Thin Blue Line Stretches Into Odd Areas : Security: In California, law enforcement includes dental board investigators, volunteer fire wardens and, in Los Angeles, some museum employees.

Think of a peace officer and the familiar images of highway patrol, city cops and sheriffs’ deputies come to mind.

Think again.

In California, the thin blue line of law enforcement stretches to include dental board investigators, volunteer fire wardens, even some museum employees in Los Angeles.

Why? Critics have a two-word answer: cash and cachet.

“Being a peace officer . . . is a hell of a status symbol. Plus, it gives them an opportunity to bargain for better retirement,” said Al Cooper of the California State Sheriff’s Assn. “It’s a real macho status thing.”

“It’s an old American tradition to try to gather authority,” agreed Joseph McNamara, former San Jose police chief and now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. “Peace officer status is very much sought after . . . and the Legislature tends to be very generous.”

Peace officer advocates disagree.

“There’s certain interests that the state has that need law enforcement officers . . . or the citizens wouldn’t stand a chance,” said Sam McCall, chief legal counsel to the California Assn. of Uniformed State Employees, which represents many peace officers.

Among other peace officers listed in the 1993 California Penal Code:

* Horse Racing Board investigators.

* Coroners.

* The chief and assistant chief of security of the California Museum of Science and Industry.

“There are a number of positions described as peace officers that by virtue of their title would cause one to wonder why they needed to be a peace officer,” said Mike DiMiceli of the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST).

Some of the more unusual peace officers are found in Section 830.3 of the code, a category Skip Murphy, president of the 38,000-member Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, calls the “catchall.”

“We look at that section and sometimes wonder should these people be in the ‘peace officer’ category, but we’re not going to go after removal of them because we don’t know what the history has been. It just raises a lot of questions,” he said.

McNamara had a blunter assessment. “My guess is there’s a pretty strong disapproval on the part of traditional police officers to extending that category,” he said.

On the other hand, peace officer defenders say they’re helping, not hindering, the fight against crime.

“For example, organized crime would love to have its hands on the horse racing industry,” said McCall.

Agency officials said having peace officer status makes it easier to put together a case, make arrests and testify in court.

“We regularly make arrests where we’re required to transport people, handcuff them, search them . . . in addition, you need the authority to get information from other law enforcement agencies,” said Don Hauptman of the Department of Consumer Affairs’ Division of Investigation.

Still, critics question why full police power is necessary to investigate white-collar crimes.

At the Board of Dental Examiners, none of the 13 investigators has had to pull a gun, but Larry Ballard, enforcement chief, said investigating dentists can be tougher than it sounds, with several cases involving illegal drug or prescription use.

At the Medical Board, enforcement chief John Lancara said his 100 or so investigators rarely pull their guns, but they do sometimes run into dangerous situations.

“Just because these people are medical professionals doesn’t mean a thing. Some of them are just crazy,” said Lancara, noting that a recent house search turned up a cache of guns.

There have been some efforts to trim the ranks, including a reorganization in the late 1970s that defrocked categories such as cemetery wardens, DiMiceli said.

In 1991, lawmakers passed a bill, sponsored by state Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), that requires agencies to get a feasibility study from POST.

Before that, “anyone who was persuasive or was able to generate some influence somehow had a great chance of becoming a peace officer,” DiMiceli said.

Presley’s bill was prompted by concern that the Legislature was handing out “pretty far-reaching authority,” and extending benefits meant to reward officers on the front lines of crime, said aide Susan Wallace.

Just how much those extended benefits cost is hard to tell.

“There’s some economic issues . . . without question,” said Rodney Pierini of the California Police Officers Assn.

For example, retirement formulas vary, but it is possible for a peace officer to retire at age 55 with 30 years of service at 75% of salary. By comparison, the average state employee would likely take home 44%.

McCall said retirement is “a little bit better,” but he questioned whether most peace officers get the maximum.

But beyond accounting lies another issue--accountability.

“It’s all these people with police powers that the public doesn’t expect them to be there,” said Margaret Pena of the ACLU’s Sacramento office. “People just don’t know where to go.”

In one case that did draw attention, a consumer affairs investigator was arrested in San Francisco in June on charges of using his badge and gun to force Tenderloin prostitutes to have sex with him.

Agency spokesmen say trouble is the exception, not the norm.

“We know exactly what our responsibilities are under the Penal Code and we pursue it exactly as we’re supposed to,” Lancara said.

State law requires departments employing peace officers to have complaint procedures available for public review and to report the disposition of complaints received.

Many of the smaller departments report few complaints. The Division of Investigation, for instance, reported eight non-criminal complaints over the last three years. Two were sustained.

Agency officials say that shows they’re doing a good job.

Critics say it means people don’t know how or where to complain.

Not all peace officers are created equal. Investigators for the Medical and Dental Examiners boards are allowed to carry guns; employees of the Contractors’ State License Board are not.

Most of the officers have powers extending “any place in the state for the purpose of performing their primary duty,” and can make arrests within their specified duties or if they witness a violent crime in progress. Armed peace officers must have agency permission, must qualify every six months and cannot carry a gun until their agency has adopted a deadly force policy in which they have been instructed.

Training varies, with the minimum a 64-hour course in arrest, search and seizure with 16 hours of firearms training for those authorized to carry guns, DiMiceli said.

In one of the latest peace officer controversies, POST recommended that science and industry museum employees not be given status, finding they were administrators, not lawmen. “However, folks at the museum after the study was completed found a sympathetic legislator,” DiMiceli said.

Museum public safety chief Rudy Schultz said lawmakers simply recognized the truth; POST was wrong.

Schultz said his employees already have public safety retirement benefits, but they need to be peace officers to maintain order in the sprawling museum and park complex in South Central Los Angeles, an area that came under fire in the 1992 riots.

“It opens those doors with enforcement agencies that we need to deal with on a daily basis, it allows the opportunity for . . . training . . . and it allows decisions to be made on a law enforcement level,” he said.

And the debate continues, with a new crop of peace officer status requests before the Legislature.

“It’s one of those things that goes on and on,” Cooper said.