WHO SAYS COPS don’t have a flair for puns or pop-culture references? Well, we did, until we spied the Seattle police blotter and noticed -Operation Crystal Blue Persuasion. Named for a covert task force started -early last year to rout crime associated with methamphetamine use, OCBP was the scourge of every crystal meth dealer from Lake City to Federal Way. The result: Nearly $1 million worth of drugs, 18 vehicles, and 26 weapons seized, and 136 people indicted on state and federal charges. All thanks to some great police work and a great title. Sharing its name with a 1969 song by Tommy James and the Shondells, OCBP allowed officers to talk about the ongoing secret operation without blowing their cover.

The SPD puts more thought into operation names than you might think, notes Lieutenant Mike Edwards. Take a gem like last summer’s Operation Sobering Thought (aimed at bars serving the sauce to minors). You think that stuff writes itself? In the past year there was also Operation Ice Bucket (to eliminate drug imports from icy Canada) and Operation Glass Window (to curb car thefts). Anyone involved in the stings can suggest names, explains Edwards, but the officers keep the bar high. “Some are just lame. If it sounds like something a little kid would come up with, we have to do better than that.”

Still, isn’t a handle like Crystal Blue Persuasion a little, uh, 1969? (The Shon-freakin’-dells?) But
just as we were about to call the nice policeman out on his stale reference, Edwards proves that at least someone on the force was born after 1979, and may even have had an Atari console in the house. A couple of years ago SPD joined the FBI and DEA to track down a criminal leapfrogging around country. They called the sting Operation Frogger.