RUMFORD – The skydiving police officer stands out.
Among Douglas Maifeld’s 12,200-plus cop cards, some officers are pictured in front of their cruisers, a few hold guns, some are with dogs or family and at least one’s golfing, but it’s the police officer who jumped from a plane that strikes Maifeld as the most original pose.
He has cop cards from every state, plus several from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, England, Holland, Puerto Rico and Spain.
Some departments only have one or two people, some do cards on everyone right down to the bookkeeper.
Maifeld is even part of his own collection. He’s been featured on four Rumford Police Department cards.
He’s been an officer since 1988, a D.A.R.E. officer since 1993. He says that in his work dealing with kids “the cards help break the ice.”
Dozens of police agencies in Maine today have the cards available for free.
In 1993, South Portland was the first department on the East Coast to release a cop card series, according to that department’s Sgt. George Berry.
The baseball card-sized collectibles, which commonly feature an officer’s picture, contact information, a personal blurb and a saying, started in California as a means of community outreach.
Maifeld met Berry at a sports card show in 1995 and shortly after, got funding for his own card. The entire Rumford PD was released the next year. Around that time, his own collection was born.
Maifeld was already into baseball cards (he’s got every Topps regular issue from 1976 to 2004.)
He says that at first he just wanted to see what other departments were up to. It kicked into a competition when he found a now-retired sergeant at the University of California Berkeley who collected, too. They trade extras.
When he e-mails other card-carrying departments he finds over the Internet, he identifies himself as an officer and always offers to pay postage. He’s rarely taken up on that offer, but he also doesn’t hear from many departments.
“I maybe get a response 10 percent of the time,” Maifeld said.
A handful of companies produce the cards nationally, one of which told him it’s printed 50,000 unique cards. So his collection has a way to go.
He tries to keep a few in his pocket when he visits children. When school is in session, he’s in two local elementary schools almost every week.
He’s given them out in all sorts of situations, even filling a request made once in the middle of a traffic stop.
On his last card in 2003, he posed with daughters Meagan and Rebecca. “We shut down Memorial Bridge so I could get the picture,” Maifeld said.
Berry in South Portland, where the department is on its seventh series, figures they’ve given away 1.4 million cards since 1993.
Most were to kids, but some went to grown-ups. “Lots of adults say, Could I get one for my child,'” said Berry. But, he laughed, they don’t always really have one.
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