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US, Black slang for police officers widely used on the East and West Coasts in the early 1970s. Roussin French. [59] In the 18th century undercover detectives in high society were dressed in a reddish (roussâtre) long jacket. Rozzers UK, slang for police officers, first recorded in the late 1800s. [60]
Historically, special constables were often looked down upon by regular officers and resented, as they were sometimes seen as "hobby bobbies" and not proper police officers. During the 1980s, specials were often considered to be preventing regular officers from earning overtime pay.
The custodian helmet is a type of helmet worn predominantly by male police officers in the United Kingdom and within certain other places around the world. [1] First used by the Metropolitan Police in London in 1863, the BBC labelled the custodian helmet a "symbol of British law enforcement". [ 2 ]
London now had the world's first modern police force. The 3000 policemen were called "bobbies" (after Peel's first name). They were well-organized, centrally directed, and wore standard blue uniforms. Legally they had the historic status of constable, with authority to make arrests of suspicious persons and book offenders before a magistrate court.
Some early-19th-century references to "railway police" or "policemen" do not concern constables but instead describe the men responsible for the signalling and control of the movement of trains (it is still common colloquial practice within railway staff for their modern equivalents in signal boxes and signalling centres to be called "Bobbies ...
It is well-known that police officers in the UK are called "bobbies", but "bobby on the beat" refers specifically to a policeman on patrol. A policeman walking the streets is a "bobby on the beat"; a policeman behind a desk is just a "bobby"; the Chief Constable of a police force is certainly not referred to as a "bobby on the beat".
The policy under which police officers in England and Wales use firearms has resulted in controversy. Notorious examples include the Stephen Waldorf shooting in 1983, the deliberate fatal shootings of James Ashley in 1998, Harry Stanley in 1999, and Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005, and the accidental non-fatal shooting of Abdul Kahar in 2006.
First attested in English in the early 15th century, originally in a range of senses encompassing '(public) policy; state; public order', the word police comes from Middle French police ('public order, administration, government'), [10] in turn from Latin politia, [11] which is the romanization of the Ancient Greek πολιτεία (politeia) 'citizenship, administration, civil polity'. [12]