Cop Cards : Tustin Police Try to Improve Image by Giving It Away

There was a time when Clark Galliher, like countless other young boys, aspired to the life of a professional baseball player. One day, he believed, his own face might adorn one of those baseball trading cards that he collected with such fervor.

But those were dreams born of innocence and youth, and in time a refocused career found him astride a motorcycle with the Tustin Police Department.

Still, sometimes dreams can come true--albeit with a twist. Galliher’s face now adorns a baseball-style trading card, but instead of holding a bat, he’s carrying a police baton. And instead of the white uniform of the Blue Wrecking Crew, he’s wearing the dark uniform of the Boys in Blue.

“It’s almost like you’re immortalized on a piece of cardboard,” said Galliher, 31, a seven-year veteran with the Tustin police. “I did want to be a baseball player . . . (now) at least I’m on a card.”

On Monday, Tustin police unveiled the Children and Officers Partnership (Cop) Card Program, a unique way to reach out to neighborhood kids and show them the human side of police officers, according to Chief W. Douglas Franks.

Thirty-four of the 88 Police Department employees, including Franks, posed for the trading cards, which will begin circulating next Monday. It is the first time that a police department in Orange County has used such a method for bringing police officers closer to neighborhood children.

“It’s an attempt to humanize the police officer for the children in the community,” Franks said.

The idea of issuing Cop Cards was first formulated locally about a year ago by Officer Dave Gora, who for years has passed out Los Angeles Rams trading cards to school kids as a way to become more familiar with the children on his beat. The cards, which were printed by the New Jersey-based Big League Card Co., cost the department about $2,500.

“It’s an excellent investment,” Franks said.

Gora said that when he took the idea to his superiors, there was an immediate, and positive, response. He then began researching the idea, found a company to issue them and submitted a staff report.

“They were in love with the idea,” he said.

The finished cards were delivered to the station during the summer, and a deal was struck with the Tustin Unified School District to circulate the cards at six of the district’s nine elementary schools.

Three different officers will be featured each week, Gora said. By December, children with all 34 cards will win a gift certificate from a local fast-food restaurant and will have their names submitted for a grand prize drawing. One child from each school will win a gift certificate to a local toy store, community services officer Dorothy O’Kelley said.

Gora said that a fear of police officers is a longstanding tradition that has worked against the community.

“I go to eat in a restaurant and hear a mother say to her son, ‘You better behave, there’s a policeman right there,’ ” Gora said. “There’s not usually a pleasant contact.”

But if children can learn to trust police officers and learn positive values, the business of fighting crime can be made easier, he said. The Cop Cards were designed to instill a trust in the uniformed officer, teach law-abiding values and inform kids about safety.

On the back of officer Jeff Blair’s card, for instance, is a simple but vital message in the form of a poem:

Gangs are no good.

Let it be understood.

If you want to be happy,

Don’t join one,

They’re sappy.

The cards also contain a short biography of each officer.

“We feel it’s another step in our effort to truly be a community-oriented police department . . . in a manner in which we can truly get to know (children) on a one-to-one basis,” Franks said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Bob Warford, who was one of 150 department officials from the Santa Clarita Station to issue similar trading cards last December, said there was an immediate response on the streets when the cards began circulating.

“They were a hot collector’s item,” Warford said.

Warford said that in the Newhall area, school kids were once wary of a police presence but that now, “they are running out to the curb and waving and yelling at you to stop. They feel so at ease around us now, and it only took a week.”

Gora said he hopes to see a similar response in Tustin.

“Right now I work narcotics detail,” Gora said. “We got a war on drugs, and we are making a dent in it. But I put most of my hope in the kids. We need them as much as they need us.”