FACTORALY - E47 POLICE

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Even if we never engage with the Police personally, we see their exploits and results in the news and all over TV in fiction. And we inevitably hear their sirens when going about our business. This episode is all about the boys and girls in blue (or black these days), their history and their time travelling boxes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, how do you do? How do you do? I'm glad you answered that correctly. Because so many people, when you say, how do you do, they get all very well-themed. And that's not what the correct answer to how do you do it it's not the question that's the correct answer to a different question yes exactly not the same at all no good well that just sets the tone for this entire show doesn't it um for those of you who have just tuned in and wondered why these two blokes are saying how do you do to each other. How do you do? My name is Simon Wells.

And my name is Bruce Fielding. And we are voiceovers. We do a lot of convincing people with our terribly smart and nice voices. Our beautifully seductive and informative voices. Yes. So that's what we do in our day job when we're not doing our day job. We love facts. We like trivia and interesting informative factual fun that was a lot of f's wasn't it oh that was a lot of f's yes we do with the kind of people who annoy

you in pub quizzes by standing up and going actually you're wrong there because yes steward's inquiry actually i think you'll find yes and once a week we come here together in this wonderful virtual space that we like to call fact orally and we pick a topic each week and we delve into it we find some interesting facts and then we pour them out to you lot we find something very arresting to talk about that was good um oh it gives you a slightly fuzzy feeling sometimes. Dear, oh dear. So this week, as you've already noticed because you've looked at the title of the episode. Well, yes, it's a giveaway.

We are talking about the police. We are. Which is, again, what we try and do is we try and take either a small subject and elongate it to 30 minutes or a huge subject and contract it to 30 minutes. This is very much the latter. This is absolutely the latter. So we're going to be talking mostly about the UK police. Yes.

I mean, we may mention other forces. We may. Yeah. It's difficult. I wanted to go on a whole piece about the Mounties. I wanted to talk about New York cops. The Japanese police force is quite fascinating, but we just don't have time

within this 30-minute segment. I could talk for ages about the beautiful baby blue uniforms of the Parisian gendarmerie, which are just the least threatening uniforms I've ever seen in my life. Oh, well, but that's balanced, isn't it? Because in Paris, they also have the, is it the CRS? Okay. It's the French National Police Force.

Oh, right. Okay. And I was once walking in Paris and I saw these four guys in long leather jackets with enormous great clubs and they're just tapping these truncheons on the pavement as they walk toward us and all the Parisians just scattered. Wow. Okay, so from the least threatening to the most threatening. Oh, yeah. Within the same country. They are scary. Wow. Okay, so we're not going to talk about any of that at all.

You won't catch any of that on this episode. We won't mention a word about that. No, not at all. Good. So let's kick off, as we often do, with the etymology of the word police. Where does the word police come from? Written almost exactly as it is, police in that form is first noticed written down around the 1500s. It comes from a 15th century French word, police, just spelled slightly differently.

That comes from the Latin policia, meaning state or government. That in turn comes from ancient Greek, politeia, meaning much the same thing, the government or at least the governance of the government. Because I thought they were sort of funded about 1977. Well, the police. And they had massive success with lots of singles, including Roxanne and Can't Stop The Prison. And Every Breath You Take actually reached a billion views on YouTube. I see what you've done there. You've gone for a different type of police, haven't you? Sorry, is that not the police?

Ah, no, no, I've done the other police. Oh, that's a bit of a sting, isn't it? Oh, dear. Actually, Sting's wife, Trudy, controls a winery in Tuscany. Really? And you can get Roxanne wine and Missing in a Bottle wine. Oh, that's beautiful. I love that fact.

That's not even the topic we're talking about, but we're giving you free facts here, just throwing them away. Wonderful. That's charming. So the origin of the other police? Yes, the other one. Yeah, so this is the bit where we sort of mention briefly the other countries, because there are a lot of countries out there that are older than us who have had law enforcement of some kind or other for a very long time. The Romans, for example. The Romans. Tell us about the Roman police.

They had a thing called Cohortes Urbani. Very good. Which is basically the police in Rome. Okay. Everyone, basically. You know, the ancient Egyptians used to have military soldiers guarding public spaces until they realized it was a drain on their resources. So they set up their own specific team of people to do that. So therefore, that's kind of police-ish. Ancient Greece had them.

