LBPD Challenge Coins and Other Cursed Artifacts

By Greg Buhl | November 11, 2020

Before CheckLBPD was CheckLBPD, we worked with Stephen Downing of the Beachcomber on his reporting on the LBPD “2020 Riot” memorabilia. We were able to help him track down two officers selling unapproved challenge coins and finding links between the LBPOA and Sunshine Sports, one of the manufacturers of some of the unapproved coins. Sunshine Sports has a page dedicated to LBPD challenge coin and made the golf divots tools for sale on the LBPOA website.

The Long Beach Post’s Jeremiah Dobruck made an even more surprising discovery; some questionable LBPD memorabilia was approved directly by Chief Luna. This was a possibility CheckLBPD did not even consider, with it seeming outlandish that the Chief would personally approve of things like a ghoulish homicide division challenge coin and a North Division thin blue line flag patch. But he did, signing off on the thin blue line design in 2018—with a notation on the Luna signed approval form listing "NONE" under potential controversies.

The Marshall Project’s article “The Short, Fraught History of the ‘Thin Blue Line’ American Flag” has excellent research on this symbol. This article makes it clear that by 2018 there was plenty of reason Chief Luna should have seen potential controversy. By then, the thin blue line flag had become a companion to confederate flags at hate marches like Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” and was the cause of a 2017 lawsuit by a police employee for harassment that would later cost an Oregon Police Department $100,000.

The symbol has become even more controversial since then, with citizens who object to officers wearing it being railroaded on trumped-up charges and multiple departments banning the symbol.

The Marshal Project describes how the thin blue line flag was turned from a flag to remember fallen officers into something more sinister. Often the flag is combined with the Punisher skull. The Punisher is an anti-hero vigilante who glories extrajudicial murder and torture in the name of Law and Order. Even the character’s creator finds police adoption of his creation disturbing, stating, “police should not be embracing a criminal as their symbol. In a way, it’s as offensive as putting a Confederate flag on a government building.”

LBPD officers would have been well aware of this Punisher skull thin blue line combo. A version was sold by an LBPD officer, who ran a side business selling memorabilia to fellow officers. This is a different officer than the one who ran Clear Hot Gear and made the unapproved “2020 Riot Memorabilia.” Both these officers seemed to have been given at least tacit approval of their side business—with the comments and photos on the Instagram and Facebook pages showing their products were widely and openly distributed throughout the department. The social media posts often tagged the LBPD and LBPOA. Sunshine Sport is a third company that manufactures LBPD memorabilia—gear sold on alongside Chief Luna approved items on Clear Hot Gear’s site and on the LBPOA website.

You can hardly blame either of the officers; when the Chief of Police is approving thin blue line flags and coins for the Homicide Division that feature vultures and tombstones, it must be difficult to know what is appropriate and what is not.

Of all the unapproved memorabilia made by LBPD officers, it is the four coins below that most trouble CheckLBPD. These coins paint a picture of two Long Beaches, one where officers serve and protect, while the other is where you go to make arrests. The coins tell a tale of two cities, a phrase frequently deployed by Councilmember Richardson during the city’s Framework on Reconciliation.

When these LBPD division coins are looked at along with the fact that only the North Division got a Chief-approved thin blue line flag patch, it does start to look like the LBPD sees Long Beach as two different cities.

While it is still unknown how these coins were distributed, it likely involved the Long Beach Peace Officer’s Association. The only other LBPD products shown on the Sunshine Sports website are golf divot tools—which were also displayed and sold on the LBPOA’s website. The LBPOA’s website also has an item listing for various challenge coins.

Elected Officials’ Response

Jeremiah Dobruck interviewed the two council-members representing North Long Beach about the North Division thin blue line flag. Councilmember Rex Richardson said, “I don’t think this coin is an issue” and added that most people in his council district are more focused on raising their families than “looking for things to be pissed off about.”

Dobruck reported Councilman Al Austin didn’t believe any harm was meant by the design, with Austin quoted as saying, “I think we need to be sensitive about the use of the flag always, but the flag in itself is offensive to some people these days—the thin blue line flag and the American flag. That’s just the moment we’re in now.”

To CheckLBPD, the thin blue line flag is inseparable from a ‘us against them’ mentality. It is the symbol of the Blue Lives Matter movement, which has morphed into a confrontational, racially-tinged response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Portraying certain areas of the city as wild or violent does not benefit officers or the people of those divisions. Perhaps that is why the city had to pay out over $3 million judgment after a new recruit, on his first day, refused to patrol a neighborhood he saw as dangerous.

The recruit requested a safer assignment, which a deputy chief granted him. The recruit’s supervising Sergeant objected, with the LBPD removing the Sergeant from his field training post and moving him to a lower-paid patrol position. The supervising Sergeant sued and won $3 million; the recruit later quit the department.

It is one of the dumber multimillion-dollar lawsuits the LBPD has lost. Not dumb in the sense that the verdict was undeserved—but in the sense that it takes a special kind of mismanagement of officer training and supervision to create such liability for the city.

Although it is certainly not the dumbest or largest judgment the city has had to pay out because of LBPD mismanagement. That honor goes to the $4.1 million LBPD Lobster-gate judgment.

Questions, comments, or tips can be directed to Greg@CheckLBPD.org (encrypted on our end with protonmail)

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