By Betty S. Mueller Santa Monica
Well our beautiful, white police cars with the carefully chosen three shades of blue and “Santa Monica” in large letters across their sides will soon be replaced by copies of Los Angeles black and white police cars. One will soon have to look closely to find the words “Santa Monica” on our police cars.
Why? Is this part of a campaign to strengthen an unjustifiable image of Santa Monica as a gang-ridden city? But changing our police cars to an aggressive, and from the pictures presented at the council meeting, ugly black and white with POLICE printed in foot-high letters across the side doors will not reduce access to guns by unruly young people.
Why this sudden change and little debated change? I have heard no complaints from citizens about our beautiful easily identifiable police cars. And none were cited. Santa Monica’s police cars convey an image of approachability and service to the public. Whoever long ago designed the present blue graphics on a field of white gave some thought to that.
Why the sudden change? Apparently, the city asked a graphic design company to advise on how to replace the city seal now on our police cars with the “city image” used throughout the city on our street signs, etc. — the circle with a sun and a streak of ocean and mountains. Covering the present city seal now on the cars would have done the job. But after talking with members of the police department, the consultant came to the council meeting with a proposal to repaint all our police cars with black hoods and rears, cover all of the beautiful blue graphics including “Santa Monica” and painting a very, large black “POLICE” on the sides of the cars. After little discussion and only one real reason offered — tourists will be able to recognize a police car for this expensive and unattractive change our City Council authorized.
Councilmember Katz mentioned how aggressive the black and white image will be and suggested having the foot-high “POLICE” on the side painted blue rather than black, as he said “to soften the image.” But he voted to repaint all the police cars as did councilmembers Shriver, O’Connor and Bloom. Throughout coun-cilmember McKeown voted “no” to this radical change, Mayor Holbrook and coun-cilmember Genser were absent.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 30, 2006. Read the original PDF.