Access to police paraphernalia is made easy by a lack of legal safeguards, a glut of supply
By Daniel Patrick Sheehan
Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania)
Related: Protecting the public from LE impersonators
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — It takes a lot of brass to impersonate a police officer, but people do it anyway: fake uniforms, fake badges and, often, real guns.
The sexual assault of a female motorist by a fake state trooper in Upper Saucon three weeks ago — which remains under investigation by the real state police —appears to be another entry in a disturbingly large catalog of police wannabes using the trappings of officialdom to carry out a crime.
And those trappings are easier to acquire than ever. Scores of Web sites sell law enforcement paraphernalia. Indeed, when the story of the Upper Saucon case appeared on The Morning Call Web site, it automatically generated advertising links to companies peddling police identification cards, uniform shirts, surplus police cars, light bars, patches and even badges.
“Without question, there are several times more badges in circulation than there are on the chests of sworn law enforcement officers,” says Robert D. McCrie, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who has studied the phenomenon of police impersonation for years.
Many smaller police departments allow officers to buy badges on their own. Others, such as Allentown, provide badges. Police gear dealers say legitimate members of their industry take every precaution to make sure the people buying badges and similar items are real law officers.
“We get a good amount over the course of a month of people trying to buy badges who aren’t certified,” says Jim Witmer of Witmer Associates, a Philadelphia-area company that operates the “Officer Store” -- a Web site and brick-and-mortar shop that specializes in police gear and sells thousands of badges a year to officers all over the country.
Shoppers ordering badges are required to provide two forms of identification and authorization from their law enforcement agency, Witmer says. The orders are forwarded to a badge manufacturer, which may double-check the shopper’s credentials.
There is no state or federal law requiring such safeguards. And, though some states have laws prohibiting conventions where badges and patches can be swapped or sold, experts say the sheer volume of such items in circulation means impersonators have scant trouble acquiring them.
“There are perhaps thousands of people who collect police badges, from the fascination of doing so, from the spirit of being a collector,” McCrie says. “They are traded at fairs, gun shows, police paraphernalia shops.”
Statistics on impersonation aren’t available because no agency tracks the phenomenon. But cases crop up all the time, ranging from the disturbing -- fake officers stopping and berating motorists for traffic infractions -- to the deadly serious.
In the Upper Saucon case, state police said the impersonator wore a light gray short-sleeve uniform shirt, dark pants, black boots and a leather duty belt with a semiautomatic handgun in the holster.
It was not close to the official troopers’ uniform -- shirt or jacket with a state police patch on the shoulders, a tie, hat, dark gray pants and leather gear -- but impersonators count on their victims having untrained eyes.
Impersonators often share a similar psychological profile: a desire to wield extraordinary power over someone else.
“In our society, only the police are charged with the right to deprive members of the public of their freedom temporarily,” McCrie says.
Last year, a 32-year-old New York City man was convicted of posing as a police officer and killing a Long Island bank manager in an effort to get the keys to the bank. Reginald Gousse, who had a history of impersonation, was sentenced to life in prison.
Fake police have also played a role in some of the nation’s most notorious crimes, including the break-in of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. A pair of thieves posing as police officers stole works by the likes of Rembrandt, Degas and Manet worth roughly $300 million.
“And Caryl Chessman, the California Red Light Bandit, used some police paraphernalia.”
In 1948, Chessman was convicted of numerous counts of robbery, kidnapping and sexual assault. The “Bandit” would approach victims in cars by flashing a red light, similar to a police officer’s.
In the law enforcement community, impersonators inspire a particular loathing, not only because they disrespect the uniform but create a sense of anxiety among citizens.
“It makes our job harder,” says Allentown Police Chief Roger MacLean. “We legitimately try to pull someone over and they’re leery.”
MacLean said legislation placing stricter controls on the sale of police paraphernalia “might be worth looking into,” but said it is unlikely to stop the problem.
“With the mail order catalogs and the Internet, you can buy just about anything,” he said. “Even to make official-looking stationery -- how hard is that?”
Copyright 2007 The Morning Call, Inc.
All Rights Reserved