It’s a Full-Time Job

Los Angeles City Councilmen Dennis Zine and Greig Smith should stick to their day jobs. The two elected officials moonlight as reserve officers for the Los Angeles Police Department, a practice that made headlines last week when they got into a middle-of-the-night scuffle with a suspected car thief at Galpin Motors in North Hills. Their hands-on approach to constituent services puts not just themselves but the city at risk.

Zine, who worked for the LAPD for 33 years before winning election to the City Council, and Smith, a longtime reserve officer, say they just want to help out the understaffed LAPD. Like the other 700-plus citizens who volunteer as reserve officers, they are not paid.

City Council members, however, are not just any citizens. What made the news last week was not routine police work but the high-profile politicians involved. That visibility can be a magnet for lawsuits.

Smith at least acknowledges the liability risk and since last week has asked to be reassigned from patrol to a behind-the-scenes job.

Zine, however, doesn’t get it, even though the Frisky Kitty, a Tarzana strip club, is suing the city for $100 million after he paid a visit in uniform last fall. Zine says he did nothing wrong. The city reportedly is trying to settle.

“We’re not doing this to grandstand,” Zine told The Times. Yet it’s hard to understand why either of the two incidents that landed him in the news required a badge. Last week’s ruckus occurred while he and Smith were giving a newly appointed member of the civilian Police Commission a tour of the San Fernando Valley, something they could have readily done in civvies. And last fall Zine could have easily -- and more appropriately -- delivered his constituents’ complaints about the Frisky Kitty dressed as their councilman, not as their personal cop.

Zine and Smith argue that their service as reserve officers gives their colleagues valuable insight into the workings of a key city department. But surely their previous experience does that, especially since Bernard C. Parks, the longtime LAPD veteran and former chief, is their council colleague. Parks didn’t allow City Council members to be reserve officers when he was police chief because of the conflict it posed for commanding officers to supervise council members who were, in effect, their bosses. Is Chief William J. Bratton listening?

Since Zine and Smith can’t stop being City Council members when they put on a police uniform, they should stop being cops.