109 Fun Facts About Police

Which nickname did London's constables take from the Home Secretary who founded their force in 1829?

Bobbies are named after Robert Peel, whose 1829 act created the Metropolitan Police; he had tried the idea first in Ireland in 1814, where his constables became known as 'peelers'.

Why did the Metropolitan Police's headquarters come to be called Scotland Yard?

From the street at its entrance: the first headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place had its public entrance on Great Scotland Yard, and the street's name became shorthand for the whole force and its detectives.

Which magistrate and novelist founded the Bow Street Runners, often called London's first professional police, in 1749?

Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones, recruited a handful of paid constables in 1749 from his Bow Street magistrate's office; his blind half-brother John carried the force on after him.

The Peelian principles behind British policing are summed up by the phrase 'policing by' what?

Consent: the seventh principle says 'the police are the public and the public are the police', so their power comes from the common approval of the public and not from the state.

The British police custodian helmet was adopted in the 1860s to replace what?

A stovepipe top hat, reinforced with cane, had topped the London policeman's uniform since 1829; it was reputedly strong enough to stand on as a step for peering over walls.

Interpol left the Paris area in 1989 for which French city?

Lyon was a late stop for Interpol: founded in Vienna in 1923, it fell under Nazi control in 1938 and was moved to Berlin, then was rebuilt in Paris after the war.

What was the FBI's first official name, adopted in 1909, a year after the agency began work?

Bureau of Investigation was the original name, formally given in 1909 to the special-agent force Attorney General Charles Bonaparte assembled in 1908; it became the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935.

Which FBI director ran the agency for 48 years until his death in 1972?

J. Edgar Hoover took charge in May 1924 and never left; in response to his long reign, Congress in 1976 limited later directors to a single ten-year term.

Which US federal law enforcement agency did the Judiciary Act of 1789 create to serve the new federal courts?

US Marshals were created by the Judiciary Act of 24 September 1789, and George Washington signed the first thirteen commissions within days; until 1870 they also took the national census.

The Texas Rangers trace their founding to an 1823 call to arms by which colonist, known as the Father of Texas?

Stephen F. Austin hired ten frontiersmen in 1823 to range over his colony in Mexican Texas and protect its settlers; the Rangers' museum and Hall of Fame is in Waco.

Where in the United States was a police department founded in 1845 on the model of London's Metropolitan Police?

New York City replaced its old night watch with a London-style municipal police in 1845, and the department has since grown into the largest city force in the United States.

The Miranda warning stems from a Supreme Court decision in which year?

1966 was the year of Miranda v. Arizona, decided 5-4 on 13 June; the warning also promises a court-appointed attorney to those who cannot afford one.

Which hat completes the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's famous dress uniform?

Stetson: the Mounties' official headgear was once a pith helmet, but men on prairie patrol bought their own wide-brimmed hats instead, and in 1904 the force made the habit official.

Ireland's police, the Garda Síochána, translate their name as what?

Guardians of the Peace is the usual translation of Garda Síochána, the force Michael Collins's government formed in 1922 as the Civic Guard to replace the disbanded Royal Irish Constabulary.

A kōban is a small neighbourhood police station found in which country?

In Japan, kōban are small police boxes where officers give directions and take in lost property as well as crime reports; Singapore copied the idea for its neighbourhood police posts.

The Carabinieri, instituted in 1814, are the national gendarmerie of which country?

The Carabinieri are older than Italy itself: King Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia founded them in 1814, and at unification in 1861 they were named the first force of the new national army.

Which US state has the country's second-largest municipal police department, behind New York?

Illinois takes second place through the police department of its largest city, which fields more sworn officers than any other US city force bar one; Los Angeles ranks third.

The first police car, an 1899 patrol wagon in Akron, Ohio, ran on what, before gasoline engines took over?

Electricity powered the 1899 Akron patrol wagon, designed by city engineer Frank Loomis at a cost of $2,400; its first job was to pick up a drunk man at a downtown street corner.

The world's first traffic lights, installed in December 1868, stood outside which building?

