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Usually professors dress to impress. Some go even as far as to don the entire suit and tie. But when a moustached man wearing a blue hoodie and sweat pants walks into room 420 and sets his bag down at the teacher’s desk, he draws more than one odd look from confused students.

Eyebrows undoubtedly raise further when the man says, “Hi, I’m Bobby Lomeli and welcome to Intro to Administration of Justice.”

While Professor Lomeli’s day job involves loads of paperwork, it is not teaching at Pasadena City College. Lomeli is better known as Sergeant Lomeli in the Pasadena Police Department.

Lomeli, an officer of since January 1985, is in charge of property crimes. After finishing his coffee, he must review all the reports of theft in Pasadena and allocate each case to the nine detectives. The rest of his day consists of pondering how to form an operational plan for search warrants, scheduling, and the other responsibilities attached to being a sergeant.

Every Tuesday and Thursday night, however, Lomeli trades in his uniform in for sweats. When Lomeli dons a hoodie instead of a badge, he has a reputation as one of the most hilarious professors on campus.

Everybody has had the class where the professor lulls even the most attentive student to sleep. They dim the lights, turn on the nightlight, and proceed read the story book (or PowerPoint) verbatim.

That is not Professor Lomeli’s class.

With 22 years of teaching and his 30 years being a cop, Lomeli can feel when students in the back are ready to slip their phones onto their laps to text anybody that will answer back.

“When you’re teaching you have to be able to read the crowd,” Lomeli explains. “If you get to a point where the crowd starts to doze off (it doesn’t happen very often) or feel uneasy then it’s time to change it up a little bit. Then it’s time to tell a story or pick on somebody!”

There’s more than one way for a pitcher to throw a ball to a catcher. Lomeli’s stories are curve balls that students must actually be attentive to catch. He relates the topic to real life and uses various students for examples.

“Sometimes I make them burglars, sometimes prostitutes, different things depending on what we’re talking about,” Lomeli said.

Those students sitting in the front row are brave souls who are not afraid of a little heat. The professor prefers to pick on the students in front as he told them beforehand that is where he’ll look to for his next victim.

Abraham Hernandez Jr., a first year student, avoids the front row, but sits back and enjoys the class nonetheless.

“Sometimes he gets serious, but he kind of lays it out flat and it’s nice and funny at the end,” Hernandez said.

Lomeli keeps the air in his class light, but he can thicken it when he speaks about crimes such as kidnapping or murder.

When asked about his humor students attribute it to his experience with the underbelly of society.

“Life is funny and you can’t take everything too seriously and in his line of work he has to make everything funny or otherwise he’ll go crazy with all the heaviness he endures each day,” said Nydia Foster, a student that knows Lomeli outside of Pasadena City College.

In school, students are taught not to judge a book by its cover, but putting that into practice is much more difficult. Society often views cops as straight-laced officials searching for a reason to write a ticket and professors as intellectuals in suits there to read a PowerPoint for an hour.

But behind every uniform is not a job title, but a person.

“To leave a feeling with the students that now they have a different idea of what a real police person is like. Many of them have this vision of police being straight laced, by the book, yes ma’am, just the facts,” Lomeli said. “But, we’re people and we all come in many shapes and colors and personalities and I’m just one that likes to interact with young people.”

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