"My name is Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, SFPD, you're under arrest for the murder of..."
Leland Francis Stottlemeyer is Captain of the San Francisco Police Department's Homicide Division.
Appearance[]
Leland is Caucasian with blond hair and a mustache. He typically wears a suit.
Personality[]
Leland, like Sharona and Natalie, often serves as a voice of reason when Monk is having psychotic episodes. He and Monk go "way back," and though Monk gets on his nerves a lot, he is still a good captain and friend to Monk. At the beginning of the series, he does not respect Monk or his theories as much. It's assumed that he and Randy were somewhat jealous of Monk and his abilities (though Randy more than Leland). In "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever," he laments that he was the youngest detective in the history of the department, and now he was just "the guy who knows how to find [Monk]."
He has some anger issues, as highlighted in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Marriage," when he punches a cop claimed to be having an affair with his wife, Karen. As a result, he takes anger management classes. There, he is given a yo-yo to prevent future outbursts, and instructed to repeat his affirmation, "these things happen." Both the yo-yo and the affirmation appear in later episodes. (Stottlemeyer plays with the yo-yo briefly in "Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike," and Monk does in "Mr. Monk Goes to the Bank." In the latter, Stottlemeyer also paraphrases his affirmation upon seeing Monk in his office.)
Quotes[]
"Even God took a day off. And what day did he take off? It was Sunday. Why did he take off Sunday? I tell you why Sunday, so he could watch football!"
— Leland Stottlemeyer, Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs
Trivia[]
- In the pilot episode, Randy was credited as "Lieutenant Randy Deacon".[1]
- If the first 2 letters of Randy Disher’s original first name and last name (Randy Deacon) are combined with Leland Stottlemeyer’s first name and last name, they spell LESTRADE, the name of a police inspector from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.
- Leland Stottlemeyer Randy Deacon
- If the first 2 letters of Randy Disher’s original first name and last name (Randy Deacon) are combined with Leland Stottlemeyer’s first name and last name, they spell LESTRADE, the name of a police inspector from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.
- Stottlemeyer drove an unmarked dark blue 2000 Ford Crown Victoria issued by the SFPD. It has a red rotating light on the dash board. His personal vehicle was a 1988 Jeep Cherokee, He now drives a 2007 Black Dodge Charger.
- Stottlemeyer is 5'11".
- In Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger, Stottlemeyer once broke his arm, claiming that he was in a motorcycle accident on the road, but in actuality had broken his arm from falling off a ladder while cleaning his gutters.
- In a webisode, Stottlemeyer says that he has an older brother named Mark who was involved in him becoming a police officer. He also mentioned that he had a brother that was in the war in Mr. Monk and the Missing Granny.
- He plays the guitar.
- He does not like Port wine.
- He was the youngest officer in the history of the SFPD to make detective.
- In an interview on Season Two's special features, Ted Levine stated that, in his view of Stottlemeyer, he had been in the armed forces as a young man, and joined the police after his enlistment was up.
- In Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect, he tells Richard Babbage that he has a sister that he feels like killing sometimes.
- In Mr. Monk Is Up All Night, Stottlemeyer says that when he can't sleep, he'll go to a specific bar. At the bar, he'll order a shot, watch the fish in the tank in the back of the bar swim around, drink the shot, and go home. He claims it works every time without fail.
- In a special reunion mini-episode broadcasted in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic[1], Ted Levine, along with Tony Shaloub, Traylor Howard and Jason Gray-Stanford as their respective character roles, where all characters are communicating via video conferencing during the pandemic. In the episode, Leland says that he is living the dream, except it’s not his dream, it’s a dream Stephen King once had.