Now that the "cover" is blown,
these small
stickers, could be used to send
the "wrong
message"
by Alex Hutchings, Jr.
Arkansas Chronicle Staff
Writer
The hour is late and the Little Rock city cops driving along I-40 in Little Rock are on the prowl for drunks behind wheels. A car accelerates rapidly up the on-ramp, pulling ahead of the police cruiser by about three blocks. Then, the car accelerates rapidly and hops into the far left lane where it soon reaches a speed of over eighty miles per hour.
The cops accelerate quickly too. Just as they get about 50-feet off
the bumper of the speeding Chevy, the driver of the police car trips a
switch that turns the expressway into a moving light show of high intensity
blue and white light. His partner reaches for the microphone to call in
the tag number of the traffic stop when his trained eye spots a familiar
sign - a small black sticker in the driver side rear window - with a thin
blue line through it. He places the mike back in the holder as both vehicles
cruise to the
shoulder.
The driver of the police car chuckles as he exits his vehicle. He stands behind his door and shouts a friendly greeting at the other driver - telling him to try to keep his car off the telephone poles tonight. And with that, what would otherwise be a serious DUI investigation traffic stop turns into a chuckle.
Whether or not the driver of the suspect vehicle really, truly was a police officer may now become a bit of a mystery to the Little Rock police officers who turned the suspect loose. It seems that one of the best kept secrets of law enforcement is not such a secret after all.
Devised as a silent means of alerting other police officers that the car bearing the "thin blue line" sticker was driven either by a cop or member of the immediate family, the stickers have been popping up on private cars owned by cops from coast to coast over the last year.
The origin of the stickers, which are often as not distributed via police supply stores, is a mystery. No police department or agency would comment on the stickers or use of them by their officers. Despite the wall of silence, cruising the parking lot of several police departments yielded dozens of examples in Little Rock, Tulsa, Atlanta and Dallas where private cars owned by cops are adorned with the subtle little sticker.
One police equipment supplier in Little Rock said he gives the stickers out for free - but only to persons he personally knows to be law enforcement officers. "The big deal used to be the 'Fraternal Order of Police' license tag medallions. But that tells everybody you're a cop. Besides, anyone can get one now. The 'thin blue line' stickers came up as a way to let other cops know that you're an off duty cop - or the spouse of one."
State regulations in Arkansas do not prohibit the placing of such stickers on a vehicle, so, it's apparently possible for anyone: cops, law-abiding citizens, habitual drunks or drug-traffickers to place such a sticker on their vehicle, thereby perhaps eliminating unwanted scrutiny resulting from their personal driving eccentricities.
One Arkansas State Police official claimed he had never heard of the stickers, but, a street level cop in Little Rock said, "I'ts not exactly a 'management' sort of thing. It's a clue for street cops and detectives to be on the lookout for in case you or whoever is driving your car is broke-down and needs help maybe."
Whatever the reason, if the stickers proliferate, the result may be widespread "cop confusion," at least until they can devise a new "secret sign."
