COP SHOP : Officer’s Mail-Order Novelties, Training Aids Aim for Police

Like many cops, when Sgt. David Crockett heads home at night, he takes his pistol--a 9-millimeter Beretta--with him. But after nearly two decades on the Los Angeles Police Department, Crockett has come up with a few ideas of his own.

Instead of leaving the pistol on a nightstand, he stores it in a bedside holster on the side of his mattress. Why? “Cops are concerned about neighborhood burglars just like everybody else,” he said.

He sells the bedside holster to other cops for $23.50.

Some nights, it gets awfully quiet in the squad car, so to pass the time Crockett has tested a portable AM-FM radio that clips onto a rear-view mirror. He sells the radio for $39.95.

Run From Warehouse

Other nights, when Crockett has gotten the rear windows of his police car kicked out by a suspect, things aren’t so quiet. So Crockett sells a $9 nylon chain that wraps around a suspect’s legs and clips onto handcuffs. Crockett calls this a “Duster Buster.” In police lingo, somebody who is numbed by the drug PCP, or angel dust, is “dusted” and, as Crockett describes it, the chain keeps “your PCP suspect or other obnoxious combatant . . . restrained, whether he likes it or not.”

Crockett, 42, works out of the North Hollywood division, but in his spare time, he sells police paraphernalia from his mail-order business called Lineup Police Products, which he runs out of a cramped Chatsworth warehouse. He offers about 300 items to police around the country and writes every word of copy in his 36-page catalogue, which goes out four times a year to 90,000 potential customers and brings in about $450,000 a year in sales, he said.

Tips on Techniques

He sells handcuffs, gun-cleaning kits and, from $8.50 on up, Slim Jims--the notched metal bars that unlock cars. He targets many of his sales to small-town, Andy-of-Mayberry-type police departments that have a couple of officers, little follow-up training and no access to new equipment supply stores. “I do the research and the shopping for them,” Crockett said.

The Potosi Correctional Facility in Missouri, for instance, ordered a couple of videotapes that deal with how to defend against knife or razor-blade attacks. “We need to get anything we can get on edged weapons. It’s what a lot of inmates use,” said Danny Berry, Potosi’s business manager.

Many of the books and videos that Crockett stocks offer tips on police techniques, such as collecting evidence at a crime scene. What do you do if you have to fingerprint a corpse whose fingers look like 2-year-old prunes? First, inject water into the wrinkled digit. The same volume points out that if blood drips from a height of 20 inches or less, it will form an almost perfect coin shape on the floor, while blood that drops from 7 feet resembles a scallop shell.

Crockett also sells coffee mugs and T-shirts emblazoned with cartoons and sayings that he composes in the spirit of police station black humor. One popular mug for the homicide division reads: “Our day begins when yours ends.” Another mug shows a burglar in flight with a gun trained on him. It reads: “Cut Court Costs.”

Crockett’s boss, Capt. Dan Watson, commanding officer of the department’s North Hollywood patrol, said: “It’s a business he’s developed using his expertise from being a police officer. I see it as a combination of serious training aids and novelty items. I know that people here purchase his products.”

Crockett has three employees, plus his mother, who does the accounting, and says his business turns a profit, although he won’t say how much. It’s promising enough that he’s thought about quitting the department. Next month, Crockett hits his 20-year mark on the job, so he’s eligible to retire at 40% of his $50,000-a-year salary.

“I’m having a difficult time figuring out if this is the right time or not,” Crockett said.

He got started in 1981 when an artist friend came up with an idea for a joke-filled police calendar. They printed 1,000 calendars, and Crockett left flyers around the police station and put a small ad in a police newspaper. Two months later, he had 800 calendars left and was looking at a $1,000 loss, then the responses came in from his ad and he sold out. The next year, he put together another calendar and added some coffee mugs and, as his business grew, he moved it from his garage to a warehouse.

Although Crockett only advertises in police magazines, he’s careful not to sell some of his products unless customers enclose a copy of their police identification card. “I don’t want some people out there to have these products,” he said.