For Arresting Humor, His Art’s Just the Ticket

“OK, men, here’s the ground rules. You crooks dress comfortably and carry on any way you like. You cops wear ridiculous uniforms, follow every rule ever written and some that haven’t been yet, maintain an even temper even under the most adverse. . . .”

That’s a judge speaking, instructing two nauseated-looking police officers and two beaming criminals in one of Police Officer Wally Davis’ “Crime Crushers” cartoons. The drawing, Davis says, is intended to win a few chuckles--and to “alert people to the fact that we (police) are extremely limited in what we can do” to keep the civic peace.

Most of all, Davis says, the cartoons in his two published books (“Crime Crushers” and “Son of . . . Crime Crushers”) are meant to show that police are as humanly fallible as everybody else. A little humor, Davis says, can help relieve the intense stress that every “street cop” feels every day on the job.

Davis writes and draws from experience. The 34-year-old Anaheim resident and La Palma Police Department officer has been a patrolman for 11 years and a part-time cartoonist since his high school days. For the past seven years, Davis has been lampooning aspects of police life that strike him as funny, and in December, 1984, his first cartoon collection was published.

Humor Is ‘Best Defense’

“Everybody in police work has to have a funny side. Humor is one of the best defenses we have against stress. . . . People expect us to be more (in control) than they are. We have to be strong all the time . . . but we’re flesh and blood,” Davis said in an interview a few days before he left on a monthlong cross-country trip to promote literacy. “If you learn to put things in perspective and find out what’s funny in a situation, it’s not going to bother you as much.”

Davis--who hopes eventually to syndicate his work--had his first two books published by Fragments West/The Valentine Press, a small Long Beach company run by cartoonist Phil Yeh. Davis’ books have sold “about 9,000 or 10,000 copies between them,” mostly through mail orders, he said. More books will be coming from Davis’ own recently formed mail-order company, Copouts Ink. (The address is P.O. Box 6223, Anaheim 92806.)

As far as he knows, Davis said, he is the only police officer-cartoonist in the United States who is publishing books of cartoons that poke fun at police officers’ lives.

His cartooning is encouraged by administrators and patrol officers in the La Palma department, Davis said. He came to the station seven years ago, 18 months after he had “burned out” from what he called 4 1/2 high-stress years at the Colton Police Department in Riverside County. Davis said he worked as a sales representative after leaving Colton but “realized (police work) is where my interests lie,” so he found a job at La Palma, a much smaller police department, in 1979. Although he later transferred to two other cities’ police stations in pursuit of career advancement, Davis said he “went home” to La Palma in 1984.

Source of Cartoons

Shortly after his return, “without my knowing about it,” Davis said, the La Palma officers hung a small bulletin board above a hallway drinking fountain. Dubbed “Wally’s World,” the bulletin board now displays several Davis cartoons. Material for these cartoons is drawn from what Davis observes in his own work and from what other officers tell him--although he said he often fictionalizes situations.

As an officer, Davis works three 12-hour shifts and has four days off each week. He does the cartooning on his days off but carries “a little book with me, and when I get an idea I write it down” while patrolling, he said. When other officers “goof up, they’ll tell me about it themselves” rather than have someone else tell him first, Davis added. Before long, a satirical look at the “goof-up” may be on the bulletin board. Davis said he believes that seeing a funny cartoon about a problem situation may help an officer “realize it (the problem) is not the end of the world.”

Plenty of Davis’ cartoons poke fun at civilians, too. “We (police officers) do see a lot of stupid stuff,” Davis said. One of his favorite “Crime Crushers” cartoons is a drawing of a man in a sports car pulled up to a police barrier emblazoned with “Do Not Cross,” “No Entry,” “Keep Out” and “Stop” signs. In the cartoon, the driver asks a nearby officer, “Excuse me, officer, can I get through here?”

“That particular situation comes up all the time,” Davis said.

Cast of Characters

Gradually, a cast of characters has evolved for Davis’ cartoons. His main character is a rookie named Ed Smedley, who is “young, single and wants to go out and conquer the whole world--he usually ends by messing up,” Davis said. Officer Leroy Johnson is a black who has been in law enforcement for 10 years and has learned not to let job stress bother him too much, and Officer Mike Lopez is a divorced man who “has five years on (the force) . . . you always think he’s mad at everybody. He seems like a mean guy, but he’s not, really,” Davis said.

Minor characters who recur in the cartoons include Reserve Figby, a weekend worker “who’ll volunteer for anything”; Officer Sally Smith, who is “struggling to fit into a traditionally male-oriented job,” and Officer Hubert Holstein, who is “not dumb, just slow on the uptake, but everybody likes him,” Davis said.

“Smedley is just about every rookie who ever walked out of the academy,” Davis said. “Johnson and Lopez probably each have a little bit of me in them. Two of the (other) characters have some basis in reality, and the people they’re patterned after know it,” Davis said, but he refused to name the characters’ models on the record (“I wouldn’t put that in (the newspaper), if you want me to live at all!”).

At the La Palma Police Department, “morale is a whole is better” than at most police departments, according to Davis, because “we’re serious (about work), but we can go ahead and have some fun with it anyway. I have on occasion depicted the chief in a cartoon, and he appreciates it because he’s not a sacred cow and neither am I. I know good and well if I mess up, I’d better draw a cartoon, or I’ll get lynched.”

‘No Maliciousness’

La Palma Police Chief Norman G. Hansen said that “a little humor never hurt anybody. . . . I think sometimes the officers take themselves too seriously,” and Davis’ cartoons help them get their problems in perspective. Hansen said he has never minded being depicted in a “Crime Crushers” cartoon because the drawings are “all done good-naturedly. There’s no maliciousness at all.”