The Houses of Parliament had gas-lit signals outside from 9 December 1868, worked by a policeman; within weeks a gas leak made one explode, badly injuring him, and the experiment was dropped.

Which colour were Glasgow's police boxes, unlike the blue ones everywhere else in Britain?

Red was the colour of Glasgow's cast-iron police boxes, a few of which survive in the city centre; the blue Metropolitan Police design became famous as the TARDIS in Doctor Who.

Which three-digit emergency number, launched in London in 1937, is the world's oldest emergency call service?

999 was introduced after a 1935 house fire in Wimpole Street killed five women; a neighbour who tried to ring the fire brigade had been left waiting in a queue at the telephone exchange.

In 1968 a small Alabama phone company beat which giant to the first US 911 call?

AT&T had just announced 911 as the nationwide emergency number when the president of the Alabama Telephone Company read about the plan in a newspaper and got his own system working in Haleyville first.

Broderick Crawford's police chief barked '10-4' into his car radio in which 1950s TV series?

Highway Patrol leaned so heavily on two-way radio chatter that stations showed its reruns under the title Ten-Four; police had devised the ten-codes in the late 1930s to keep radio messages short.

The Taser is named after a 1911 novel about which boy inventor?

Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle starred the childhood hero of Jack Cover, who began work on his dart-firing stun gun in 1969 and named it after the book.

Which police device did Indiana State Police captain Robert Borkenstein invent in 1954?

The Breathalyzer gave police a quick, portable test in place of the clumsier Drunkometer; Borkenstein left the force in 1958 to run Indiana University's new police administration department.

John Larson, fresh from a University of California doctorate, built his 1921 polygraph as an officer in which city's police?

Berkeley police chief August Vollmer encouraged John Larson's lie detector, which tracked blood pressure and breathing; Larson later called it a Frankenstein's monster for the way police came to use it.

Who developed Kevlar, the fibre in modern body armour, at DuPont in 1965?

Stephanie Kwolek, a DuPont chemist, spun a thin, cloudy solution of the kind usually thrown away and got a fibre five times stronger than steel; Kevlar first replaced steel in racing tyres.

Besides his body-measurement ID system, what is French police officer Alphonse Bertillon credited with inventing?

The mug shot in its standard form was Bertillon's work of the 1880s; his name was later tarnished when, though no handwriting expert, he gave evidence that helped to wrongly convict Alfred Dreyfus.

Argentine police solved an 1892 murder with which evidence, a forensic first?

Fingerprints: Francisca Rojas blamed another man for killing her two children, but a bloody print at the scene matched her own and she confessed; Buenos Aires province then adopted Juan Vucetich's filing system.

Which forensic technique did Alec Jeffreys discover at Leicester in 1984?

DNA profiling first cleared Richard Buckland, a teenager who had confessed to one of two Leicestershire murders, and then identified the real killer, Colin Pitchfork, who was convicted in 1988.

Which dog breed is famed for following human scent days later and is widely used by police?

Bloodhound trails have been followed when several days old, and the breed is said to be the first animal whose evidence US courts admitted; 'sleuth' is short for sleuth-hound, an old name for the dog.

Which of these names for a police baton is the one traditionally used in Britain?

Truncheon is the British word for what Americans call a nightstick or billy club; the first London constables of 1829 carried a wooden one as their only weapon, with a rattle to call for help.

The Pinkerton detective agency, which guarded railroads in its early years, was founded around 1850 in which Midwestern city?

Chicago is where Scottish-born Allan Pinkerton set up his agency around 1850; he claimed to have foiled an 1861 plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, and his logo was an open eye with the slogan 'We Never Sleep'.

The Paris office often called the world's first private detective agency was opened in 1833 by which former convict?

Eugène Vidocq had been in and out of prison before he set up and led the Sûreté's detectives; his 1833 agency again hired ex-convicts, and he is believed to have inspired Balzac's master criminal Vautrin.

Prohibition agent Eliot Ness led a team nicknamed what while pursuing Al Capone?

The Untouchables got their name because Capone's bribes could not buy them; Eliot Ness handpicked the small squad of Prohibition agents to raid the gang's breweries.

