Look-Alike Cars the Issue : Police, Pizza Maker Haggle on Legislation

A legislative confrontation between San Diego police and a pizza restaurant owner over delivery vehicles that look like squad cars was delayed Monday to give the combatants time to iron out their differences.

Restaurateur Daniel Crotta, seeking to expand his San Diego-based New York Pizza Department into a national chain, says he’ll paint his delivery cars blue so they won’t look like white patrol cars used by local police in San Diego.

“That would help,” said Lt. Glenn A. Breitenstein of the San Diego Police Department’s traffic division.

But police would be a lot more pleased, Breitenstein said, if Crotta agreed to remove the fake light bars atop the delivery cars.

Crotta said he doesn’t want to do that because he has registered a trademark, picturing delivery cars that have mock light bars. Still, Breitenstein and Crotta, both in Sacramento on Monday, said they would like to discuss the matter further, and might even fashion a workable compromise.

Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista), who is carrying a bill to ban police car look-alikes at the request of the San Diego City Council, postponed a vote on the measure by the Assembly Public Safety Committee Monday.

“We are going to try and work something out,” Peace told the panel, which is chaired by Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego).

Police say that when Crotta’s delivery cars took to the streets late last year, they caused considerable confusion among citizens who mistook them for police cars.

One citizen who witnessed an automobile burglary mistakenly tried to flag down a pizza delivery car, and several stranded motorists have complained of being passed by police cars, Breitenstein said.

“We (police) have very stringent requirements about rendering aid, so we think those may have been pizza cars too,” Breitenstein said.

Crotta, who is an attorney, said the idea for a police motif for his pizza restaurants came to him in 1983.

He said he hopes to soon open two new restaurants in San Diego County and two in Los Angeles County, and that he is also exploring out-of-state markets.

Crotta said he has worked with the local police and the California Highway Patrol to try to overcome their objections and keep everything legal.

Besides the squad cars, each of the pizza outlets will be decorated as a police precinct, all the employees will wear patrol uniforms and customers will receive get receipts that are labeled “citation.”