Certain clothes, grocery products could be warning signs to parents, officer says

WEST VALLEY CITY — Hats, shoes and shorts with secret compartments. Whipped cream dispensers turned huffing devices.

They look like your everyday clothes and grocery store products. But they mean a whole lot more to the drug culture and drug users. And they could be signs that teens are up to no good.

One expert officer at the Utah Council for Crime Prevention’s Power of Prevention Conference in West Valley City warned people what to watch for in their own homes. Officer Jermaine Galloway is also a consultant who travels around the region, dropping the jaws of unwitting parents.

One item commonly found in local shopping malls that Galloway is talking about is the “stash hat.” It looks like an ordinary baseball cap, but inside — with the zipper obscured below a fold of cloth — is a hidden area large enough to hide a key, or drugs.

Galloway also showed off shorts with a detachable pouch that hangs by the underwear around the groin, and shoes that have a zip pouch under the tongue.

“As a police officer, anything with a non-traditional compartment always makes you kind of wonder what’s in there,” he said. “We’re law enforcement and most of us hold our wallets in our front or back pocket or something like that. So it always makes you wonder.

"Sure, there are probably people who put their house keys in there. They hide their hundred dollar bill in there or something like that. But there are also people who use those things in a negative way.”

Galloway is warning parents to also be aware of what is on T-shirts. An image of a clock may mean nothing, but if the clock’s time is 4:20, it’s a drug reference, he said.

The officer demonstrated how a small container of Reddi Wip whipped cream, found at numerous convenience stores and grocery stores, can become a drug tool for a huffer simply by how the dispenser is depressed.

“It just sends out the nitrous (oxide),” Galloway said as the container hissed. “It doesn’t send out the whipped cream.”

Galloway underscores that these products can obviously be benign on their own, but if they start showing up in bulk in, say, a teen’s room, there may be room for suspicion from parents.

Parents who attended Galloway’s remarks at the conference had their eyes opened.