Commission to Vote on Gates’ Guard Plan : Off-Duty Police May Lose Film-Site Jobs

All was controlled chaos Tuesday morning in front of the downtown Los Angeles County Court House, where film crews had gone to shoot scenes for the television series “Remington Steele.”

It was the usual mishmash: stars aplenty, gawkers galore and a never-ending stream of cars that had to be stopped periodically so that Hollywood could do its thing.

In the middle of the traffic, trying to make sure that the director got his unobstructed shots and that everybody else eventually got where they were going, stood Jerry Wolf, a former Los Angeles police sergeant who retired with a pension in 1984 after crashing his police motorcycle.

For Wolf, 45, as well as other retired and off-duty officers, handling crowds and traffic for the studios has provided a viable second income.

“If I didn’t do this,” he said, “I’d have to find another job.”

He may soon have to.

The Board of Police Commissioners is expected to vote today on a proposal by Police Chief Daryl F. Gates that would no longer allow off-duty and non-sanctioned retired officers to work on filming locations.

Instead, such jobs would go to on-duty officers--who would receive overtime pay--and to only those retirees selected by the chief.

Gates has said he believes that the proposal would allow the department to better supervise the activities of its personnel and would help in the “control of benefits abused by officers who are sick, injured on duty or on a disability pension.”

Many officers, however, contend that the proposal would dry up a majority of film location jobs because the studios, faced with paying more for police protection, would instead hire cheaper private security forces--or film outside the city.

“And how safe are the streets going to be when you have some private guard out there who’s making six bucks an hour?” Wolf asked Tuesday as he and five others--including a second retiree and four off-duty police officers--handled the crowd and vehicular traffic on the “Remington Steele” set.

Several blocks away, a similar group of officers were handling security on the set of the “Hill Street Blues” series.

Under the Los Angeles Police Department’s longstanding informal system, officers obtain entertainment industry jobs by contacting other officers who act as “coordinators,” or liaisons, with the various studios and are paid for their services.

Patrolmen receive $17.48 an hour and can work no more than 18 hours a week. Motorcycle officers, many of whom own motorcycles that resemble the departments’, get $19.48 an hour. In addition, they are paid $30 a day for taking their motorcycles to the job, which, when parked, warn passers-by of police presence and provide a visible deterrent to thefts, studio officials say.

According to police estimates, about half of the approximately 40 officers working for the studios on any given day are retired, but they are hardly distinguishable from those who are merely off duty.

Wolf, for example, wears the same helmet, boots, jacket and revolver he used when he was employed by the department. Today, he earns about $1,000 a month from the studios--nearly doubling the $1,263 he nets each month from his city pension.

In correspondence sent last year to the Police Commission, Gates said that the actions of officers at filming locations often “reflect their relationship with the filming companies,” while ignoring the needs of the community.

Problems Created

“The current practice of allowing off-duty and retired police officers to work at filming locations has created numerous problems,” Gates wrote. “Although the officers are in uniform and generally identified as Los Angeles police officers, they are employed by private agents.”

Gates told the commissioners that the proposal has been discussed with executive directors of the Los Angeles Film Development Committee. The directors, he said, expressed concern that the industry might have to pay more for traffic and crowd control.

“It was explained that there may be a slight increase in salary costs; however, the total cost will decrease due to a reduction in the number of types of officers assigned to work filming locations,” Gates wrote.

Members of the committee could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

While Gates contends that they are frequently under-utilized on film sets, off-duty officers and retirees like Wolf argue that they always work hard.

“You get to sit around once in a while sure, but even then we’re helping promote public relations by just being out there,” Wolf said. “Why change something that works?”