Call the Cops Makes Hollywood Look Real : Movies: The company formed by three LAPD members consults with filmmakers so that police work will appear authentic.

Sitting in a Studio City coffee shop, LAPD SWAT officer Randy Walker holds a still from this summer’s smash movie “Speed,” showing Keanu Reeves’ character being honored for his police heroics.

“No one has ever looked more real getting the Medal of Valor,” Walker says proudly. “From the actual medal and the stripes on his uniform to his badge, ribbons and buttons, when they look like that, we’ve done our job.”

His other job, he means. When he isn’t storming barricaded armed suspects or rescuing hostages, Walker moonlights (or daylights, depending on his shift) as a technical adviser to Hollywood. He calls his side business, which also includes his former SWAT partner Ed Arneson and Ed’s brother Mark, Call the Cops, appropriately enough, and that’s exactly what the makers of “Speed”--and a host of other films and TV shows--have done to make their works as authentic as possible.

“Keanu in particular relied on them,” says executive producer and production manager Ian Bryce. “For the medal scene, he really wanted to know how he should move, so he and Randy discussed how it should be done with military precision.”

When the little details are real, audiences are much more likely to buy action scenes and plot lines that strain credulity. In addition to looking over scripts for correct dialogue and terminology, the threesome also advise production designers and prop masters and train the actors in the use of firearms and police tactics.

For instance, they showed Reeves and co-star Jeff Daniels the proper “low ready” position for carrying MP-5 assault weapons (angled toward the ground with the trigger finger along the frame) and how to enter a room with a handgun (the gun always moves in sync with the eyes).

“They worked us pretty good on how to actually do what cops would do,” Daniels says, noting how every tactic, even the simple act of going around a corner, is based on safety and caution. “They take a lot of the gung-ho hero stuff--bursting into a room and 75 bad guys open fire and the hero’s still standing--right out of it.”

Most mistakes occur, they say, when the filmmakers rely on cliches gleaned from TV. Just as there are no doughnuts on the table in front of Walker and Ed Arneson (Mark Arneson is on the set of their latest movie, James Cameron’s “Strange Days,” which is due out next year), real cops would never hold a gun up by their face. “We call that the ‘Cagney & Lacey’ stance,” says Walker, 46, a Jeff Daniels look-alike with a thick build and a deep voice.

And they would never have sampled narcotics as Wesley Snipes did in “Rising Sun.” Even though they consulted on portions of the script, they were never shown a scene in which Snipes does a taste test of some dope. “That’s something they did in films 25 years ago,” scoffs Arneson, 45, furrowing the considerable crows feet that have built up around his friendly eyes after 20 years of sizing up suspicious types. “Would you do that? I wouldn’t know what cocaine or heroin tastes like.”

*

The filmmakers, they suggest, should have used a much more visually interesting--and realistic--drug-testing device called a Narcoband kit, which changes colors with a hit and a shake.

But that’s not to say that Walker and the Arnesons aren’t flexible enough to allow a little artistic license. So that Reeves could be an all-encompassing hero, for example, they looked the other way when his character tried to defuse a bomb, which a SWAT officer would never do.

“A lot of times what works in real life and is tactically correct doesn’t work for them on film,” Walker notes, chomping down into a burger. Adds Arneson, in between bites of ham and eggs: “Directors have certain things in their mind they want to show on camera.”

Walker was inspired to create Call the Cops in 1988 after a producer and writer came to visit the SWAT unit one day. He recruited his partner Ed Arneson, and Ed’s brother Mark, a South-Central homicide detective, joined them in 1992. Not long after mailing out 2,000 flyers, they were hired for a TV pilot called “Protect and Surf.” Director Richard Benjamin then used them on his 1990 buddy-cop film, “Downtown.” They’ve since advised on eight other movies, including “Point Break,” “Terminator II” and “Point of No Return.”

It beats security work, they agree. “It’s a way to make extra money in a way that’s not another threatening experience for us,” says Ed Arneson, who obviously doesn’t know Hollywood yet.

Although they have the LAPD’s permission for their off-duty work, there are some tactics they won’t reveal, such as hostage negotiation strategy. “That’s a mind thing,” Arneson says.

It’s a situation they know all too well. Both men were awarded the Medal of Valor for rescuing two female hostages after a 14-hour ordeal at a mid-Wilshire District medical center in August, 1983. They are reluctant to give too many of the details because they are turning it into a screenplay, but each saved one of the hostages while the gunman was simultaneously shot to death by two other SWAT officers.

“He was a true-life Dennis Hopper,” says Walker, referring to the villain in “Speed.” “He was an intelligent bad guy who knew the tactics of the police.”

While that was one of their proudest moments in the line of duty, their most satisfying Hollywood experience has been “Speed,” not surprisingly. (Ironically, they get the same amount of money for both--$30 an hour.)

“Most of the portrayal of police officers was positive, and that was kind of nice,” says Walker, who says he is one of only three L.A. SWAT officers to have been wounded in action since the unit’s current inception in 1972. “They looked good, they had haircuts. Sometimes that drives us nuts. There are extras on a set in police uniforms and they have shoulder-length hair. And we’re like, ‘Wait a minute. . . . ‘ “

For Daniels, the ultimate test of Call the Cops’ advice came when a couple of SWAT officers he knows back home in Michigan saw his performance. “I didn’t want them to go, ‘Huh, that was cute. That’s not what happens when I get to work at midnight,’ ” says the appropriately coiffed actor. “They said, ‘Yeah, you did it right.’ ”