Which TV police drama gave Sergeant Joe Friday the badge number 714?

Dragnet reruns were even sold to stations as Badge 714; when its creator and star Jack Webb died, the Los Angeles police retired the number and gave him a funeral with full police honours.

'Let's be careful out there' closed the morning roll call on which 1980s police drama?

Hill Street Blues gave the line to Sergeant Phil Esterhaus; when actor Michael Conrad died during the fourth season, the writers wrote the sergeant's death into the show as well.

Peter Falk's Lieutenant Columbo drove which battered French car?

Peugeot 403 convertible, grey and battered, was Columbo's car, as rumpled as his raincoat; Peter Falk chose it himself the day before filming began, spotting it tucked away behind all the other cars on offer.

Telly Savalas played which lollipop-loving TV police lieutenant?

Kojak took up lollipops to cut down on cigarettes, a habit Telly Savalas was trying to curb too; the sweet became as much his trademark as the line 'Who loves ya, baby?'

HBO's The Wire, created by former police reporter David Simon, is set in which city?

Baltimore was David Simon's beat for twelve years at the Sun; he wrote the series with Ed Burns, a former city homicide detective, and cast real local politicians and police in small roles.

Which actor played Frank 'Ponch' Poncherello in CHiPs?

Erik Estrada played Ponch through all six seasons, coming back after a 1979 crash on set threw him from his motorcycle and broke both wrists; co-star Larry Wilcox was gone by the final season.

Which actresses played the title detectives for most of Cagney & Lacey's run?

Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly were the pair from 1982 to 1988, each winning Emmys for the roles; Loretta Swit played Cagney in the pilot and Meg Foster in the first six episodes.

When Law & Order ended its original run in 2010, its 20 seasons tied the record of which Western?

Gunsmoke ran for 20 seasons from 1955 to 1975; NBC cancelled Law & Order one season short of breaking the tie, and the spin-off Special Victims Unit passed them both in 2019.

The BBC's Dixon of Dock Green, which ran from 1955 to 1976, was spun off from which 1950 film?

The Blue Lamp, the 1950 Ealing film, killed off PC George Dixon, shot by Dirk Bogarde's young crook; Jack Warner then revived the character for the BBC series.

In the 1984 comedy Police Academy, why does Steve Guttenberg's Carey Mahoney enrol as a recruit?

To avoid going to jail: arrested yet again, Mahoney is offered the academy by a captain who knew his late father, plans to get himself thrown out, and then learns he can't quit or be dismissed.

Sting, frontman of the Police, got his nickname from what?

A black-and-yellow striped jumper he wore on stage with the Phoenix Jazzmen led bandleader Gordon Solomon to say he looked like a wasp, and the name Sting stuck.

Which fictional detective regularly showed up Scotland Yard's Inspector Lestrade?

Sherlock Holmes often let Lestrade take the public credit for cases he had solved; the inspector, doubtful of him at first, ends up telling Holmes that Scotland Yard is very proud of him.

Which Australian state's police force began in 1789 as a night watch drawn from well-behaved convicts?

New South Wales: Governor Arthur Phillip formed the night watch to guard Sydney a year after the First Fleet landed; the colony's police bodies merged into one force in 1862, now Australia's largest.

Which UK body, set up in 2013, is often nicknamed 'Britain's FBI'?

National Crime Agency officers began work in October 2013, replacing the Serious Organised Crime Agency after only seven years; the press had already pinned the same 'British FBI' label on that body.

What is the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department?

To Protect and to Serve won a 1955 contest for a police academy motto, entered by Officer Joseph Dorobek; the city adopted it for the whole force in 1963 and put it on the department's cars.

Which French ruler reorganised the police of Paris into a Prefecture of Police in 1800?

Napoleon created the Prefecture of Police by a law of 17 February 1800, and the arrangement stuck: its prefect has answered to the national government, not to the city of Paris, ever since.

Sir Charles Rowan, joint first commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police in 1829, was a veteran of which battle?

Waterloo, where Colonel Rowan was wounded commanding a wing of the 52nd Foot; he was chosen to give the new force military discipline, while barrister Richard Mayne supplied the legal expertise.

