Council Member Is Again an Officer

Residents of Los Angeles now have another opportunity to meet one of their City Council members--when he arrests them.

Councilman Dennis Zine, who represents the west San Fernando Valley and served 33 years as a Los Angeles Police Department officer, rejoined the LAPD as a reserve officer on Tuesday.

In handing Zine a badge at Parker Center, acting Police Chief Martin Pomeroy set aside his concerns about putting an elected official in a potentially dangerous job and allowing someone with control over the Police Department’s budget to work in its ranks--even for just two days a month.

In fact, he said, having a member of the council’s Public Safety Committee carrying a gun and riding in a squad car is a “unique, rare and pleasurable” opportunity.

“I’m looking forward to two days a month having my boss working for me,” Pomeroy said.

Zine, 55, said he will fill in for active officers on nights, weekends and holidays, most likely in the West Valley Division, where he used to work as a motorcycle officer. He is classified as a “line reserve” officer--one of a group of 235 members of the reserve force who are allowed to make arrests and perform all the other duties of a patrol officer on active duty.

Becoming a line reserve officer usually requires 1,000 hours of training, but the LAPD waived that requirement because of Zine’s long career with the department before his 2001 election to the council.

Zine, the first L.A. police officer since Tom Bradley to be elected to the City Council, is the first council member to serve as a reserve officer, he said.

“It sends a strong message to the officers that someone is supporting them,” Zine said, adding that he hopes more Angelenos will join the LAPD’s reserves.

Zine’s son, Christopher, is an active-duty officer with the LAPD’s Pacific Division.

In all, the Police Department has 680 reserve officers, all of them volunteers. Most of them do administrative work and are not peace officers.

The LAPD says it is short 1,100 officers, and loses more officers than it hires. Last week, Mayor James K. Hahn signed legislation to make it easier and more attractive for officers who leave the LAPD to return to active duty.

Zine will receive a $50 monthly stipend to maintain his uniform and for other incidentals. He said he will donate the stipend to charity. Joining the reserve force will have no impact on Zine’s eventual LAPD pension, which he has not yet begun to draw.