FOR THE KIDS : Officers Find Children Are Ready to Flip For Pogs : Police are turning to the popular bottle caps to spread anti-crime messages. They’re even holding a tourney in Moorpark on Nov. 5.

Police in Moorpark have discovered a new way to talk to kids. It’s the language of Pogs, those wildly popular milk bottle caps kids collect, trade and play games with.

Whenever officers see kids doing something smart--wearing a bike helmet or crossing the street safely--they hand out a Pog. They’ll even autograph the silver-dollar-sized caps.

Capitalizing on current Pog mania, Moorpark police, who work under contract with the Sheriff’s Department, are also sponsoring a milk cap tournament Nov. 5.

The caps are an icebreaker for the police--a way to mingle with kids and give them some positive strokes for good behavior. They also provide an entree for police to give children some practical safety tips.

“It surprised me how well it works,” said Moorpark Senior Deputy Ed Tumbleson, who organized the program this summer. Officers started handing out the caps late last month, and in one week they had doled out 3,000.

It’s working so well, in fact, that Simi Valley police have decided to do the same thing. They’ve ordered 10,000 caps for $1,000 and will begin giving them out in mid-September. Similar plans are in the initial stages at the Sheriff’s Department’s west county division. And, Ventura police are looking into it too.

“Kids are really into Pogs,” said Simi Valley Officer Jack Greenberg. “We thought it would be great.”

It was clear to Moorpark Deputy Jody Keller-Smith that kids are bonkers about them when she stopped by a city park with a handful last week.

“If you have Pogs, you’ll have an audience,” one mother said as Keller-Smith rounded up at least a dozen kids for an impromptu safety lesson.

“Who knows about stranger-danger,” the officer asked. Most did. Did they know what to do?

“You say, ‘NO!!!!’ Then run-run and find someone to tell,” she coached. They repeated in unison. Then she handed out the caps, imprinted with a picture of McGruff, the crime-fighting dog, and the words, “Take a bite out of Crime.”

A few minutes later, Keller-Smith turned her patrol car down the driveway of an apartment complex and spotted a mother and four children. After talking to the kids about the DARE (Drug Awareness Resistance Education) program, she handed out Pogs.

“Ever since Pogs came out, my kids have gone crazy,” said Jackie Fisher, mother of three of the children.

In Moorpark, police are handing out Pogs with four different designs: McGruff the dog, a teddy bear, and two with variations of the seals of the Sheriff’s Department and city. All say “Moorpark Police Department--DARE to Keep Kids Off Drugs.”

In Simi Valley, kids also will get Pogs with the DARE message, along with drawings of the city’s patrol car, badge or seal. One cap will even have character drawings of the city’s three DARE officers. Eventually, they might get a Pog case or a “slammer,” the heavy disc players use to flip the caps.

For those out of the loop on this latest kid craze, the game of Pogs actually has its roots in the Depression when kids stacked the caps face up or face down and tried to flip them over by walloping them with a slammer.

Two years ago a teacher in Hawaii revived the game. She got some milk covers from a dairy and showed her students how to play. As the game caught on, the most popular discs came from a drink made of passion fruit, orange and guava--thus the name, Pog.

The game’s popularity spread to Southern California earlier this year, although many schools in Ventura County and elsewhere banned the caps because they proved to be too disruptive during school hours. Still, the caps are sold everywhere from video stores to sport card stores, and weekend tournaments around the county sometimes draw crowds.

Moorpark’s Tumbleson went to a DARE conference last March where he learned about the caps. “Few kids in Moorpark knew about them then,” he said. “But during the summer they got hot.”

Details

* WHAT: Pog tournament sponsored by the Moorpark Police Department.

* WHEN: Nov. 5, 10 a.m.

* WHERE: Arroyo Vista Recreation Center, 4550 Tierra Rejada Road.

* FYI: 531-9100