Which sedan dominated American police fleets from the 1990s until its production ended in 2011?

Ford Crown Victoria cruisers were built on a separate frame, so a crashed car could be repaired cheaply without straightening the chassis, which helped keep it the standard patrol car for over a decade.

The word 'police' goes back to polis, the word for a city in which ancient language?

Greek polis, 'city', gave politeia, which passed through Latin and French into English; 'police' at first meant civil administration, and named a force of officers only from about 1800.

Which French king's 1667 edict put a single lieutenant general of police in charge of order in Paris?

Louis XIV created the post by an edict of March 1667; its first holder, Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, ran the police of Paris for thirty years and gave the city its street lighting.

England's first force to carry the name 'police', set up in 1798, guarded merchants' cargo on which river?

The Thames: thieves were stripping a fortune in cargo each year from ships in the Pool of London, so West India merchants helped pay for the Marine Police of 1798; it merged into the Metropolitan Police in 1839.

Why was the Metropolitan Police uniform deliberately made blue in 1829?

Red was seen as a military colour, and Peel wanted his constables to look like civilians, not soldiers; for the same reason the new ranks avoided army titles, apart from Sergeant.

Old Kingdom Egyptian market guards used which trained animals, shown in a tomb relief seizing a thief by the leg?

Monkeys and baboons were trained to catch thieves: a Fifth Dynasty tomb relief shows one gripping a market thief's leg as a guard closes in; the guards also carried wooden staffs and used dogs.

Which Canadian police force traces its roots to 1729, when an island colony's governor appointed its first officers?

Royal Newfoundland Constabulary looks back to Governor Henry Osborn, who split the island into six districts in 1729 and gave each its own magistrates and constables; the 'Royal' title came in 1979.

RoboCop follows a murdered police officer rebuilt as a cyborg to patrol which crime-ridden city?

Detroit hands its police department to a mega-corporation in the film, yet the cameras were hundreds of miles away: RoboCop was shot mainly on location in Dallas.

Which rock and roll star asked President Nixon for a federal narcotics agent's badge at the White House?

Elvis Presley set up the December 1970 meeting himself, telling Nixon he could reach out to the hippies and help combat the drug culture.

In the name of the police tactical unit SWAT, what do the letters W, A and T stand for?

Weapons and Tactics was the second choice: LAPD inspector Daryl Gates wanted the letters to mean Special Weapons Attack Team, and his deputy chief turned it down.

In Disney's Zootopia, rookie officer Judy Hopps is the first of which animal to join the police force?

Rabbit recruit Judy Hopps was nearly the sidekick: fox Nick Wilde was the film's lead until the makers swapped the two roles late in production.

The US Secret Service was founded in 1865 to fight which crime, decades before it guarded presidents?

Counterfeiting was rampant after the Civil War, which is why the agency sat inside the Treasury Department until 2003.

Which NBA Hall of Fame center became a reserve officer with the Los Angeles Port Police?

Shaquille O'Neal later trained as a Miami Beach reserve officer too, and chose a private swearing-in so he would not draw attention from the other officers.

Which father of schoolboy Ralph serves as Springfield's chief of police in The Simpsons?

Clancy Wiggum takes his surname from the maiden name of creator Matt Groening's mother, whose parents were Norwegian immigrants.

Gene Roddenberry was the LAPD chief's speechwriter before he created which science-fiction TV franchise?

Star Trek came after years in uniform: Roddenberry started in the traffic division, became the LAPD's liaison to the TV series Dragnet, and resigned in 1956 to write.

Truckers nickname state police after which mascot, who wears the same flat-brimmed campaign hat?

Smokey Bear has worn a campaign hat since his first fire-prevention poster in 1944, and because many state troopers wear the same type of hat, truck drivers call them smokeys or bears.

Chase, the police pup who is second-in-command of the PAW Patrol, belongs to which dog breed?

German Shepherd pup Chase doubles as the team's spy dog, working beside a clumsy Dalmatian who serves as its firefighter and paramedic.

