still a lot of fighting to be done, Santa Cruz said, and he hopes the new leadership is willing to go to battle, and that the legislators are listening.

"I've done what I can do. You can hear that train whistle blowing as they used to say, and I hear it blowing and I'm ready to go," he said. "In manpower, we're probably the shortest we've ever been. We need a patrol school, a large school, and not only one. We need them back to back."

Santa Cruz spent two and a half years as a sheriff's deputy before he joined MHP in 1974. He served on the road until 1986 when he became a master sergeant and stayed there until 1995 when he was promoted to Troop Commander of the coast district.

After spending a few years in the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation as a captain, Gov. Haley Barbour appointed him to lead special events and planning, then asked him to take over as chief for the Highway Patrol. Santa Cruz said he was "extremely happy" doing what he was doing, so he consulted his family, finally agreeing to the appointment. It wasn't long until Commissioner Steve Simpson ran for office, and Barbour appointed Santa Cruz.

"I sure didn't like that," he said with a laugh. "I knew the Highway Patrol, but as commissioner that was a different ballgame."

Barbour told him to surround himself with good people. He took the advice and the position, planning to leave when Barbour did. Then another highlight came when Gov. Phil Bryant asked him to stay on as commissioner not once, but twice.

Through the years, there have been ups and downs, so many of them etched in his memory. Each one has its own emotion.

He thought Hurricane Camille was as bad as it could be until his house filled up with water during Hurricane Katrina. He and his son tied two ice chests together with an extension cord and tied off to the house to ride out the flooding. He watched the lights come on and the siren begin to wail as salt water short out the electrical system on his patrol car and it floated away. It was found later with his John Deere on top of the hood.

The emotion showed in his eyes as he recounted the day his partner, Trooper Bruce Ladner, was killed by a Florida couple who shot him and stole his patrol car, leaving him for dead. Witnesses were able to give authorities a good amount of suspect information, but there was no way Ladner could have known that the Lincoln he was pulling over was stolen, and that the drivers' license Tracy Alan Hansen gave him was fake.

During that encounter, Hansen and his girlfriend, Anita L. Krencic, shot Ladner three times. He was able to flag a passing car to take him to the hospital, and he died 31 hours later. Santa Cruz was off that day.

"They told me that he'd been shot. I had on a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt, and I grabbed a gun and got in the car," Santa Cruz, who was a master sergeant at the time, said.

Hansen and Krecic fled the scene in Ladner's patrol car. They pulled over a Ford Ranger and stole it, leaving its driver with the patrol car. They spent the next several hours asking Hancock County residents to take them to New Orleans. En route to a Waveland hotel room, they were caught.

"Me and another trooper, believe it or not, we caught him that night," Santa Cruz said.

That experience colored a lot of the rest of Santa Cruz's career.

"It shows you what can happen. What a traffic stop can turn into, and you've got to be careful," he said. "It's so easy for something to happen."

As a longtime leader, the commissioner can remember 16 troopers who have died in the line of duty while he has been at DPS. He didn't say as much, but it's clear he remembers them all very personally.

"I've had troopers that died... one that drowned in a car. Some killed in wrecks, that were shot, that were friends of mine. Not partners, not as close as Bruce," he said,  the thought tailing off. "It's like losing one of your own kids."

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But the bright spots come to him, too. Santa Cruz said he was incredibly honored to receive the Jim Ingram Lifetime Acheivement Award in 2015. Ingram, a veteran FBI agent who investigated the deaths of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, had been commissioner when Santa Cruz joined DPS, during the Kirk Fordice administration. After leaving DPS, he worked with the FBI's civil rights cold case unit, most notably in the prosecutions of Edgar Ray Killen and James Ford Seale.

"I've never met a finer man in my life," he said. "To receive that award, I'll put that above anything I've ever gotten. He was straight with you, and he was fair, and I've tried to be that way, too."

Santa Cruz, who was a sniper before DPS had a SWAT team, values everything he's accomplished. But more than that, he takes great joy in watching the process as determined young men and women become troopers.

"The good part, I think, is I'll remember every class that I've been to as a trooper that graduated. Seeing these young men and women walk off that stage with their diplomas in their hands," he said. "That's part of my family."

That's what DPS has been to Santa Cruz — a family. He has troopers that are his actual kin, but to him, everyone of his men and women at DPS are his brothers or sisters. Matter of fact, he'll tell you, law enforcement has its sibling rivalries, but there are no bonds like it.

"We bicker, but that's part of it. If one gets hurt, I don't care who it is, what agency, you hurt all of us, and we're coming together as that family again," he said. "When something takes place, everything is forgotten and it's one big family again. Especially DPS. That's a family I've never seen anything like."

Contact Therese Apel at 601-961-7236 or tapel@gannett.com. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.