Officially, at least, Orange Cove police Chief Frank Steenport says he still doesn't know what he did to get suspended. Unofficially, he knows what he's read in the paper, and it seems to be about budget overruns in his department.

In reality, he says he's likely a victim of Orange Cove's rough-and-tumble small-town politics.

"This was a full-contact sport," he says. "This was not Mayberry."

And though he had run-ins with others, including current Mayor Gabriel Jimenez and City Manager Sam Escobar, Steenport said he suspects the main culprit behind his troubles is the city's longtime power broker, Victor Lopez, whom he compares to a "Third World despot."

Steenport, 57, has been largely quiet since his Feb. 11 suspension, but after reading about himself in a story in The Bee that outlined Orange Cove's latest political upheaval and his role in it, the chief said he had to speak up.

In an interview at the office of his Fresno attorney, Barry Bennett, Steenport traced his time from being tapped to reconstitute Orange Cove's long-dormant police department up until his suspension by Escobar last month.

Yes, he said, the department ran over budget. But, he added, it was with the blessing of a council that wanted to maintain a high service level, even as the economy tanked.

Steenport said that's the kind of dedicated effort needed at the time to get Orange Cove's crime under control.

There was an "effort to win the hearts and minds of Orange Cove residents -- and we'd done it," Steenport said.

When the police department was reborn in late 2009, Orange Cove was a corrupt small town where the law was applied loosely, if at all, and not equally, he said. A town where political favors were done for family and friends. And a town where one man's word was paramount -- that of Lopez.

In response, Lopez suggested Steenport was losing his mind. He denied all of the chief's allegations, and said they are nothing more than the rantings of a beleaguered city employee. He challenged Steenport to meet him in the boxing ring.

"He's the one that's worried, not Victor Lopez," Lopez said. "He's the one that's got the problem, not Victor Lopez. ... Give him a handkerchief, man. When big boys cry like that."

A new department

From the very start, Steenport said, there was resistance to reforming Orange Cove's police department, and all of it was coming from "Victor and his cronies."

It was 2009, and Steenport was police chief in the tiny western Fresno County town of Huron when he got a call from Orange Cove City Manager Alan Bengyel. Steenport had taken on a similar challenge in Huron when Bengyel was city manager there.

Bengyel and the Orange Cove council wanted to analyze what it would take to restart the department, which had been dormant since 1982. In that 27-year interim, Fresno County sheriff's deputies had been contracted to patrol the town.

When Bengyel contacted Steenport, Lopez, though still mayor at the time, found himself in a strange position -- the minority. Lopez couldn't stop the council's actions, though Steenport said the mayor was dead set against any talk of reconstituting the department.

Steenport said he studied the issue and made a report to the council -- all without charge. His finding was a local police force was the way to go -- if it was affordable. The coverage was better, Steenport said he told council members, and locally based officers would better be able keep tabs on what was going on in town.

The presentation included estimates on costs, adequate staffing levels, and the number of police vehicles needed, among other things. Steenport said he gave the council a cost range based on the economy as it was in February 2009 -- and he warned them that if the economy worsened (which it did) those costs would likely increase.