One of the safest places to work in Ventura County is at the Hall of Justice.

Security at the courthouse is provided by dozens of professionals who work at the Sheriff's Department, many of them are assigned as courtroom bailiffs like Deputy Ramirez on the first floor in Courtroom 12.

In the afternoons, he plays music and on Wednesday, Andrea Bocelli's tenor lungs filled the air.

It serves a purpose.

Deputy Ramirez's music is played loud enough to allow attorneys some privacy when they talk to the jailed inmates who are inside a detention cell  that is in close proximity to the front rows.

Some of the music also seems to have a calming effect on the dozens of people waiting for the judge to take the bench.

Upstairs in Courtroom 22, Deputy Plassymeyer will give you the capital of any state. A few weeks ago, I stumped him, however, with Alabama. The capital is Montgomery.

Deputies Ramirez, Alvarez, Frates, Veloz, McLaughlin, Plassymeyer and Tumbleson are a few example of textbook professionalism. There are so many others.

I've seen the deputies come running into a courtroom or the hallway within a minute or so to handle a situation that got out of hand.

These ugly courthouse incidents are few and far between.  In a place where emotions often run high and several hundred inmates are bused there daily, much of the credit for maintaining the peace belongs to the deputies.

It's sometimes simply knowing how to defuse a potentially explosive situation before it gets out of hand.

Yeah, no doubt, there are bad cops. There are also bad journalists, doctors, lawyers, priests, pastors and rabbis.

But I know that Sheriff Dean won't tolerate unprofessionalism among his ranks.

There is another side I sometimes  get to see.

Deputies walking over to hand a box of Kleenex tissues to tearful families of crime victims and even relatives of defendants.

It's doesn't matter hurt is hurt.

This week during a jury recess on Tuesday, I was in a courtroom.

A deputy and I were the only ones in the courtroom.  It was quiet. He was near the bench, but I could still hear him talk to someone about his dog, "Hendrix."  The animal was in so much pain, and the deputy was going to have to make the decision on whether to put down the animal.

"He can't handle the pain," the deputy told the person on the other end of the phone. "We can cremate him but what's the point?"

He quietly walked over and stood a couple of feet from a wall of large crime scene photographs, evidence being used in an aggravated assault trial. He quietly wept, wiping his eyes with Kleenex tissues.  For a while, he said nothing while facing the photographs with his back still toward me.

 "I'm sorry. It's just tough man,"  the red-eyed deputy told the bailiff who had entered the courtroom and found out about Hendrix.

The  deputy who is 6-foot-plus and muscular said his dog, "Hendrix,"  is13 years old, and Hendrix is an old dog but he's family.

I told the deputy about an old cockatiel I found on top of my apartment roof more than five years ago. I didn't want the bird. I took out a newspaper ad and called the Humane Society.  No response. I then planned to drop off the bird at the bird sanctuary in Summerland.

The cockatiel is my buddy and he's family too.  I named the bird "Pretty Bird." It was the name I gave him when I first saw him up on the roof.  I told the deputy that when my bird is no more it's going to bust me up inside.

On Thursday,  good news.

The deputy told me that he went to another veterinarian and got a second opinion. The deputy was happy. Hendrix, it turns out, has a bad case of arthritis and a prescription for drugs was written.

So Hendrix still has a many more years left, he said with a calm smile.

Friday afternoon, Deputy Plassmeyer knew the capital of Florida.  In Courtroom 12, Deputy Ramirez was playing oldies - Sweet.