LAPD Hangs Out Its Stocking With a Wish List : Donations: Lab equipment, pagers and cellular telephones are among the items needed by the Police Department. Corporations offer goods and money to modernize outmoded equipment.

Watch out, Salvation Army, there’s a hot new charity in town, a needy nonprofit that is hauling in the donations.

The Los Angeles Police Department has no intention of issuing bells and Santa suits to its officers or putting tip jars in its patrol cars. But it has launched a campaign to tap into the public’s largess.

With the holidays just around the corner, Chief Willie L. Williams has drawn up a wish list of about 500 items that the LAPD urgently needs. Crime lab equipment. Telephone answering machines. Car phones. Pagers. Polaroid cameras. The total price tag exceeds $4.5 million.

First Interstate Bank announced Monday that it will help round up the gifts, primarily by tapping into the city’s corporate culture. To set an example, the bank has offered to enroll LAPD managers in its leadership development programs and fund an internal monthly newsletter for LAPD employees.

“This initiative will not in any way substitute what the city of Los Angeles is doing and can do through taxpayers’ dollars,” said Edward M. Carson, First Interstate’s chairman. “It is, instead, a supplemental effort to help keep the department as well-equipped as its sister agencies.”

The LAPD has an infrastructure that is years behind the times, a decaying remnant of its once glorious past.

Officers keep records with paper and pencil at ramshackle wood desks. They drive cars with more than 100,000 miles. During the heat of crime-fighting, their handcuffs fail, flashlights go out and transmissions die.

“We do not have a lot of the technical resources that are necessary to do modern policing for the 1990s and the year 2000, which is quickly approaching,” Williams said. “We do not have basic things--car phones . . . things that are not novel.”

The new campaign is part of Mayor Richard Riordan’s effort to prod the private sector into donating money and resources at a time when city government is facing a serious budget shortfall.

“The private sector realizes the obligation that they now have to make this city healthy again,” Riordan said.

Even without an organized campaign, donations have been streaming in to the LAPD. In recent months, the police have received hundreds of letters and telephone calls from those who want to help, officials say. Crime-weary residents and some politicians have stepped forward with pledges for everything from computers to patrol cars.

The corporate offers range from several dozen video cameras donated by a Kentucky firm to 13 personal computers and six printers offered by Great Western Bank. KHS Bikes and Challenge Publications teamed up to donate six high-performance mountain bikes valued at $1,000 each.

Elected officials are also involved. Councilwoman Laura Chick, who took office in July, donated $77,500 to the LAPD West Valley Division from her office budget and gave the department three of the seven city cars assigned to her staff.

To head off those who might want to buy a patrol car for their own block, Williams stressed that donors will not have a say in the deployment of their gifts. But many donations are directed to a police station close to home.

Even if the LAPD does become everyone’s favorite charity, the Salvation Army should not worry too much. The famed bell ringers are in on the act, benefiting along with the police.

As part of its LAPD donation, First Interstate is giving $177,000 over the next several years to fund an anti-gang program that the Salvation Army will oversee at its facility in the Pico-Union district.

The program is aimed at at-risk youngsters who are on vacation from 10th Street Elementary School, a year-round facility where one-third of the students are off at any given time. The On Track program will provide daytime activities at the Red Shield Youth and Community Center.

There will also be parenting classes to improve the environment at home, a bilingual social worker to handle crises, and an advisory council made up of parents, children, bank executives and, of course, the police.