In This Police Action Series, It’s Ready, Aim, Hire

Lights. Camera. Action.

“When duty calls, the LAPD responds,” a voice booms over a pounding soundtrack.

Cut to an emergency operator answering a call: “911 emergency.”

“My daughter is missing,” a shaken-sounding man says.

The girl is seen getting into a car, the driver ominously obscured.

Cut to a police station: “We have an Amber Alert,” a commander tells a roll call of officers. “Be careful out there.”

“I would be going nuts if it were my daughter,” a male officer tells his female partner as they hurry to a cruiser and the start of their patrol shift.

Seconds later, they join a high-speed chase.

This isn’t the latest Harrison Ford movie. It isn’t the West Coast version of “NYPD Blue.”

It’s the first of three new movie-trailer-style ads that the Los Angeles Police Department hopes will help it fill a looming void in its ranks next year. The ads will be seen on the big screen before blockbusters are shown at the Magic Johnson Theaters, and on the Internet at Join LAPD.com and at Monster.com.

The spots were made by public relations firm Weber Shandwick, with a well-known director of music videos, J.C. Barros, at the helm. The cost was about $100,000 from the department, and $350,000 in donations of services from a dozen sources, officials said.

Chief William J. Bratton, who played New York’s mayor in the Al Pacino movie “People I Know,” wants to make one thing clear: Despite the city’s tight budget, the department is hiring.

“We need to hire 400 officers this coming year, thanks to retirements and departures,” Bratton said.

The LAPD may need to recruit as many as 6,000 men and women to find enough to qualify for the police academy.

The films use real officers, tactics and scenarios. The department has drawn on Hollywood marketing power to create entertainment content that promotes the LAPD.

The short film is divided into three, three-minute vignettes that depict officers responding to a child abduction, a domestic disturbance call and a hostage-taking.

The first ad, already online, and the second segment end with “to be continued” and are quickly followed with a clip of action-packed footage from the next installment.

“These are cops playing actors, not actors playing cops,” said Armando Azarloza, executive vice president of Weber Shandwick.

Scripted with a big Hollywood crew, the films were directed by Barros, who has been at the helm of videos for Gloria Estefan, Jon Secada and Enrique Iglesias.

The principal officers, Det. Cassandra Britt-Nickerson and Officer Pablo Vitar, were selected from a casting call of the rank and file, said Capt. Rick Webb, commanding officer of recruitment. Vitar acted in movies as a child.

The familiar narrative voice is that of Ashton Smith, an LAPD special reserve officer who possesses some of the best-known vocal cords in town, having made numerous movie trailers.

With the LAPD striving to ensure that the department resembles the community, Webb said it is no coincidence that the lead characters in this mini-episodic drama are Britt-Nickerson, an African American woman, and Vitar, a Latino male.

“The LAPD is a very diverse group, and that’s reflected here,” he said.

Azarloza said the campaign was designed to appeal to young people at sites they frequent: the cinema and the Internet.

“These spots show the authentic work of officers but are also exciting, branded entertainment,” he said.

Unlike past campaigns, which tended to stress money and benefits, Webb said the new ads tout the rewards of the job itself, presenting LAPD service as a kind of modern “Adam-12,” the popular TV series that was an update of the early police show “Dragnet.”

Candidates must be 21 or older to enter the academy, have a high school diploma or the equivalent and be a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident with a history of lawful conduct.

Webb said the advertisements are part of a wider campaign including radio spots and billboards. Britt-Nickerson, Vitar and other officers -- all with Hollywood good looks -- can be found on their own billboards promoting Join LAPD.com.

The films were shot in September, using as a backdrop such settings as Los Angeles from the 6th Street Bridge -- where the hostage crisis with a suicidal man was staged -- and the Venice boardwalk, where the child abductor’s car is found nearby.

Just to complete the act, the LAPD even held a premiere for the ads, complete with red carpet, in the auditorium at police headquarters at Parker Center.

Hanging on the side of the building was a 30-foot-tall banner sporting images of the LAPD’s new star, Britt-Nickerson.