China had a group of people called prefects who did, you know, they sort of kept the the local public law and order they're around 700 to 500 bc i guess if you've got laws you need enforcement well you do don't you yeah um i mean there's always been enforcement in as much that if you have a complaint against a person you can nab that person, slap them about a bit, maybe present them in front of a judge, and they will get a sentence. But it was always right sort of through medieval times, again, at least in the context of this country. The capturing of that person to take them to court was very much in the hands of the locals. There was a practice called hue and cry which i thought was just a 1980s pop

yes um but hue and cry was a a medieval practice um which sort of came up in 1285 if someone wronged you you could go out into the street and just shout your head off and rely upon your neighbors and passers-by to come along and, you know, club the fella in question in order to be dragged before an authority. But yes, there was no organised central body. There were individuals employed by local magistrates to do a bit of police-ish work. You had night watchmen who patrolled the areas to make sure that no one was up to mischief. The closest thing you had in this country, and I also confess I'm going to be focusing quite a lot on London police because

I'm fascinated by the history of London. You had a group called the Bow Street Runners. I remember them. They had a hit in the 60s, didn't they? There were just so many bands here that were named after police, not least the police. The Bow Street Runners, these were the law enforcement officers of the Bow Street Magistrates Court in the city of Westminster. Isn't that a catchy title? The public nicknamed them the Bow Street Runners. There were six of them at first, and they were employed by the local courts to kind of enforce law in the local area. Not particularly joined up, not particularly regimented, but go and give people a bit of a knockabout if they're misbehaving. So they were kind of the first organized group of what you could almost call police in London before the Met.

Well, there were privateers, weren't there? There were people who were employed privately. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They were sort of employed by local magistrates. They were not, they didn't have a uniform, well, a uniform or a uniform regulation. Yeah. They just kind of, they were employed individually to go and kind of keep the peace-ish. One of the roughest pubs near me is up Maldon Road and it's called the Robert Peel. Ah, okay, right. Well, that's ironic, isn't it? That it's a rough pub. It's a really rough pub.

They often call on their namesakes to come and break stuff up. Oh, right. Well, that's ironic, isn't it, that it's a rough pub? It's a really rough pub. They often call on their namesakes to come and break stuff up. Oh, great. Watch out, Bruce Fielding's in the pub again. So what do you know of Mr. Peel? I think he was a Home Secretary who became a Prime Minister. And he sort of founded a nationally financed public police force, which were then called sort of Bobbies after Robert or Peelers after Peel. They've had a few nicknames over the years, haven't they? They have had quite a few. Rosa.

I don't know where Rosa comes from, actually. Right. So a lot of these are so, so disputed um there was a document written at the time this is in the the early 1800s referring to this new metropolitan police force as robert's lobsters ah some say it's because they wore red coats others say that's ridiculous they didn't wear red coats at all they wore blue so that's just preposterous but some some suggestions i've seen contract robert's lobsters as rosas which i find a little bit tenuous yes also um cops many people say that coppers you know um police being coppers comes from it's an american term which comes from the bright copper badges on the uniforms not at all um the word cop is is kind of related to the word capture

or catch um goes back to 1704 so a cop is one who cops who who captures people yeah that's all it is okay i just remember the tommy cooper joke go on he puts on one policeman's helmet and he goes copper then he puts two on and goes tuppence that's very good just like that so what about old bill uh old bill i believe if i remember correctly i haven't looked this one up comes from the fact that william iv was the king of england at the time that the the force was formed it was formed. And it was a royal force. It was a royal force. So William IV, Bill. All right. I mean, there's loads.

Wooden top. Actually, we covered that, didn't we, in our episode on hats? We did. Oh, my memories. Was there wood in the original helmets? It was made of cork. Of cork, right. Yes. So yeah, wooden tops, flat feet, flat foot,

I guess because they pounded the beat. Yeah. The boys in blue, for obvious reasons. Now that one, again, disregarding the lobsters bit, apparently Sir Robert Peel deliberately put police officers in dark blue in order to distinguish them from the military, who wore bright red. Ah, OK. It wasn't just to not show up the bloodstains or anything. Officially, okay. It wasn't just to not show up the bloodstains or anything. Officially, no.

But we also refer to police officers, I mean, I used to do it when I was young as a kind of like a, as a badge of honour, to call them constable. I mean, when they weren't a sergeant or something. Right, okay. But I'm not sure they enjoy call them constable. I mean, when they weren't a sergeant or something. Right, OK. But I'm not sure they enjoy being called constable anymore.

Do they not? And American policemen certainly don't enjoy being called constable. Why not? I don't know, but I tried it once and it didn't work. What a shame. So when you're arrested by American police and you put on your best posh accent, you go, hello, is there any sort of problem here, constable? I see.

