‘Wranglers’--Rounding Up Policemen for Film Locations : But Chief Gates Wants to Alter Lucrative Program

Somewhere off Colombia, Robert W. Wheeler is diving for sunken Spanish treasure on a personally financed, three-month scuba expedition.

Back home in Van Nuys, his two children attend private schools. There is a pool in his backyard and, until he sold it recently for lack of use, a 40-foot yacht in Marina del Rey.

Not bad for a former Los Angeles police motorcycle officer with a herniated disk who had to retire in 1980 on an $800-a-month disability check.

That Wheeler, 45, and his wife, Denise, are living the good life, however, has little to do with his disability pay. “Bob’s check,” says his wife, “just about covers our food for a month.”

‘Cop Wrangler’

It is Denise Wheeler’s work as a “cop wrangler” that supports the family’s life style. She is among a dozen men and women who arrange traffic control jobs for about 500 off-duty and retired police officers at locations throughout Los Angeles where movie and television crews film.

About half of the wranglers, known more formally as police coordinators or agents, are, like Wheeler, the wives of policemen. The others are either retired or active officers. All see themselves as stalwarts of American free enterprise--competitive entrepreneurs providing the studios a needed service. For most coordinators, it is a lucrative venture.

But to the Los Angeles Police Department, many coordinators are slick opportunists who decide who gets location-shooting work. Officers who work for coordinators are often more loyal to them and to the studios than they are to the public, police administrators contend.

Concerned primarily about the city’s liability and his department’s lack of control, Chief Daryl F. Gates wants police officials to regulate security at filming locations in Los Angeles, much as the Sheriff’s Department does in county areas.

Gates wants to give movie location jobs to former police officers who retired under honorable conditions, and to on-duty officers working overtime. Gates has said he believes that the proposal would help stop pension and sick pay abuses by officers who say they can’t report for duty for medical reasons, but who nonetheless continue working on movie sets.

His plan--under study by the Los Angeles Police Commission--has some Hollywood studios fearful that having to deal with the Police Department’s bureaucracy could increase their production costs, forcing them to film outside the city.

The debate has shed light on what the current system’s critics contend is a police force within the police force--a closed, offbeat microcosm of law enforcement.

Not the Genuine Article

It is a world in which most of the motorcycle officers one commonly sees on location shooting sites are not the genuine article. Most are young officers normally assigned to patrol cars, moonlighting desk jockeys or retired cops.

Their official-looking motorcycles also are fakes. All are privately owned, and more than a few are unlawfully equipped with flashing blue lights intended for emergency vehicles only.

“You’ve got (officers) who have never ridden a motorcycle on the job . . . and they’re there every day pulling down big bucks with a surplus (California Highway Patrol) motorcycle wearing L.A. police motorcycle uniforms,” said George (Nate) Jaeger, 41.

“The whole thing’s crazy,” said the former San Jose police motorcycle officer, who worked movie location jobs for 1 1/2 years in Los Angeles before quitting last summer.

While the Police Commission ponders the issue, the coordinators and those whose jobs they arrange are lamenting their possible elimination after decades of what they say has been tacit acceptance by the city.

The coordinators concede there are occasional abuses in their business, but insist that blatant improprieties are rare. And they point out that of all parties concerned, only the Police Department has grown unhappy with the present arrangement between the studios and themselves, an arrangement whose roots are nearly as old as Tinseltown itself.

“Why change something that works?” asked William H. Valdez, 40, a coordinator and former Los Angeles motorcycle officer who retired on a back-related disability in 1973 after a motorcycle accident.

These days, when he is not riding a surplus CHP motorcycle to movie sets, Valdez drives a shiny black BMW and owns a small house not far from the ocean in Manhattan Beach--a life style he might not have afforded on a policeman’s salary. His earnings from his coordinator job, in which he arranges part-time movie set work for about 80 retired and active policemen, are triple that which he receives from his disability, he said.

Could Lose ‘Everything’

“If I lose this job, I lose my house, the car, everything,” Valdez lamented. “Right now, we’re part of the American way. We’re working hard and reaping the benefits. We just want to be left alone.”

Valdez and his predecessors have been left alone for more than 60 years.

Their business began in the 1920s, when slapstick comedians like Charlie Chaplin and other silent film makers turned to the streets of Los Angeles to record their zany stunts. To clear whole blocks of bystanders for their shots, directors would often enlist the help of off-duty officers.

