New Mexico: Banning a BATmobile

The Batman summer superhype has caught up with Las Cruces police chief Ron Axtell. Warner Communications demanded that the city stop using the Batman , logo on its ambulance-like BATmobile. The vehicle is used to catch drunk drivers, and its popularized name really stands for the breath alcohol-testing unit.

Axtell did not mind losing his BATmobile. “I’m sure it’s not going to affect our arrests,” he said. “The people we put in it probably don’t even know there’s a bat on it, they’re so drunk.”

But Axtell was no joker. He cut a deal and got Warner to donate an official Batman jacket as a prize in a city-wide contest to come up with a new name for the five-year-old program.

It’s all more hype for a batty summer.