And he gave me a really filthy look. Okay. I mean, that might just have been the attitude you had at the time, as opposed to the word itself. I did look up the etymology of constable. It's Latin. It's confusing. It doesn't make sense to me.

If you people at home would like to go and look it up and make more sense of it and let us know. Or, I'll tell you what I could do. Go on. I could look it up. Yes. And then I could put a link in the show notes in the blog. Ah. Factorily.com.

Factorily.com. But beware, it's always a massive hole that you'll fall into dramatically fast. Yes. We often say that these episodes are a gateway to further research. Yes. The website does all the research. The vehicles they drive as well have in the past had some great names. Oh, go on.

Especially in London. Yeah. So in London, they used to drive white police cars. Right, okay. But on the side of the police cars there was like a a band and the and the band was yellow and red yes so it's too there's yellow on the outside and a red central line going along the car yeah which is why they were called jam sandwiches oh is that right oh brilliant the white bread the the yellow butter, and the jam. That's fantastic. Oh, yeah. Isn't that great?

We talked about the different sorts of police in the UK. I mean, we were talking about the Met, but the Met has various different divisions. Yeah, sure. Also, there's kind of like riot police. Oh, sure. And not in the UK, but they have been called out for a very strange reason once in America, in New York. Okay. Because there was a riot outside Gimbel's, the department store.

And that was when they launched the very first ballpoint pen. Okay. And there were queues around the block and people just went straight into Gimbel's and just bought the lot in about 10 seconds. Right. And they had to call the riot police to stop people from smashing into the shop and looting the place. I would never have assumed that so many people were so eager to get their hands on a ballpoint pen. Yes. Apart from the Met in London, we also have the River Police.

Yes, of course we do, yeah. They always look super cool in those amazingly quick that yeah are designed to sort of catch people who are trying to probably do drugs or drug smuggling yeah along the but they also just generally police the the speed limits because it's a very slow police very slow speed limit in on the thames up until the tower bridge And then it goes nuts. So if you go on a river bus, it's quite calm and nice past the Houses of Parliament. Yeah. But as soon as it gets past Tower Bridge, they give it some welly. Oh, I see. But the river police, one of the things they are traditionally hot on is gambling.

Okay. And there used to be a lot of gambling at Riverside because it was easy to escape the police if you were gambling on a boat. Oh, right. And you could just row the boat out into the middle of the tent and escape. Yes. But then the gamblers who were playing dice

realized that actually what they could do is stay where they are and just swallow the dice. Yes. So the police couldn't prove that they were playing, that they were gambling by the river. That makes sense. Hence the expression, no dice. Oh, you're kidding me. That is fantastic.

Yeah. Love that. Oh, and of course, they have the mounted police as well. I mean, you talked about the Mounties in Canada. We have our own mounted police in London. Yeah, we do, don't we? I can't say that I've seen any for quite a while. They used to be a relatively common thing in London.

Oh, you find them quite a lot at football matches and demonstrations and wherever there's crowd control required. Yes. You'll find police horses. Okay, yes. Because I grew up in London. I used to think that all horses were that size. I don't know, 17, 18 hands high.

They're quite large, aren't they? They're big horses. Yeah. And so I thought the small ones must be just like babies. But when they've got older police horses, they retire them, but they still look after them. Okay, good. Old police horses are looked after. They sort of have their own sort of police pension plan.

Oh, lovely. But if you would like to, you can apply to borrow an old police horse. Can you indeed? So the police lend out old police horses to people. Right. So, for example, Rebecca Brooks, the newspaper editor. Yes. She had an old police horse for two years.

Okay. She just kept and never gave back. Right. That's brilliant. So you can just hire a police horse. Well, yes, if you ever want. I'm not even sure you need to pay for it. They just sort of make sure that you look after it properly.

And you can just borrow one. That's fantastic. The other thing is we talked about uniforms before. You mentioned dark uniforms. Yes. When there's the portrayal of the police in dramas, on television, say, for example, what happens is very interesting.

Take, for example, The Bill. Yes. So The Bill, which is a british uh cop drama yeah it's been running for years and years and years well i don't know if it's still running i don't i'm not sure either i think um they have a lot of uniformed police actors yes so what happens is they actually source those police uniforms from the people who make police uniforms all right and when they're finished with them the metropolitan police buy them back from the producers of the bill yeah and either recycle them and give them to other police people or destroy them right and the reason for that is that this impersonating a police officer would be very easy if you could just buy old uniforms from the bill. So the police actually keep them within their circulation so that they don't actually stray outside.

