Rampart CRASH Souvenirs Are Hot Item at Police Convention

As hundreds of officers milled about the streets of the capital for a national police exposition Monday, one of the hottest sellers at the “LAPD Shop” booth offered a ghoulish reminder of the worst corruption scandal in the department’s history.

Emblazoned on T-shirts and towels was the logo for the notorious Rampart CRASH unit: a grinning skull in a cowboy hat, surrounded by a “dead man’s” poker hand of aces and eights.

“How can you sell this stuff?” a few passersby asked LAPD Officer Erik Solter, a Devonshire motorcycle cop who runs a private company selling LAPD gear.

Frustrated LAPD commanders asked that same question, saying they never authorized the high-profile retail booth and that they find the Rampart shirts “disgusting and inappropriate.”

But Solter said he consulted with several high-ranking officials at the LAPD, who advised him that while the Rampart scandal had become too hot to market such memorabilia in California, “they said out here in the East, you can probably sell them.”

So he did--and cops from around the country gobbled them up. With his LAPD badge hanging around his neck, Solter had sold about 100 of the Rampart T-shirts as of Monday evening.

“It’ll be a collector’s item,” said Bill Repsch, a burly undercover officer with the Philadelphia Police Department. He bought three: one for himself and two for colleagues.

Some cops buying the shirts said they wanted to show solidarity with their besieged LAPD colleagues, whom they believe have been unfairly maligned because of the misdeeds of a few bad seeds. Others just like the colorful, ghoulish logo and “the look,” Solter said.

But no one means to suggest any support for the type of violent and illegal behavior allegedly demonstrated by some LAPD officers, he said. “It’s just a T-shirt,” he said.

Critics, however, said the logo reflects the troubling “us versus them” mentality adopted by some Rampart officers, who not only wore the emblems on jackets and sweatshirts but had themselves tattooed with versions of the grinning skull.

“We find it distasteful and counter to professionalism and our efforts to enhance the department’s image,” said Cmdr. David Kalish. “It sends the wrong message and could be perceived to have evil intent. . . . But unfortunately, as disgusting and inappropriate as we may find it, we are limited in our recourse.”

Kalish said the department has been exploring trademark issues surrounding such retail ventures for the last year, but proving a violation can be difficult.

Solter, however, said that his supervisors are well aware of his business sideline and that he had to be approved for a work permit by the department. But he said he didn’t remember which supervisors told him there was no problem with selling T-shirts adorned with the logo for the disbanded CRASH unit outside California.

Monday’s retail display--complete with live music and booths from police departments around the country--was set up just a few blocks from the U.S. Justice Department. The department has authorized a lawsuit against the LAPD because of a “pattern” of misconduct in the Rampart case.