Anti-crime tool reeks of success

By Chris Dixon
The New York Times

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COMPTON, Calif. — A small posse of sheriff's deputies in Compton has unleashed a new weapon in the war on crime.

It is remarkably small, improbably inexpensive, stunningly low-tech and has proved incredibly effective for seven months. So effective, in fact, that Lt. Shaun Mathers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department wonders why more departments have not realized that such a tool might be right under their noses.

"I was kind of grousing with some friends," he said. "What could we do to make our officers more visible in the community? And someone said, 'Maybe we could use a good odor, like fresh-baked cookies.' As I was driving home, it struck me. Maybe there's a value in a bad odor."

That value, Mathers thought, would be in clearing out vacant buildings that become magnets for prostitutes, drug dealers and gangs. After a few experiments with chemical stink bombs, he and Deputy Scott Gage found a petroleum-based gel called SkunkShot on the Web. "It's pretty weird," Gage said, "but it's brilliant."

And the Skunk Squad was born.

The squad's first success, Mathers said, came last May.

"There was an old vacant bungalow-style motel which is in a heavily populated prostitute area," he said. "People were coming and going to use narcotics. One part of it had even burned down because they were using candles to light the place. It was dangerous."

Deputies took several $15 tubes of SkunkShot and spread them around the building, just cleared of drug users and prostitutes. Mathers was amazed to find no one there several hours later.

"It's horrible, just unbearable for two days," he said of the odor. "After five or six days you can still smell it. We even got in a battle of smells with the folks there. They were bringing cans of Glade and scented candles, but that stuff just can't compete."

Deputy Matt Vanderhorck says a cascade of crime is avoided by keeping people out of vacant buildings.

"It's not just the people trespassing. If they had never pulled the boards down and used this place to live, those guys never would have cut their dope open and the hookers wouldn't use this place as their hotel," he said of an apartment complex where SkunkShot had been deployed weeks earlier. "And of course it really affects the people who live around here."

The inventor of SkunkShot, an Australian named Andrew Rakich, is a laser and satellite engineer by trade. He said he thought of the idea 10 years ago as a sort of aerosol for women to use to fend off attackers or as an animal repellent for gardeners.

The product is synthetic, but its components chemically mimic a skunk's musk. "We're certainly not milking skunks," Rakich said. "That would be one of the worst jobs in the world. I've never even actually seen a skunk myself, but we're all aware of them down here thanks to Pepe Le Pew."

Rakich said a gel using the scent of cat urine is being tested.

Although the gel is a serious crime-fighting tool, it occasionally is used for practical jokes.

"That's one of the reasons we keep it on the down low," Gage said. "You know those push-down soap dispensers? Well, allegedly someone put some of the product in one of those in the men's bathroom."

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