There is an article in today’s Los Angeles Times about security on film set locations. It mentions how most of the officers that you see around town doing security and directing traffic on sets are retired, no longer active members of the police force.
Personally, I find this quite disturbing! While I live in Santa Monica, which is an independent city (Los Angeles is an amalgamation of lots of little cities inside a great big one), we have similar issues. And if you read my posts from the past, you can see that filming in Santa Monica can be a problem.
You might ask, “What’s the problem with this?” Well, the problem is that often times they “protect” the filming. Go and read the article, it talks about how they (the filming) often work past hours that they are allowed, create excessive noise and other things that disturb the surrounding neighbors/neighborhoods. The officers aren’t there to protect the filming, they are there to enforce the rules and protect the neighbors/neighborhoods.
If they aren’t doing their jobs by protecting those that are effected, then what are they doing? Are they just there impersonating a police officer? They wear police uniforms and ride police motorcycles even though they aren’t police. Isn’t this against the law? Can I dress up as a police officer and provide security…? I didn’t think so, and just because you are retired doesn’t give you the rights to put on the uniform again and act like police, especially when you are allowing film crews to not abide by the rules (time limits, parking issues, security, etc., i.e. breaking the law!).
Again, go read the article and you will be as shocked as I am… The LAPD sent out officers to spot check and found that often there are violations, which is why they are now looking to oversee these folks that do film security, impersonating officers! I say go to it!!!! The film folks say that it will raise costs, increase hassles and make them move filming elsewhere…. Then go! There is no reason that a film crew/comapny/industry should not have to follow the same rules that the rest of the public does.
A rare occurrence in LA, where the police have been investigated by the FBI, etc. I say go LAPD :-)!