LAPD Has Protection in Reserve

Around midnight on the dark streets of the San Fernando Valley, two Los Angeles police officers spotted a suspected car thief inside Galpin Motors.

And though the officers were well past the first blush of their youth, they swung into action and helped subdue the scofflaw -- who may have been surprised when he learned that he had been arrested by two members of the Los Angeles City Council dressed in police uniforms.

The midnight activity last summer of “Starsky and Hutch,” as Councilmen Dennis Zine and Greig Smith were quickly dubbed around City Hall, prompted some council members to question the practice of elected officials moonlighting as police officers.

But over at police headquarters the top brass have big plans for the reserve corps. At a time when the city’s 9,200-strong police force is desperate for more officers but restricted in hiring because of tight budgets, officials are hoping to expand the volunteers’ ranks. The reserve corps is now at 700, but is authorized for 2,000.

The volunteers wear the same uniforms and perform the same duties as rank-and-file cops, right down to carrying a gun in many cases. Over the years, reserves have made thousands of arrests, participated in dozens of car chases, and in the last 12 years alone been involved in 10 shootings, two of them fatal.

There’s one big difference: They don’t get a salary. Last year, reserve officers donated time worth an estimated $7 million to the city’s coffers, the equivalent of 104 full time-officers, according to department officials.

This summer, the LAPD graduated its first reserve class since 1999. And last month, Police Chief William J. Bratton called all the reserves together for the first time in years. As hundreds of sweating but solemn middle-aged men and women stood on the hot pavement at a police training center in Westchester, Bratton vowed to “reemphasize” and “increase” their role in the department.

“It’s a no-brainer,” LAPD Capt. Rick Webb said of the policy shift. “If you have people who want to work for you for free, go for it.”

Although county sheriffs, including Los Angeles County’s, and police departments throughout California have relied on reserves for years, Los Angeles is among the few large police forces in the country that afford its reserves the same authority as regular officers. New York and Chicago, for example, do not assign guns to volunteers. San Francisco, which has 20 reserves, San Diego, which has 22, and Oakland, which has 25, don’t typically allow their volunteers to carry guns off duty without a concealed weapons permit.

But policing experts and even some traditional critics of the LAPD said they see nothing wrong with the program -- as long as the volunteers are properly trained.

“It’s a job where you can’t make a mistake,” said Lou Madeira, a senior law enforcement consultant with the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training and a supporter of reserve programs. “Where you have someone who is making lethal-force decisions, well, obviously they have to be superbly trained.”

Over the years, some reserve programs -- particularly ones that did not require strict training -- have run into trouble.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca suspended a special reserve program in 1999 after one reserve deputy was arrested on federal money-laundering charges and another was accused of brandishing a weapon at two people outside his Bel-Air home. (The department’s regular reserve program, however, is going strong.) More recently, a reserve officer with the Inglewood School Police Department was arrested on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon after being stopped as part of rapper Snoop Dogg’s entourage.

And in Oklahoma a few months ago, a reserve police officer in the town of Perkins was charged with manslaughter after he shot and killed a man during a pursuit. The volunteer, who said he thought he heard someone give an order to fire, had not completed his training when he was sent out onto the streets with a gun, said Perkins Police Chief Robert Williams.

But in Los Angeles, the LAPD reserve program has never been dragged into the spotlight.

Madeira and other experts say that is because the department, like most around the state, requires its volunteers to have the same training as regular officers, and must undergo background checks and refresher courses. Officers who carry guns also must meet the same physical requirements.

“If you want to earn a badge in the LAPD, you have to go through the academy,” said Eric Rose, a reserve officer and amateur historian of the program. “Some departments give out badges and gun permits as a perk; LAPD hasn’t.”

Still, there have been a few problems. Twenty-five reserves have been let go for various reasons since 1997. Unlike sworn officers, reserves can be dismissed at any time. Since 1990, reserves also have been involved in six off-duty shootings, two of which were found to be against department policy, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis. One reserve officer accounted for two of the shootings.

LAPD officials refused to comment on specific cases. But Assistant Chief George Gascon, himself a former reserve, said that “sometimes you deal with a bad apple.... You’re recruiting from the human race.”

Reservists, however, say the program produces fewer bad cops than a regular police academy class.

Because they are paid only a $50-a-month stipend for their work, most reserves are motivated by an altruistic desire to help their community -- and sometimes a taste for adventure. Though some departments in California offer their reserves benefits, Los Angeles does not.

“What I tell people is cops take off to play golf, and I take off to play cop,” said Los Angeles attorney Howard Ekerling, who has been a reserve officer for 19 years. “To me, it’s the ultimate in community policing.”

At 60, Ekerling is by no means the oldest reserve; there are some in their 70s and 80s.

