Stealing the Scene : Police Crew Making Carjacking Tape Looks Too Real for Comfort

A plot twist that wasn’t in the script surprised Los Angeles Police Officer Russell Long when he tried to film a movie alerting people to the dangers of carjackings and other robberies.

Long got ambushed.

Operators of fancy Gelson’s Market in Encino told him to get lost when he set up his camera in their parking lot to shoot the follow-home robbery sequence.

Scram, ordered the manager of a nearby Sav-On Drugs before a purse-snatching scene could be photographed.

“Hmmm . . . it’s not prudent at this point,” Elizabeth Nielsen, vice president of TransWorld Bank, said to the suggestion that one of her branches serve as the backdrop for the automated teller machine robbery scene.

As it turns out, Neilsen’s bank is a sponsor of a merchants’ meeting Monday in Woodland Hills where Long’s anti-carjacking video will be premiered.

The 7:30 a.m. “Business Watch” session at the Warner Center Marriott Hotel will be staged in conjunction with five chambers of commerce in the west San Fernando Valley.

Officials of Gelson’s and Sav-On did not return phone calls seeking comment Friday.

“Most companies categorically don’t want to be associated with robberies,” said Long, who recruited other officers and volunteers at his West Valley Division police station to portray robbers and victims.

“We put this together in six hours of shooting over a three-day period. We didn’t have the luxury of having time to go through corporate boardrooms to get permission to film.”

That is also the reason officers didn’t simply borrow an anti-crime video from the Police Department’s film library. Carjacking is such a new phenomenon that no films on the topic exist.

“We’re in the process of writing a script now,” said Officer John Greene, who works in the 12-member film unit. “Then it goes through the approval cycle . . . it could take a couple of months.”

The string of filming rejections sent Long and his troupe of make-believe robbers and victims scurrying to find alternate locations.

“I was absolutely stunned when they kicked us out of Sav-On,” said Millie Hamilton, a Neighborhood Watch volunteer from Encino who was recruited to portray the purse-snatching victim. Her scene, which involved having the criminal smash the window of a car borrowed from a police impound lot, was eventually videotaped on a street next to the West Valley police station in Reseda. Later, gasoline pumps at the police station garage were used as the backdrop for the gas station carjacking scene.

Officers hurriedly filmed their ATM robbery sequence at an unattended Bank of America Versateller machine a few miles from the police station. The scene was done in one take so as not to attract attention. (“We wish we’d known about it in advance,” bank spokesman Charlie Coleman said Friday.)

By the time they had done the ATM scene, the movie makers had jettisoned the large, professional video camera they had borrowed and substituted a hand-held 8-millimeter camcorder that was more mobile and less conspicuous.

The camera may have been too inconspicuous when a curbside carjacking scene was photographed on Variel Avenue in Woodland Hills.

Some startled passersby thought they were witnessing the real thing when a scruffily dressed Officer Mike Piceno ran into the street waving a pistol to “rob” motorist Kristine Doyle, a police station volunteer who lives in Canoga Park.

“The gun looked real,” said Nancy Arnold, a secretary from Woodland Hills. A security guard at a nearby industrial building rushed off to call the police before onlookers intercepted him and convinced him the robber was the police.

Motorists were briefly stopped by uniformed Officer Stephanie Tisdale while shorts-clad Officer Tim Kidd videotaped the mock robbery. “Hey, you’re all invited to the cast party,” Kidd shouted afterward.

There was no party. But there was a party atmosphere when volunteer Frank Jasinski, a telemarketer from Chatsworth, finished editing the 22-minute tape and it was previewed for the actors at the police station. Final touches were added Friday to what the officers dubbed their infomercial.

“My agent will be here any minute,” said Officer Tony Newsom, who starred as the robber in the follow-home robbery sequence in which Mark Markowitz portrayed the victim. Markowitz, a retired businessman from Encino, is president of the West Valley Division’s police advisory council, a citizens group.

After Monday, the anti-crime tape will be offered to other groups around the city that want to view it, Officer Steve Kegley said.

“You need visual aids,” Kegley said of crime-prevention discussions. “These things can be so dry.”