When Good Guys Have Guns, Bad Things May Happen

There is plenty to ask in the matter of Sheriff Lee Baca and his Very Important Posse, but perhaps the most basic question is: Why is there a posse to ask about at all?

When we last heard from Baca, he was calling for gun control. So what’s up with a sheriff who declares one day that “Los Angeles is not a frontier country,” only to turn around a week later and issue Berettas and badges to a gaggle of businessmen and pals?

For those who may have missed this week’s not-really-surprising headlines, this current puzzle regards the new sheriff’s newest and most controversial endeavor, a month-old program for so-called executive reserves. This is the unit that was going to be the “celebrity” reserves until it turned out that no celebrities wanted in on it. So the department settled for 20 or so interested parties, most of whom are little-known civic types with a law enforcement bent.

The idea, according to the sheriff’s captain who oversees the program, is to use these folks as a sort of kitchen cabinet, tap them for advice on finance and public relations and the like. One, Robert Port, is a filmmaker who, the captain told me, was tapped to improve the department’s recruitment videos. Another is Kevin Crampton, president of a Paramount gasket company with a criminal justice degree and management expertise. Others include two attorney grandsons of the late Sheriff Peter Pitchess; Emerson Glazer, a philanthropist and developer who has a piece of the Staples Center area redevelopment; Gary Nalbandian, a friend of Baca from the San Gabriel Valley, and the Rev. Shelby Jordan, the pro-football-player- turned-minister who spoke at Baca’s swearing-in.

Decent people, but from the start, there swirled about them the great chortling sound of fate being tempted, big time. If what you want is a cadre of consultants, what possible good can come of rushing them all through a quickie course in crime stopping and then suiting them up with 9-millimeter guns?

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Sure enough came this week’s news that one of the new reservists allegedly debuted in his position by pulling his piece on a couple of Bel-Air “auto burglars” who turned out to be a couple trying to fix their own car. Scott Zacky, of the Zacky Farms poultry family, was alleged to have pulled this stunt on his own time and with his own weapon, but he was relieved of reserve duty pending his hearing next month.

The incident, as documented by the Los Angeles police, was a real Barney Fife moment; there was some comic, Mayberry-like back-and-forth over whether Zacky ran out in “short pants” or “boxers,” and the chicken angle was especially antic. Still, it happened a scant two days after he was sworn in as a reservist, and now it turns out that the screening process was rushed to beat a new state law tripling the requirements for reserve training. In its haste, the department failed to notice that Zacky had a prior conviction--later expunged--for brandishing a gun during a traffic incident.

So the question arises: If the sheriff wants to keep lethal weaponry out of the hands of the wrong people, what’s the point of a rush-job gun giveaway like this? What kind of gun control bestows the sheriff’s official imprimatur on a guy whose weapon-wielding once earned him 90 days’ house arrest?

And even aside from the Zacky question, why is it necessary to arm any of these civic-minded people? Couldn’t the county tap their expertise without incurring potential taxpayer liability? What if one of these VIP guns accidentally goes off and wounds someone, or worse? Who does the sheriff think would end up paying the claim?

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But the problem touches on a deeper dilemma, one of the political variety. The unspoken fact of the law enforcement reserve phenomenon is that there are two kinds of folks who’ll volunteer for it: genuine altruists and dicier people who are thrilled by the trappings of authority.

The latter group can be problematic. Like all sorts of armchair quarterbacks and weekend warriors, they tend to be way more gung-ho than the guys who actually have to man the front lines. But the great thing about both types of reservists, from the viewpoint of an elected official, is: They satisfy a particular segment of the voters who tend to turn out for local elections, and they serve the department, basically, for free.

This is the quandary, not only for Baca but for all the elected law enforcement officials on the gun control bandwagon--one of their most avid constituencies is peppered with cop groupies who covet badges and guns. But if Baca means what he says, he’ll disarm his VIP unit before the Barney Fife thing stops being funny. Gun control begins at home.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.