While he caricatures most of the department’s “mess-ups,” Davis said that “there have been a couple I didn’t do because they made me mad. People know if I don’t do a cartoon (on a mishap), it’s because I take it seriously. . . . I don’t know that the worst situations get into the artwork. There are some situations I will never address in a cartoon (because) I just don’t think they can be made light of.” (One such situation was the death of a baby that Davis was called on to help. He attempted to revive the child, then administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation “all the way to the hospital” without success. “That could never be a joke,” he said.)

But often, police officers do make jokes about grim situations--and that’s a sign of health, Davis said. “It’s graveyard humor, it’s gallows humor,” he said. “Instead of getting maudlin (when someone dies), you find something funny. . . . You’re not making fun of the guy who died, you’re relieving the stress we (police officers) have no other outlet for.” Police officers who don’t learn to laugh may end up divorced, alcoholic or suicidal, Davis said.

Larry Blum, a police psychologist with a private practice in Santa Ana, said Davis is right about humor being beneficial for those engaged in high-stress work. Blum, who has met Davis socially and read his cartoons, said he thinks the “Crime Crushers” cartoons are “wonderful; they give officers the chance to laugh at the things that are causing them frustration . . . but I don’t think humor is sufficient” for solving emotional problems resulting from police work.

Unprepared for Trauma

During training at police academies, there’s a “lack of an emotional training (to supplement) tactical training,” Blum said. “I think officers are woefully unprepared for the trauma” they will inevitably experience in dealing with life-and-death situations day after day. But humor such as Davis’ can serve as short-term therapy, Blum said. “That’s what the black humor or police humor is used for. . . . It is a way of distancing ourselves” from frightening realities.

Davis is now traveling across the country to promote literacy and simultaneously make his work better known. The tour, called “Cartoonists Across America,” was organized by Yeh (Davis’ first publisher), who writes and draws books about a character called “Frank the Unicorn.”

Yeh and two other cartoonists--Lynn Williams and Leigh Rubin--left in mid-April to make presentations in Denver, Kansas City and St. Louis, and Davis joined the tour recently in Chicago. The four plan to travel until late May, making numerous appearances to talk about humor, cartooning and the importance of reading. They are visiting cities in the Midwest, the Southwest and the South, as well as Washington, Syracuse, Boston and Toronto, Davis said.

The trip’s purpose is “to get everybody aware that there is a literacy problem in this country and to inspire people who don’t know how to read to want to read cartoons,” Davis said. Earlier this spring, the four cartoonists made similar appearances together up and down the West Coast.

Endorsements Cited

The “Cartoonists Across America” idea has been endorsed by such celebrities as Charles Schulz and Barbara Bush, wife of Vice President George Bush, Davis said, as well as by the national Literacy Volunteers of America. (A Literacy Volunteers spokesperson said the cartoonists are “linking up” with the organization’s chapters across the country but are not being paid for their appearances.) The cartoonists, who are “all basically non-famous but trying not to be that way,” are paying their own expenses, Davis said, and he is using accumulated vacation time from his La Palma police job to make the trip.

Davis said he has a particular interest in promoting literacy because “literacy does relate to crime. Statistics do indicate that there are probably 10% more illiterates in prison than in the general population. Maybe there’s a chance if (a criminal) does learn how to read, when he gets out (of prison) he may get a job.” (Appropriately enough, one of the tour’s stops was at the Cook County Jail in Chicago, where Davis and his associates spent an hour “doing drawings for (the inmates) and rapping with them” about cartooning, Davis said in a telephone interview after the presentation.)

Davis’ third book, “Desperately Seeking Crime Crushers,” will soon be published by Davis himself. (“I’m trying to take movie titles and pervert them” into book titles, Davis said. “Later on I’ll do ‘Planet of the Crime Crushers.’ Of course, that opens up ‘Return to the Planet of the Crime Crushers.’ ”) He said he has enough cartoons for an additional six books and plans to publish a book a year.

He has also invented a board game, “Crime Crushers: A Game of Criminal Pursuit,” which is scheduled to make its debut this summer. It’s “a game for street cops, for those who used to be street cops, for those who want to be street cops and for those who don’t even like street cops,” he said. “There’s no police talk in it, no codes; you don’t have to be a cop to figure out what to do next.”

Police Board Game

Set in an anonymous “City, U.S.A.,” the game sends its players “around the board to check out suspicious activities, make traffic stops, go to the doughnut shop (that’s a penalty)” and engage in other bits of police work, Davis said. He also plans to publish Crime Crushers calendars, coffee mugs, Christmas cards and a “child-safety coloring book,” Davis said. Crime Crushers T-shirts and bumper stickers already are available.

Married (to Marcie, a self-employed typesetter) and the father of three children, Davis dreams of someday retiring from full-time police duty and devoting himself to the cartoon books and other products. He also would like to conduct anti-stress seminars at police departments around the country, he said, to encourage officers “to use humor as a pressure valve” for venting their feelings.

If he were to retire, Davis added, he would “become a reserve (officer)--I’d go in and ride once a week for 12 or 16 hours” the way his cartoon character Reserve Figby does. (Reserve officers work part time for little or no pay, Davis said.) But unlike the “inexperienced” and “idealistic” Figby--whose reasons for being a reserve are unclear even to himself--Davis said he knows why he would be a part-timer.

Police work is “where I have to be to keep the (cartoon) ideas flowing,” he said. “I want to keep in touch.”