With advances in motion picture technology that freed directors from indoor sound studios and, later, with the blossoming of television, location filming on Los Angeles’ streets increased. The need for police security grew accordingly.

By the 1960s, many major film studios had established regular contact with active and retired Los Angeles police officers who could organize others on short notice. In some cases, policemen’s wives would make the dozens of phone calls needed to round up available officers.

For their efforts, the coordinators took a cut from the studio pay of each officer whose off-duty work they arranged. Thus was born the modern-day Los Angeles police wrangler.

Officials estimate that on the average, there are 20 movie and television film crews on location each day in Los Angeles. At nearly every one, men dressed in Los Angeles police uniforms can be found directing traffic or holding back crowds.

“These people are professionals; they know what we need and they’re very well trained in police work,” said Lindsley Parsons Jr., senior vice president of production management for MGM/UA Entertainment Co. “They make our job much, much easier.”

Under the present arrangement, the studios decide how many officers they need. They pay a minimum of $17.48 an hour--the amount that middle-grade Los Angeles police officers receive when on duty. The moonlighters are guaranteed a daily minimum of eight hours in wages, even if filming takes only 15 minutes.

Officers requested by the studios to wear motorcycle uniforms and ride an official-looking motorcycle get an extra $2 an hour, plus $30 a day for motorcycle rental. The motor bikes, even when parked, warn passers-by of police presence and provide a visible deterrent to thefts on filming sets, studio officials say.

Deals Cut Individually

Individual coordinators cut their own deals with the off-duty officers and retirees they broker. Most coordinators receive between $20 to $30 a day per worker. The studios also pay some coordinators additional fees for helping arrange filming permits, issued by the city’s Office of Motion Picture Coordination in Hollywood.

Few, if any, of those officers arrange their jobs independently. So tight is the coordinators’ grip on the business that rarely can off-duty officers and retirees obtain work today on a movie or television set in Los Angeles without going through them, officials say.

“For years, (the Police Department) tended to ignore the situation because we didn’t get complaints about these people, but as there was greater need for more officers, the situation tended to deteriorate,” said Cmdr. George A. Morrison, the Police Department’s expert on the subject.

“It’s got to the point now where many of them are beholden to location managers,” Morrison said. “If the film crew wants a running shot (in which the camera is mounted on a moving vehicle) and the permit says nothing about running shots, they block the streets and go ahead and do it anyway.”

Jaeger, the former San Jose motorcycle officer, can attest to that.

He said he more than once observed coordinators ignore filming permit restrictions. Some movie officials, he said, routinely expected officers on the set to acquiesce and do the same.

While working on one movie last year, Jaeger said he demanded that production be shut down as a helicopter film crew prepared, without authorization, to hover over a crowded Westside park. A permit revision was issued within minutes and shooting continued without incident.

Fired From Set

The next day, Jaeger said, he was fired from the set. Today he is a security supervisor for a chain of Tokyo-based fashion stores.

“If the permit says they can shoot until 6 p.m., but they decide to shoot to 9, who’s going to argue with them?,” Jaeger asked. “The cops on the set aren’t going to argue. They’re getting paid overtime.”

Hollywood executives who work closely with police coordinators insist that the coordinators’ loyalties lie with the law, not with a paycheck.

“Our standing instruction to them is, ‘Don’t do us any favors, do your job,’ ” said Ralph Alderman, supervising production manager for Stephen J. Cannell, producer of television’s “The A-Team.” Cannell’s company employs 47 active and nine retired officers, all of them coordinated by Wally Cook, a 23-year police veteran assigned to the front desk of the Police Department’s Devonshire Division.

“You go by what the permit says,” Cook said. “You don’t bring discredit to the department, you don’t involve yourself in conduct unbecoming an officer and you don’t bend any rules.”

Yet Cook, 47, who routinely drives his surplus motorcycle to and from movie set jobs, does not have a motorcycle license, according to state Department of Motor Vehicle records. “I keep putting it off,” he said.

What’s more, Cook’s motor bike is equipped with flashing blue emergency lights, a violation of state traffic codes. The blue lights, he explained, “slow down an awful lot of drunk drivers and stop accidents. Right or wrong, that’s a fact.”

