Police after hours

LOS ANGELES POLICE OFFICERS cannot dip into confidential LAPD files to grab salacious information to sell to newspapers. That’s a no-brainer. So is banning officers from selling police data to private investigators or using it in their own private-eye businesses. Misusing police databases is a crime, and the department suspended former Sgt. Mark Arneson three years ago on suspicion of doing just that. He was indicted in February as part of the criminal probe into Hollywood private detective Anthony Pellicano.

Now the Pellicano case, and Arneson’s alleged role in it, has forced a closer look at the Los Angeles Police Department’s policy of allowing police officers to do almost any kind of work when they are not on duty. If Chief William J. Bratton gets his way, even officers who play by the rules and keep their hands off confidential police files could be banned from moonlighting as private investigators.

Bratton is right. Cops who set up shop as private detectives are trading on their city access and their positions, whether they cross the legal lines or not. It’s one thing for an officer to work during his or her time off in a security job, or any one of countless positions that can supplement a police salary and take advantage of the LAPD’s flexible work schedule. It’s another thing entirely for officers to use their public positions for private gain.

Making a change is not as easy as it sounds. The LAPD has never before explicitly banned officers from private detective work, so before changing the policy, the city must confer with the union. Meanwhile, Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss is asking for several steps that go beyond the proposed rule.

Weiss, who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, correctly points out that police officers face plenty of conflicts of interest in all kinds of outside employment, whether or not they get licenses as private investigators. For example, an off-duty cop might work for a lawyer as a litigation consultant and face the same kinds of conflicts that a licensed private eye does. Weiss wants the Police Commission to consider ethics training and to lay out clearly what does and does not pose a conflict.

As an even more basic step, the department must get a better handle on what its moonlighting officers actually do. The LAPD said earlier this year that just two officers work after hours as private detectives. Then, it turned out, there were 13 with licenses and permission from the department to do outside work, and 105 with licenses but no permission (they hadn’t asked for it because they apparently don’t have any work). And that’s just the private eyes. How many “consultants”? How many paralegals? It’s not clear.

The department may or may not be rife with conflicts of interest. At the very least, the city should have an accurate, up-to-date register of its police officers’ off-duty work assignments.