Picture It--Trading Cards Featuring Sheriff’s Deputies : Community relations: Carson may spend $11,000 to spotlight deputies. Officials hope to provide children with a positive image of law enforcement.

Forget about baseball--it’s time to catch sheriff’s fever.

Trading cards featuring law enforcement officers and even their police dogs are emerging as the latest tool in law enforcement. The cards, which feature a public service announcement or biographical information about the deputy instead of batting statistics, are a hit with children and card collectors alike, officials say.

In July, the Carson City Council will vote on whether to spend $11,000 for cards depicting Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who patrol the city. Although details are still being worked out, Carson would be the second city in the county to hand out the cards.

“Far too often, the first contact a young person has with law enforcement is negative,” said Carson Councilwoman Sylvia Muise-Perez when she brought up the proposal at a council meeting this month. “If we have it in a positive way, maybe we can win some of those people over to our side.”

The proposal would allow up to 175 patrol officers from the Carson Sheriff’s Station to be photographed with props of their choice. The officers could write messages of up to 40 words on the back of the cards. Detectives and other desk personnel would probably not be pictured on the cards.

For its $11,000, Carson would receive about 87,500 cards--500 for each patrol officer pictured.

The city, which contracts with the Sheriff’s Department to serve as its local police force--modeled its program after a similar community relations effort in Santa Clarita two years ago. Officials there say the cards have been a grand slam.

Even adults like them, said Leonard Yniguez, a Valencia distributor for Big League Cards, which produces law enforcement and other cards.

“Everybody likes them. They’re amused by them,” Yniguez said. “There has not been anything negative that I’ve heard about them. It allows the kids to approach the officers and ask if they have the cards. They can get to know the officer. They can call an officer by a first name.”

One sample card from Santa Clarita shows Deputy Hugh (Pac-Man) Kearns posing beside a squad car. The card lists Kearns’ interests (cycling, weightlifting and swimming) along with a quote: “I want our community safe for everyone.”

No one knows how many departments are distributing trading cards, but Big League Cards has produced cards for at least 80 police agencies across the United States and in Canada and Germany, said distributor Yniguez, who is also a sheriff’s deputy stationed in Van Nuys.

“I have some that were made up for K-9 units, traffic, detective bureaus and officers on jet skis,” Yniguez said. “I even had a guy in Kansas running for sheriff who had some cards made up as a political handout.”

For years, Los Angeles Police Department officers have been handing out Dodger cards, which feature baseball players on the front and short anti-drug messages on the back.

Carson officials don’t see youngsters trading sheriff’s cards for, say, Darryl Strawberry baseball cards. But they say the program is worth the money it would cost to print the cards. The money would probably come from narcotics forfeiture funds.

“I see it as more than a community relations trend,” Carson Sheriff’s Capt. Joseph James said. “I see this as a facilitator (in allowing) kids to approach officers. . . . It gives policemen an opportunity to interface with kids in a non-confrontational way.”