A Los Angeles traffic cop who was fired after he appeared in a pornographic video that was posted to the Internet wants his job back.

John K. Dancler was fired last July after an investigation by KNBC-TV showed him and another traffic officer appearing in a porn video while on duty and in uniform, the Los Angeles station reports.

In a hearing this week before the city's Civil Service Commission, Dancler said that he was responding to a call for backup when a porn actress and a movie crew asked him to perform sex acts with her.

"I was caught totally unaware, totally by surprise," Dancler told the hearing officer on Wednesday, referring to the 2008 incident in which he performed acts that led to his dismissal.

"I complied with actually touching her breasts," Dancler said.

Dancler's attorney told the commission hearing that the veteran traffic cop's dismissal was unwarranted and said city officials made his client a "convenient scapegoat," the Los Angeles Times reports.

Following the TV station's investigation, the Department of Transportation fired Dancler for misconduct and participating in "indecent acts" that reflected poorly on the city's civil workforce.

The acts included "groping the bare breasts, spanking the bare buttocks and being straddled by an adult video actress in public," the Times quotes the executive director of the L.A.'s Civil Service Commission as saying.

Dancler, who worked for the department for 23 years, earned about $56,000 annually before he lost his job, the newspaper says.

The other officer seen in the video received "appropriate discipline," according to a department spokesman.

Watch video of the hearing, in which John Dancler appeals to officials to get his job back: