The Fight Against Crime: Notes From the Battlefront

The folksy old cop on the beat is gone. These days, it takes PR gimmicks for police officers to draw public attention to crime fighting, from talking patrol cars to streetwise parrots.

“It just gets old for people when we are standing up there talking from pamphlets all the time,” says Sgt. Bruce Sonnenblick of the Crime Prevention and Community Affairs section of the Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Station.

In addition to their standard community meetings and Neighborhood Watch programs, law enforcement community relations departments turn to less traditional and less jargon-filled methods.

The Los Angeles Police Department has CASEY, the popular talking car. CASEY is a robotic car whose name stands for Crime Awareness Safety Education for Youth.

Officers take the robot, which is built in the shape of a police car but is only about the size of a child’s tricycle, out to schools and on other community outreach programs.

The four CASEY cars don’t actually talk. An officer stands out of sight of the audience, and operates the car by radio controls, answering questions through a hand-held radio hooked up to the model.

When students pose questions, the car rolls up closer to them and whammo, out comes the advice.

“There can be some humorous situations from time to time,” said Sgt. Reid Morthel, who heads the LAPD’s Crime Prevention Division. “When we are teaching people about their own safety, we want them to get involved in the lecture. And I’ve found that the best way to reach them is laughter.”

This little trick, fooling audience members into believing the car talks, works most effectively with children, because they are more apt to learn from humor than dry police lectures in cop jargon, Morthel said.

Before CASEY, there was “Officer Bird,” a talking parrot that a police officer taught to recite crime prevention tips.

The pair became much requested fixtures on the LAPD open house circuit, but are no longer with the department.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department utilized the talents of one of its own to change the voice of crime prevention. Deputy Aaron Williams, a ventriloquist, appears with a dummy at adult gatherings, school assemblies, open houses and in classrooms.

In schools, Williams’ alter ego delivers safety tips about things like “stranger danger” and warnings against taking part in vandalism.

LAPD Valley traffic officers have launched their own version of the department’s anti-drug program called DARE.

A team of officers is frequently dispatched to local private and public high schools to teach lessons such as “How to Avoid a Ticket,” said Capt. Al Kerstein.

Despite the sometimes deadly serious nature of their jobs, both sheriff’s deputies and LAPD officers agree that when used properly, laughter or other audience participation methods can make an important difference.

“It all depends on what type of audience and what I am speaking about,” says Sonnenblick. “If I am talking to kids, then props and stuff like that might be fine. But if I am talking to a victims’ group then I don’t think injecting humor is a good way to reach them. That might make light of their situation.

“But if it’s a neighborhood group or something like that, we tell jokes all the time.”