Which comedian plays wisecracking detective Axel Foley in the Beverly Hills Cop films?

Eddie Murphy inherited the part from Sylvester Stallone, whose rewrite had stripped out the humor and turned the script into a standard action film.

On police radio, an urgent alert sent to every officer is an APB, which is short for what?

All-points bulletin is first recorded among American police in 1947, and the same alert also goes by BOLO, for be on the lookout.

Lawman Wyatt Earp fought the gunfight near the O.K. Corral in which silver-mining boomtown?

Tombstone's famous shootout was over in around 30 seconds, and it was not fought in the corral at all but in a narrow lot beside a photography studio.

Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot is a retired police officer and wartime refugee from which country?

Belgium's best-known fictional policeman is the only invented character to receive a front-page obituary in The New York Times, after his last case in 1975.

Which police inspector hunts the paroled convict Jean Valjean for years in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables?

Javert was himself born in a prison, the son of a fortune-teller and a father serving in the galleys.

The FBI Academy, where new special agents train, sits on a Marine Corps base in which Virginia town?

Quantico's present academy opened in 1972, years after the Marines first let agents use their firing ranges there; it now covers 547 acres of the base.

Which sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, tracked down and killed the outlaw Billy the Kid?

Pat Garrett, a former bartender and cowboy, was waiting in the shadows of a friend's bedroom at Fort Sumner when the Kid walked in around midnight.

Which three-digit number reaches police and other emergency services everywhere in the European Union?

112 is written into the GSM mobile standard, so a compatible handset can dial it even when the phone is locked.

Which actor created bumbling French police inspector Jacques Clouseau in the original Pink Panther films?

Peter Sellers only began developing the exaggerated French accent in the second film, A Shot in the Dark, which came from a stage play that had no Clouseau in it.

Which actor won five Emmy Awards as the jittery deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show?

Don Knotts played a lawman so careless with firearms that Sheriff Andy Taylor made him carry his gun unloaded, with a single bullet in his shirt pocket for emergencies.

The original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation follows police forensic investigators in which city?

Las Vegas rarely saw the cameras: the early seasons were shot in Santa Clarita, California, because the valley there looks so much like the city's outskirts.

Which actor plays family man Roger Murtaugh, partner to Mel Gibson's Martin Riggs, in Lethal Weapon?

Danny Glover was the casting director's idea: she suggested pairing him with Gibson because the script gave Murtaugh no set ethnicity.

Which actress plays detective-turned-captain Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit?

Mariska Hargitay's Benson began as a detective in 1999, and in 2021 her 23rd season broke the record for the longest-running regular character in American primetime live-action television.

Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, Inspector Harry Callahan, works for which city's police department?

San Francisco suited the story: the film drew on the real-life case of the Zodiac Killer, with Callahan hunting a similar psychopath called Scorpio.

Which TV police drama's title became American slang for the police?

Hawaii Five-O took its title from Hawaii being the fiftieth state, and when it ended after twelve seasons it was the longest-running police drama in American television history.

Which actor played whistleblowing officer Frank Serpico in Sidney Lumet's film about police corruption?

Al Pacino was playing a real officer, whose reports of corruption during eleven years on the force led to the Knapp Commission investigation.

Which future US president spent two years in the 1890s as a reforming big-city police commissioner?

Theodore Roosevelt made a habit of walking officers' beats at night and in the early morning to make sure they were actually on duty.

Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency, is based in which Dutch city?

The Hague beat Rome and Strasbourg to host the agency, whose officials have no power to arrest suspects themselves.

Which Jamaican reggae band recorded Bad Boys, the opening theme of the long-running reality show Cops?

Inner Circle got the job by luck: a field producer for the show happened to be a fan, and the 1987 song became a US top-ten hit on its re-release in 1993.

The Keystone Cops, silent film's bumbling policemen, appeared in slapstick comedies made by which producer?

Mack Sennett named the troupe after his Keystone studio, and as early as 1914 he had moved them from starring roles to the background behind comedians like Charlie Chaplin.

Which wartime technology did Connecticut State Police begin testing on speeding drivers in 1947?

