I can't believe what I'm reading here. Sponsorship ads on police cruisers? Placing banners on anti-drug program vehicles is one thing, but when the call goes out "Officer down!", the cruiser shouldn't have "Victoria's Secret: The Fall Collection" emblazoned on the panel.
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Group rips plan to swap cruisers for ads
Free police cars bearing commercial messages is an idea whose time has not come, say opponents to the deal offered to Dade City and Zephyrhills.
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 31, 2002
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DADE CITY -- Even before the rubber meets the road, a plan to swap police cars for advertising is meeting opposition from a national advocacy group.
Commercial Alert, an organization based in Portland, Ore., on Wednesday launched a campaign against a program that offers cities free police cars in exchange for placing advertising banners on the cruisers. Dade City and Zephyrhills have both signed up for the program, but neither city has received a car.
Zephyrhills police Chief Jerry Freeman and Dade City police Capt. David Duff said Wednesday the group's concerns are unwarranted and their cities need the financial support.
Commercial Alert Executive Director Gary Ruskin said his group on Wednesday sent out letters to the heads of 100 top companies, urging them not to support the cop car program with their advertising money. The group also launched a campaign to urge residents to ask their police chiefs to take a commercial-free pledge.
The letter sent to companies is signed by 40 college professors, activists and authors in the field of criminal justice.
"This is our job. Commercial Alert is a national organization with nearly 2,000 members in every state. We're set up to protect children and communities and families and the environment from this kind of commercialism," Ruskin said.
"Some things should not be for sale, and police are one of them. You turn police into national laughingstocks, and you degrade their moral authority."
Commercial Alert also opposes advertising in schools, the Smithsonian museums, and NASA space programs.
The letter claims advertising on a squad car undermines an officer's authority and makes "them objects of ridicule and contempt" and "hucksters on wheels."
Advertising also might create a conflict of interest and encourage officers to go easy on sponsors, the letter states.
Freeman said the advertisements would be small, the support welcomed and there would be no conflicts. He said police for years have splashed bright paint schemes on D.A.R.E. cars, part of a program to combat youth drug use. Those cars often carry sponsorship markers, he said.
Cities have already been promised by program coordinator Ken Allison of North Carolina-based Government Acquisitions LLC that ads for alcohol, tobacco, firearms and gambling would be prohibited.
Duff said the program is the best way for a cash-strapped department to get new equipment and said the objections don't merit a comment.
"Everybody is against something," he said.
"I think it's ridiculous," said Ron Tannehill, assistant professor of criminology at Washburn University in Kansas and part of Commercial Alert. "It can make the police a laughingstock."
So far, the ads-for-cars program is still a proposal. No cars have been delivered, but Freeman and Duff said they are on the list, waiting to see what happens next.
