CHITWOOD'S COLORFUL LANGUAGE ENDS UP ON HOT-SELLING
T-SHIRT

Michael Chitwood's penchant for tough talk made him an often-quoted
public figure in Maine. Now the former Portland police chief is
going national.

Chitwood's creative slang recently landed his suburban Philadelphia
police department on the national news after a couple of officers in
Upper Darby, Pa., put one of their favorite Chitwood-isms on the
back of a T-shirt.

The officers began selling T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase "Not
in My Town 'Scumbag' " -- a term Chitwood has used frequently to
describe drug dealers -- to raise money for a scholarship fund.

The T-shirt effort got the attention of both the Philadelphia media
and the national cable news earlier this month.

So much attention, Chitwood said, that the department has launched
an Internet site to handle the shirt sales, which until recently
were tying up his department's phone lines.

"We were getting e-mails from across the country" after the site
went up, said Chitwood, police superintendent in Upper Darby.

The T-shirts are for sale at www.scumbagteeshirts.com for $10 each.
Chitwood estimated his department has sold around 700 of the shirts
and raised about $3,000 for the Dennis McNamara Scholarship Foundation.

McNamara was an Upper Darby police officer who was shot and killed
on duty in early 2002. His family awards a scholarship to a local
high school student interested in poetry or music -- two of
McNamara's hobbies -- each year, Chitwood said.

Portland Deputy Chief Joseph Loughlin said officers here weren't
surprised to see a Fox News report featuring the chief known as
"Media Mike" during his time in Maine. "He always threw around a lot
of colorful words to get people's attention -- and it works," Loughlin said.

Chitwood said the phrase on the T-shirt was intended to send a
message to drug dealers in Upper Darby, a community of about 83,000
with a good deal of violent crime. Police conducted 68 drug raids
and made 132 arrests during the first 11 months of this year, he said.

The shirt also serves as a response to a fashion trend that roiled
police and prosecutors in several mid-Atlantic states last year.

"This is our response to 'Stop Snitchin,'" Chitwood said, explaining
that T-shirts bearing the slogan were popular at the local high
school last year. (Snitch is a slang term for a person who gives
officials incriminating information about a criminal.)

Authorities criticized manufacturers of the snitch T-shirts for
possibly encouraging witness intimidation.

Chitwood, a Philadelphia native, left Portland for Upper Darby in
2005. He served as Portland's police chief for 17 years and briefly
considered a run for governor.