Radar reached the roadside through two engineers who had developed it for the military and cobbled their first unit together from coffee cans soldered shut.

How do more than 95 percent of American sheriffs get the job?

Elected by local voters, a sheriff also tends to stay put: sheriffs hold office for twice as long as appointed police chiefs.

The term Stockholm syndrome was coined after a 1973 hostage siege at which kind of business?

A bank vault held the four hostages for six days, and criminologist Nils Bejerot invented the term after police asked him to analyze how they had reacted.

Legend has gangster Machine Gun Kelly coining which nickname for FBI agents as he surrendered unarmed?

G-men is short for government men, though the tale of Kelly shouting it at the agents who cornered him in 1933 is probably a fabrication.

Which chemical do crime-scene investigators spray to make hidden traces of blood give off a blue glow?

Luminol reacts with the iron in hemoglobin, and the glow it gives off is faint enough that it has to be viewed in a darkened room.

Which writer drew on his years in Burma's Imperial Police for the essay Shooting an Elephant?

George Orwell sailed out to join the force in 1922 and, after catching dengue fever, resigned to become a writer rather than go back from his leave in England.

Walter Arnold, Britain's first convicted speeder, was chased down at 8 mph by a policeman on what?

A bicycle was all it took in 1896: Arnold was doing four times the 2 mph limit for towns, and he was fined one shilling plus costs.

Police in which Nordic country did not fatally shoot anyone until the twenty-first century?

Iceland's first death in an armed police operation came in Reykjavík, after a man fired a shotgun in his apartment and wounded two officers.

Which word was added to the full name of the US law enforcement bureau still known as ATF?

Explosives was tacked onto the title of a bureau that began in 1886 as a Treasury revenue laboratory, yet it still answers to its three old initials.

Which future president made his national reputation as governor during the 1919 Boston police strike?

Calvin Coolidge backed the police commissioner and rebuked union leader Samuel Gompers, and the fame carried him onto the Republican ticket the following year.

Which Latin phrase names the citizens a sheriff could summon to arrest a felon or keep the peace?

Posse comitatus, Latin for the force of the county, is usually cut to its first word; England's Sheriffs Act 1887 told every person in a county to be ready at the sheriff's command.

Ernesto Miranda, whose case gave police a famous warning, was arrested by officers in which state?

Arizona got the case back for a retrial once the Supreme Court had overturned the conviction, and Miranda was found guilty a second time in 1967.

Which herding dog named after the Mechelen region is a favorite of police and military units?

Malinois comes from Malines, the French name for Mechelen, and the breed now works for the United States Secret Service among other forces.

Which Paris police detective, based at 36 Quai des Orfèvres, did Georges Simenon feature in 75 novels?

Jules Maigret grew out of a 1929 boat tour of northern Europe, during which Simenon wrote three popular novels featuring a police inspector of that name.

Which future US president personally hanged two murderers while serving as sheriff of Erie County?

Grover Cleveland could have paid a deputy $10 to do the job, but in spite of his reservations he carried out both executions himself.

Lester Wire, the police traffic officer credited with inventing the electric traffic light, worked where?

Salt Lake City got his hand-operated wooden signal in 1912, but Wire never patented the idea, and both of his original models had been lost by the 1960s.

Which bamboo stick, sometimes metal-tipped, do police in India carry as their main crowd-control baton?

Lathi gives its name to the lathi charge, the baton rush used to scatter crowds across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Good cop, bad cop interrogation is informally named after which early newspaper comic-strip duo?

Mutt and Jeff, Bud Fisher's strip about a mismatched pair, began in 1907 and is commonly regarded as the first daily comic strip.

Crime Stoppers began with a detective in which southwestern city asking local TV to reconstruct a crime?

Albuquerque detective Greg MacAleese was stuck on the fatal shooting of a gas station worker, and he helped design a way for the public to give details anonymously.

Which former Texas Ranger led the lawmen who tracked down and killed Bonnie and Clyde?

Frank Hamer had retired after almost 27 years with the Rangers when the Texas prison system took him on as a special investigator to catch the pair.