Officer Is Targeting Police in His Mail-Order ‘Lineup’

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 Crockett has tested a portable AM-FM radio that clips onto a rear-view mirror to help pass the time. He sells the radio for $39.95.

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 their 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.

He sells handcuffs, gun-cleaning kits and, from $8.50 on up, Slim Jims--the notched metal bars that unlock cars, which police use to rescue those who have locked their keys in their 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 seven feet resembles a scallop shell.

Tips on Escorting Suspects

One videotape demonstrates how to escort a suspect without handcuffs. The instructor advises to keep one hand on the suspect’s elbow and, with the other hand, grab the back of his pants and yank upward to tighten the pressure on his groin. “That’s darn uncomfortable. It takes his mind off resistance,” the instructor says. If the suspect turns belligerent, the instructor says to remember that “the head is a gift.” He shows how to grab a suspect’s hair and yank him to the ground.

Crockett also sells jokes, coffee mugs and T-shirts emblazoned with cartoons and sayings that he composes in the spirit of black police station 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.

‘Difficult Time’

“I’m having a difficult time figuring out if this is the right time or not,” Crockett said. He still likes his job and his co-workers, and there’s also the worry of making enough from his business to keep up his life style.

“I’m not sure that it’s going to work yet. Every time you turn around, the bureaucracies are going after you,” Crockett said.

Postage for instance. Last year, the post office upped the mail order tab; now Crockett pays 17 cents to mail each catalogue, up from 12 cents. Add the 25 cents that he pays to print each catalogue and Crockett invests about $37,000 to get each run out the door. He also gripes about workers’ compensation insurance--it’s doubled in three years--and says finding reliable suppliers is a nagging headache.

But he sticks with mail order because he likes the magic of sending out a piece of paper in the mail and getting money sent back.

Joke-Filled Police Calendar

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.

There are about 800,000 police and other law-enforcement types in the United States, and Crockett figures that the average pay for police nationwide is a modest $24,000, so he tries to keep his prices down. One item that flopped was a $214 steel battering ram to bust down doors. “Too expensive,” he said.

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. Possible Crockett contraband includes a videotape on how to burglarize a home, which neatly demonstrates how to force open an electronic garage door in 15 seconds with a crow bar; how to beat the three most popular brands of door locks with an awl and a screw driver, and an explanation why GM’s cars have the toughest locks of the Big 3 car companies.

Another item Crockett sells, which he says isn’t authorized for use by the Los Angeles Police Department, is a 26-inch steel baton (price $45) used by the U.S. Capitol Police. For police on other departments, it makes a dandy “impact weapon,” he said, and whips out in a second to its full length. Even when retracted, the baton comes in handy, Crockett said. “It improves your punch, if you’re going to punch a guy.”

Field Supervisor

At the moment, Crockett works as field supervisor on the 3:30 p.m.-to-midnight shift, getting called in on such special problems as family disputes that won’t stop simmering, and chemical spills. In his tenure, Crockett said, he hasn’t shot anybody or been shot at, although he was burned when he was surprised by a wall of flame during a rescue at an apartment building that caught fire from fireworks. He was off work a month.

He still likes being a police officer, but the bureaucracy grinds on him. As a member of the department, for instance, he needed a special permit to run his mail-order business and, even with the permit, he can’t put in any more than 20 hours a week.

Still, Crockett said he will probably stay on the force a few more years. Each year’s service fattens his pension by 3%, and it will lessen the pressure on his mail-order business to hit it big.

As Crockett noted, sending out a catalogue is like “going to the races or to Las Vegas. It’s a gamble. You put your money down and hope everything goes right.”