Trouble-Shooter Olsen Finds More Trouble : Government: ‘Kelly is out of control,’ says one former city official. Hands-on councilman denies allegations of misconduct and abuse of power.

Kelly Olsen takes particular pride in being a hands-on Santa Monica city councilman, but some people are saying he should keep his hands to himself now and then.

In the past few months, his ubiquitous trouble-shooting has gotten Olsen into a heap of trouble, culminating in a session during which the city manager said he reviewed with Olsen the proper boundaries for a council member.

He has been accused of everything from giving orders to traffic officers to buttonholing on-duty firefighters to discuss politics to demanding a police escort while he videotaped drug-dealing in Palisades Park.

“Kelly is out of control,” said just-retired councilman Herb Katz in a recent interview.

Olsen denies any impropriety and insists he has become a target for tall tales and rumors.

“If I’m being charged with paying attention to what’s going on, I plead guilty,” Olsen said.

Councilman Ken Genser, who is Olsen’s ally, defends his colleague, saying Kelly is just being Kelly, the same guy who jumped into a moving car to rescue a woman having a seizure and intervened when he saw a man harassing a woman outside a store.

Others view the matter differently. “I think there are some serious allegations of misconduct that need to be investigated and settled,” said Councilman Paul Rosenstein.

To that end, newly seated Councilwoman Asha Greenberg asked at Tuesday night’s council meeting if there is a procedure to investigate the various charges. There is none, as such complaints are usually handled privately by City Manager John Jalili.

City Atty. Joseph Lawrence said the only avenue for dealing with serious misconduct is to forward them to the district attorney’s office.

“Only in Santa Monica would someone suggest going to the district attorney because a councilman allegedly asked a staff member to help an old lady across the street,” said Genser in a later interview.

Genser was referring to Olsen’s explanation of an incident in which he is accused of giving orders to traffic officers.

But in a written report obtained by The Times under the California Public Records Act, the traffic officer questioned the wisdom of being ordered around by someone who was not her supervisor and who knew nothing about traffic control.

The incident took place during a Nov. 4 accident on 4th Street. According to the report, the officers had set out flares to direct traffic around the accident.

According to the report, Olsen first told one officer to check and see why the traffic lights were flashing and then told the reporting officer: “I want you to get out in the intersection and better direct the traffic.”

She wrote that she tried to tell him why that wasn’t a good idea under the circumstances, but “he cut me off and told me, ‘I want you to get out there because pedestrians cannot safely cross the street.’ ”

“I, not wishing to cause a problem, did what he directed,” the officer wrote.

Olsen’s view of the incident is decidedly different.

The councilman said he was helping a stranded “old lady” across the street and merely suggested to the officers that pedestrians needed help because of the flashing signal. He said he did not press the matter when the officers said it was too dangerous for them.

Nothing about his actions could be construed as abusing of his authority, Olsen said. “I would never go out and do that. It’s just dumb.”

He suggested in an interview that the officers had an ulterior motive for writing up the report--to cover themselves if he turned them in for idly sitting on the hoods of their cars “practically playing cards.”

A friend of Olsen, Stewart Ziff, who was with him at the time, backs up Olsen’s account.

The incident with the firefighter last month resulted in a formal complaint to the city manager from union President Rob Wirtz.

“What’s a councilman doing coming into the workplace on city time taking an employee away from his work and talking about politics?” Wirtz asked. “We’ve told our folks when he shows up to call their battalion chief to deal with him.”

Olsen acknowledges that he got into a conversation with a firefighter, but said it occurred in the natural course of events when he dropped by to thank the man for a firetruck bank he had given Olsen.

In a third incident that raised eyebrows, Olsen took it upon himself last month to go down to Palisades Park in the middle of the night with a video camera to film drug sales, stopping by the police station to demand an escort, police said.

The trip to the park garnered Olsen banner headlines in a local paper, but did not sit well with Police Chief James T. Butts, who said in an interview it is not proper for a council member to use his implied power to insist upon an escort in a non-emergency situation.

“You’re taking someone off of routine patrol,” Butts said. “I’d prefer if someone plan ahead.”

Olsen denied asking for a police escort, saying he was offered a ride-a-long by police.

Questioned about whether his forays to the park were an appropriate action for an elected official, Olsen responded: “I think that’s what pro-active government is supposed to be like, isn’t it?” And, he argued recently, reporters should be concentrating on the issue of drug-dealing in the park, instead of questioning his method of exposing the problem.

He dismissed most of the criticism against him as being promulgated by Wirtz, with whom he traded barbs before the November election.

In that brouhaha, Wirtz accused Olsen of threatening that the department would not get its much-coveted red firetrucks if the union president didn’t stop telling reporters that rent control was not an issue in the election.

Under the City Charter, council members are policy-makers who are expressly forbidden from directing city workers unless they go through the city manager. If the facts warrant it, a council member can be charged with a misdemeanor.

In practice, council members deal directly with department heads and other staff members--to a point. The question is whether Olsen overstepped the bounds.

“Council members don’t have less rights as council members than as an individual citizen,” Lawrence explained at the council meeting. “The problem arises when you use your position as council member to use leverage the average citizen doesn’t have.”

Though he denies violating the charter, Olsen does see his role as going far beyond policy-maker. He boasts of being on duty 24 hours a day to take calls from residents and being their advocate at City Hall by interceding with the staff on their behalf.

He monitors the police scanner, has personally gone to a park to measure for lights and has asked repeatedly that council members be issued police-type badges denoting their official status, city officials said.

Olsen denied seeking a badge for himself, but said he did ask for one for Genser when he was mayor, as had been the practice in Santa Monica.

Nothing seems to escape Olsen’s attention. Last year he became upset when he saw a series of nearly invisible monofilament wires placed over lakes at the Water Gardens office project to keep sea gulls from fouling the lawns and water. Olsen quickly concluded migrating birds would get trapped and ordered developer Jerry Snyder to take them down.

Snyder declined and Olsen brought the matter before the council, portraying the wires as a horrible act against nature by an insensitive developer. It was later revealed that the city uses the same means to deter sea gulls from its trash yards. The method is approved by government wildlife experts.

Ziff described his friend as an interventionist whose actions are being misinterpreted.

“He actually is concerned about things and asks questions when others don’t,” Ziff said.