Other Violations

Vehicle codes are not the only regulations commonly violated by coordinators and those who work for them, authorities contend.

Deputy City Atty. Byron R. Boeckman said Los Angeles’ Municipal Code provides that only on-duty officers are authorized to direct traffic. It also is a violation of the city’s code for anyone but an active, on-duty officer to wear a Los Angeles police uniform, Boeckman said.

So how has it evolved that scores of uniformed police retirees and off-duty policemen stand in the streets of Los Angeles, telling motorists where to go?

“I don’t know. It’s infuriating,” shrugged Cmdr. Morrison, the Police Department’s expert. “It’s hard to start enforcing regulations like these when these people are in some never-never land to begin with.”

The coordinators, convinced they are benefitting rather than hindering the city and the entertainment industry with their efforts, would disagree.

Take Los Angeles police retiree Jack Wood, 60, whose $10-per-worker fee is among the lowest charged by Los Angeles’ police coordinators.

Wood arranges security for television’s “Cagney & Lacey.” His nickname among his peers, he said, is “Iron Ass,” earned “because I run such a tight ship” and because he will only arrange jobs for officers with actual motorcycle experience, like himself. He coordinates about 35 of them.

“I got the best of both worlds,” Wood said recently during a break between scenes. “I’m helping private enterprise now, and I’m still a cop.” Wood retired from the Police Department in 1972.

And there is the coordinating team of police retiree Robert Laird, 61, and his officer son, Doug. The elder Laird was a career U.S. Air Force bomber pilot before becoming a Los Angeles motorcycle officer. He retired from the Police Department in 1976. His son has been a police officer for 16 years.

‘It Keeps Me Busy’

Besides working on movie sets together, they have coordinated more than 100 other officers and retirees for more than seven years. “It keeps me busy,” said Bob Laird. He said he still finds time to spend four months a year at his vacation retreat in Colorado.

Then there is Officer Terry Cammack, 39, an ultra-distance marathoner and foot patrolman whose beat is downtown Los Angeles.

Cammack began coordinating police services for independent film companies in the early 1970s and is today considered among the most successful of Los Angeles’ cop wranglers. All but a few of the 130 people he handles are active Los Angeles police officers.

Yet not all of the those officers who pay him to coordinate their moonlighting jobs share Cammack’s low rank. “Several sergeants work for me,” Cammack said. “None of them are immediate supervisors, though. I want to avoid any conflicts of interest.”

Cammack has never been a motorcycle officer but dresses like one at the filming locations where he works. Of the Police Department’s 313 motorcycle officers, perhaps no more than 25% work off-duty movie location jobs, according to those interviewed. Members of a proud, close-knit group, some “motor officers,” as they are known, sneer when asked about imposters who don white helmets, striped britches and leather boots to become “movie motors.”

“The money’s not bad and you eat good . . . but there’s absolutely no commitment and little expertise needed,” said Sgt. Dennis P. Zine, 38, a motorcycle sergeant in the San Fernando Valley. “It’s boring. You’re not a police officer. You’re a security officer.”

Resentment is not limited to the Police Department’s motorcycle corps alone.

Some officers stationed or living in areas regularly used for filming, such as San Pedro, complain that they can never get movie location work because the coordinators have already allocated all the available jobs. A majority of the coordinators live in the San Fernando Valley, and rely heavily on valley-based officers and retirees to work citywide.

Other Officers Sue

Retirees from other police departments also complain that they are discriminated against by all but a few Los Angeles coordinators.

Last May, four retired officers from other jurisdictions sued the Los Angeles Police Department and coordinator Denise Wheeler, after one of the retirees was issued a citation for allegedly posing as a Los Angeles policeman at a filming location in Hollywood. Their lawsuit, which is pending in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that Wheeler turned the Police Department on them because they were among her competitors. Wheeler has called their charges “ridiculous.”

The incident, however, typified what is often a dog-eat-dog business. There may be cooperation between some coordinators when movie jobs are abundant and the need for available officers is great. But more often than not, there is intense rivalry.

“There are guys out there like any other freelance-type business; they’re greedy and vicious,” coordinator Cook admitted. “They try to steal work from you.” And now the coordinators are worried about the department’s plan to take over the business completely.

Said Wheeler of the proposal: “Bob, my husband, hopes he finds gold down there in South America. I don’t know what we may have left by the time he gets back.”