Believe it or not, the Jayhawk has never been used as a logo on Kansas University patrol cars.

Until this past year, that is.

“It is dramatically different from what we’ve had in the past,” Ralph Oliver, director of the Public Safety Office, said of the logo he designed.

Last year the department obtained four new, white Ford Crown Victoria police cars. In the past the cars mainly were decorated with stripes in KU’s school colors of red, blue and yellow. Oliver, however, decided it was time for a change.

“I just sat down and decided I wanted to put the Jayhawk in the design,” he said. “I just fooled around with it. It was just one of those inspirational days that I put that graphic together.”

Art designers at KU took Oliver’s idea and polished it and then it was turned over to Art & Sign, 615 Vt., the business that actually put the logo on the car.

The Jayhawk cars are marked patrol cars. The department usually gets four new cars every three years or so, Oliver said. When new cars are purchased, the patrol cars have their markings removed and are then used as unmarked cars, he said.

Eventually police cars are traded in for new ones and when they leave police service they usually have up to 130,000 miles on them, Oliver said. The cars are purchased as part of a fleet of new patrol cars the state obtains through a bidding process for the Kansas Highway Patrol.

The new cars always go to patrol officers first because they usually have all of the latest safety equipment that go into police cars and which are needed by patrol officers, Oliver said.

Oliver wasn’t sure whether other Big 12 schools show their logos on their patrol cars, but it didn’t matter to him. That wasn’t how he got the idea.

“We tend to lead, not follow,” Oliver said.

KU’s campus patrol cars generally get a new striped or logo look every few years. But if the Jayhawk continues to be popular, it could be a signature logo on the cars for several years.

“It’s going to be around for a while,” Oliver said. “We’ve had a lot of comments about them and a lot of people like it. People also think it (patrol cars) has a lot cleaner look to it than the others have had.”