On the back cover of this month’s NRA magazine there’s an ad for Kimber tactical pistols.  Kimber recently had a big win when the LAPD SWAT team went to 1911 pistols made by Kimber.  What caught my attention was the disclaimer at the bottom, which said:

LAPD™ is a trade and service mark of the City of Los Angeles.

I did a little digging around and sure enough, here’s their trademark registration.

It just had never occurred to me that a police department would register a trademark.  It turns out that a search on the trademark database for the term “police” turned up a number of other departments with trademarks.