The LAPD first turned to reserve officers during World War II, when hundreds of its regular officers left the city to fight overseas. In the years after the war, the volunteer ranks swelled to about 2,500, according to Rose. Numbers dwindled in the 1960s after new policies limited reserves to humdrum chores such as directing traffic and helping control crowds at parades.

But in the last two decades, reserve officers who completed training at the police academy have been allowed to perform many of the same duties as regular officers, from patrolling streets to booking suspects, and the ranks slowly have swelled.

Over the years, at least three reserves have received the Medal of Valor, including Stuart Taira, who died in 1983 while trying to rescue a fellow officer from a crashed police helicopter.

Under current rules, active reserve officers can choose where in the city they want to work, and can come in as often as they please, as long as they work at least two shifts a month.

Perhaps for that reason, the police stations in the San Fernando Valley get a disproportionate amount of help.

That, too, could change. The Police Commission has created a committee to study the program, boost recruitment and make sure reserves are used where they are needed most.

Police Commissioner Alan J. Skobin, a reserve commander with the Sheriff’s Department, said he has talked to department officials about beefing up the number of volunteer detectives.

Many reserves, Skobin said, have day jobs that give them “extraordinary skills.” An accountant, for example, would be a invaluable addition to a team working financial crimes.

There is also talk of establishing a rank structure within the LAPD’s reserves, something the Sheriff’s Department already has.

The volunteers are a diverse bunch. Some are retired police officers, such as Zine, or former officers who found more lucrative careers but wanted to stay involved. Others are young men and women who aren’t sure whether policing is the career for them and want to investigate the field.

And a sizable number are professionals -- airline pilots, surgeons, government bureaucrats -- who somehow find the time and the will to squeeze their middle-aged bodies into police uniforms at least every other week.

Unlike many of his fellow reservists, Smith, the city councilman who made news on patrol with Zine, said he never harbored dreams of becoming a police officer.

But strolling from Blockbuster Video in Granada Hills with his wife a decade ago, he watched in horror as gang members chased a young man into the parking lot then shot and killed him. Smith -- out of shape but full of determination -- signed up for the reserves.

After losing 45 pounds and huffing and puffing until he could run a mile in less than 10 minutes, Smith was issued a gun and a badge and dispatched onto the streets of Los Angeles.

For others, being a reserve is a way of fulfilling a childhood dream of being a police officer -- in their spare time and while still drawing a more sizable salary in another profession.

“It’s a very interesting hobby. It’s such a diversion from what I deal with daily,” said Barry Morris, a chiropractor whose boyhood fantasies involved police work.

Now he volunteers as a technical reserve, meaning he wears a uniform but does not carry a gun. Still, sometimes he has trouble forgetting about his day job: Once he was booking a suspect, he said, and the man complained of lower back pain.

The chiropractor in him wanted to ask: “Well, does it radiate down below the knees?” But he quickly reminded himself that his mission was to get handcuffs on the suspect and let others worry about medical problems.

Nancy Olah, a 29-year-old high school math teacher and mother of a toddler, joined the reserves five years ago, despite the hesitation of her husband, who feared for her safety.

Olah said she loves the adrenaline rush of cruising the streets and occasionally running down a suspect. “I really feel like I’m contributing to the city,” she said.

At the reserve assembly last month, Councilman Zine, a retired LAPD sergeant, beamed with pride at his fellow reserves. He disagrees with suggestions by his council colleagues, among them former LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks, that it is a conflict of interest for him to supervise the department as a council member while moonlighting in a black-and-white patrol car.

Parks argued that it would be difficult for commanding officers to treat council members in the reserve corps like any other member of the rank and file. Other council members worried that having elected officials involved in police work might be an invitation to frivolous lawsuits.

That was enough for Councilman Smith. A few days after he and Zine wrestled with a burglary suspect at Galpin Motors as an aide snapped photos, Smith announced that he had asked Bratton to move him off the streets and onto a specialized car theft unit.

Zine, however, said he isn’t budging.

“We have a 12-minute response time,” for officers to roll out to emergency calls, he said. “I’m trying to reduce that.... We’re doing this for the right reasons.”

Zine said he blames Parks for stirring up the controversy and said the former chief should join the reserves himself.

While in Sacramento for a League of Cities meeting last month, Zine tried again to enlist Parks in extracurricular police work.

In the exhibition hall where the meeting was being held, Zine heard a commotion as a bandit snatched several purses that were being stored near a curtained-off area.

He turned to Parks, who was also at the meeting, and suggested the two chase and tackle the scofflaw.

Parks demurred. “I said, ‘Try 911,’ ” the former chief said. “Not that I don’t trust Dennis to back me up.... “

*

Times staff writers Scott Glover and Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.