At Nationals Park, the Facilities for Police Recruiting

It's weird enough that the Scottsdale, Ariz., police department is trolling for recruits in Washington, 2,300 miles away from the posh desert community.

Weirder still is where Scottsdale is looking for a few good men and women: in the restrooms of Nationals Park.

Perched above the urinals in the men's rooms at the new ballpark, conveniently at eye level, are posters reading, "The Scottsdale Police Department Is Hiring," illustrated with a photo of a lush desert scene. The ads are in the ladies' rooms of the new stadium, too.

Please dispense with the jokes about the cops looking for some straight shooters.

The way the Scottsdale police figure it, ballpark patrons are a captive audience. And ballpark bathroom visitors are a really captive audience.

So the department, which currently has about 25 vacancies, is spending $36,000 this year to put help-wanted ads in ballpark and sports arena restrooms around the country. The posters have gone up in Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, too, among other places.

"It's a conversation starter," says Greg Carlin, the Scottsdale P.D.'s recruiting officer. "Maybe you'll see it and go back to your seat and tell your friends, 'I just saw an ad for police officers in the bathroom.' And your friend might say, 'You're kidding. My nephew is trying to get on the force.' "

Scottsdale, he explains, is fishing where the fish might be biting: "We've tried to focus on areas where the market for police officers isn't strong, where there might not be a lot of [law enforcement] jobs."

The suburban Phoenix city contracted with InStadium, a seven-year-old marketing company based in Chicago that acts as a bathroom billboard broker. The company contracts with teams and venue operators for poster space in their johns, then leases the space to advertisers. It has 370 clients at the moment, and projects revenue of $7 million this year.

As you might expect, the company knows a good deal about the sociology of ballpark bathrooms. According to Michele Foster, InStadium's head of marketing, people go to the john an average of 2.3 times per game (we didn't ask about the .3 times). They'll look at ads for at least 90 seconds, longer if there's a line, she says.

For maximum attention, the company puts ads near the mirrors in women's rooms ("Yes, we spend a lot of time there," Foster says), and above the urinals in the men's, since men tend to fix their gaze on that spot.

Foster calls stadium restrooms "a pristine amphitheater." By which we think she means "for advertising."

Scottsdale's Carlin says his department has gotten lots of calls about the ads since they began popping up in stadiums but has hired only one officer as a direct result.

As for the ads in Nationals Park? So far, three calls. No hires.