National Football League

Officer's journey takes him from O.J. Simpson to USA team handball

Published Feb. 23, 2016 2:33 p.m. ET

Sam Gardner

On June 17, 1994, David Gascon stepped up to a lectern at Los Angeles Police Department headquarters and delivered news that no police commander wants to have to pass along: a suspect in a double homicide was nowhere to be found.

Except in this case, the murder suspect was O.J. Simpson, and the ex-football star was supposed to have already been in custody.

It wasn't the first time Gascon found himself in the spotlight during a high-profile case -- he'd been a prominent figure as a police spokesperson in the Michael Jackson child abuse investigation a year earlier, as well -- but as the horde of reporters in attendance let out a collective gasp at the news regarding Simpson's whereabouts, Gascon knew the case was about to take on a life of its own.

"It was an issue of significant public interest and I knew it was coming, and I certainly was emotionally prepared for it," Gascon told FOX Sports by phone on Monday. "So it was not anything that caught me off-guard. It was just a challenge because of what it was.

"It's not often you walk into an auditorium with 800 or more people jammed in there, everybody has cameras," he continued. "There are reporters sitting in front of the seats and all the aisles are jammed up, and you have to use police banner tape to keep people out of police headquarters. I mean, you don't often see that kind of thing."

In some ways, the day seemed doomed long before Simpson led police officers on his infamous low-speed chase through LA.

The main suspect in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, Simpson was scheduled to surrender himself to authorities at 11 a.m. that Friday. The time was later changed to 11:45, with a noon police press conference to follow, but Simpson and his attorney, Bob Shapiro, never showed.

Additionally, Shapiro informed LAPD that he was unaware of Simpson's location, putting Gascon and the rest of the department in an awkward spot, to say the least.

"If you're the lawyer representing somebody, you'd rather do it in a diplomatic and organized way than have the cops go kicking in your door or finding you someplace and dragging you out in handcuffs," Gascon said. "So when somebody gives an assurance that they're going to surrender their client, you take them at face value and they're usually responsible people.

"I'm not saying Bob Shapiro wasn't a responsible person, but he said that they were going to surrender him at a certain time, and all of a sudden, he didn't," Gascon continued. "It's not that Bob Shapiro is responsible for O.J. Simpson; O.J. Simpson is responsible for O.J. Simpson. But when the attorney of record gives you an assurance that something is going to happen, you're supposed to be able to take that to the bank."

As if that wasn't enough, the press conference had to be delayed until 2 p.m. due to bomb threats, but once the scene had been cleared and reporters filed into the building, Gascon was ready for the onslaught of questions he knew would be coming his way.

"From a standpoint of having to be in front of cameras explaining that, you have one thing that you always can rely on, and that's the truth," Gascon said. "You just tell the truth, and while telling the truth can be discomforting to some people, it's a lot easier to deal with an issue when you do."

And though Gascon appeared frustrated at times throughout the tense exchange with reporters, he says that he was confident throughout his delivery of the message because he felt he already knew how the manhunt for Simpson would play out.

"I felt calm and I felt very focused and, in fact, before I took the stage, I told the three people I was with how this thing was going to end up," Gascon said. "Because when you think about it, how else could it have ended up but the way it did? Where was somebody like O.J. Simpson going to go where people were not going to recognize him?

"I knew he was going to end up at his house," he continued of the eventual chase. "Where else was he going to go? He certainly wasn't going to get away, so it could only end one of two ways. Either there was going to be an unfortunate situation with a shooting or he was going to surrender, and I never felt that it would be anything other than him surrendering."

Not long after Gascon addressed the media, Shapiro held his own press conference, at which Robert Kardashian read Simpson's so-called suicide note, however, Gascon says he never considered Simpson a threat to end his own life.

"I don't think I ever believed that he was going to hurt himself," Gascon said. "I think he's a master manipulator, and though others may disagree, my thought throughout the thing was that he was never suicidal and was never going to do that."

Eventually, officers did take Simpson into custody, and that night, some eight hours after his original press conference, Gascon was able to update the world with the news he'd intended to pass along from the start, calling the end result "something that all of us can be very proud of."

Sarah Gascon

Now nearly 22 years later, the case -- and Gascon's press conference -- are back in the spotlight thanks to the FX miniseries "The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story" (Tuesdays 10 p.m. ET). But for Gascon, who spent 25 years as a consultant for producers Steven Bochco and Stephen Cannell on such shows as "Hill Street Blues", "Murder One" and "21 Jump Street", there's not much interest in reliving the fictionalized version of the Simpson case.

"It was entertainment, but part of my responsibility was to take the creative juices of writers and producers and make it somewhat realistic," Gascon said of his time in TV. "That type of programming can never be 100 percent realistic. They have to sell you a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, but to the extent that I could help shape something and make it somewhat reasonable, I did.

"I saw a little bit of the first show," he added of "The People v. O.J. Simpson." "But I didn't have too much of an interest in watching a dramatic presentation of that event."

Instead, Gascon, who retired as an assistant chief in 2002 after more than 30 years with LAPD, pours most of his time and effort into a more recent passion: team handball.

In 2005, Gascon began working on a volunteer basis with USA Team Handball after his daughter Sarah, a former volleyball and women's baseball star, made the national team. Sarah is now a team captain and her dad is the general manager of the organization's high performance program, which includes the two US national teams.

"It's a great sport and it's amazing that so few people know of the sport in the United States," Gascon said. "Because when you really watch, it's like the ideal American sport. It's very physical, it's fast, it's quick, there's a lot of contact -- no padding -- fast-breaking, scoring, spectacular goalkeeping. It's everything you'd want in a sport, and it's incredibly dynamic. You have to see it to understand it, but then you fall in love with it."

One of Europe's most popular sports, team handball has yet to truly catch on in the U.S., and the program's growth has been stunted as a result. The men's team has not qualified for an Olympics outside the U.S. since 1988 and the women haven't qualified for a non-U.S. Olympics since 1992. Neither team will be competing in Rio this summer, either, but Gascon hopes that with proper exposure, a return to Olympic competition could be realistic by 2020.

In 2013, Gascon helped establish a residency program at Auburn University, where the men's and women's teams now live and train, and the hope is that USA team handball can create inroads in the SEC to get more top athletes playing.

"Success will breed further success, and if we can have success that will allow the general athlete population to gain better access to the sport," Gascon said. "If they can actually see it on television and see it spread to these universities, we think it will catch fire. Then we go from athletes who are good athletes to athletes who are great athletes. And the better the athletic ability, the likelihood for competitive United States team increases.

"We are right on the cusp right now of being able to compete with the western hemisphere teams," Gascon continued. "We're not that far away. But everyone else is trying to win also."

You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.