How interesting. Now, I'm an ex-postman and we had to have a very similar policy because if anybody got their hands on royal mail uniform, they could impersonate a post person and go into a post office and nick all sorts of stuff. So again, if ever you see, we've sort of gone the other way, I suppose. If ever you see a post person portrayed on TV, there is no royal mail insignia on any of the uniforms. They're just neutral. And when a postie leaves service, they have to hand in their old uniform, even if it's decades old, to the office for it to be burnt for exactly that same reason.

Gosh, it's like burning the American flag. Pretty much, yeah. Which is, again, our episode on flags. Oh, it all ties back one way or another, doesn't it? Talking of TV, we talked about the names of, sort of the names given to the police, the Rosas. Yes. But there was a police series called The Sweeney.

Oh, you're right, there was, wasn't there? With John... Thor. Thor. We're The Sweeney Son and we haven't had our dinner. Yes. It was particularly wide tie. Yes.

And they're called The Sweeney because of Cockney rhyming slang. So they were actually technically the Flying Squad. So Sweeney Todd, Flying Squad. Oh. Oh. That's brilliant. The Sweeney Todd. So they were the Sweeney.

Why were they called the Flying Squad? They didn't fly. Because they got there very quickly. Ah. And they were the Sweeney. Why were they called the Flying Squad? They didn't fly. Because they got there very quickly. Ah. And they had very fast cars. Gotcha. Oh, there are other police animals as well. We talked about horses.

Oh, yes. Go on then. Oh, well, I instantly think of dogs. Yes. So do you know what the first force to use police dogs was? No. It was the transport police. Okay, right.

Who are still using them to this day in airports and things like that where they use sniffer dogs. Oh, I see. I thought you were going to say the dogs drove the cars. So the first two police dogs were bought for the transport police in 1888. Oh. And they bought two. They bought bloodhounds because they thought, well, you know, they're going to be on the scent of things. Yes.

And it didn't really work out. Okay. One bit the commissioner. And they both actually ran off at various different times and has been found and brought back so but police dogs play a big role now in um in catching people and also detecting stuff yes of course yes um i won't tell the whole thing one of our previous episodes um there's an anecdote about my grandmother-in-law being caught at the airport. She was asked to test out a new dog by taking some drugs in her clothing and the dog failed to sniff her and she just sort of kept on walking

and eventually had to turn around and say, Kiwi, would you like your drugs back? Now, bloodhounds, I wonder, that's such an iconic image, isn't it? I can think of so many sort of cartoons and movies where there's a Victorian police officer with a bloodhound, his ears drooping on the floor. That's the bloodhound, not the officer. Sort of sniffing the ground and catching the scent and absolutely going off on one. And in fact, I think there's a reference to bloodhounds in Sherlock Holmes, one of the Sherlock Holmes books. Holmes actually borrows a bloodhound from the police force.

His name's Toby, if I remember rightly. You've got a very good memory. And they use Toby to go and sniff out a particular villain in East London. And now you think of a police dog, you instantly think of a German shepherd, don't you? Yes. So I wonder when the transition went. Were the years just too much?

I did look this up, but I can't remember it. don't you yes so i wonder when the transition went were the years just too much did they just get in the way i did look this up but i can't remember it so it's another thing that i will put in the show notes about how how the german shepherd um alsatian type dog became the the the dog of choice okay we're talking about the metropolitan police uh on this episode mostly yes quite a lot, yeah. But there is a police station that isn't a police station. Because I had to go and do the producer thing where I had to produce my license and insurance for my car. Okay, yes.

And I was working in Victoria at the time. And when I got stopped, I said to the police officer, can I produce this at Scotland Yard? And he said, no, that's not a police station. Which is very interesting. It's not actually an official police station. Right. It's sort of an office. It's the headquarters.

Headquarters thereof. Yeah. And it's actually, there was a building within a place called Scotland Yard in Victoria. Yeah. within a place called Scotland Yard in Victoria. Which was, it was a kind of like a, it was a B&B for visiting dignitaries from the Court of St. James. Okay. So this was like a beautiful, lavish house

that visiting dignitaries would stay in. Right, and that's how Scotland Yard got its name and that's why it's so associated with the London police. Yes, and in fact there's now Old Scotland Yard, which is the original one, and New Scotland Yard, which is the one with the triangular turning side. The turning thing, yes, that you often used to see on news reports when they had anything police-y to report. Exactly. But police stations, there's that classic sort of blue light.

I mean, there was a film in the 50s starring, I think it was Jack Warden as a policeman, called The Blue Lamp. Oh, all right, yes, I recognise that. But this blue lamp thing for the British police was a very iconic thing. But police stations come in all shapes and sizes, don't they? They do, yes. I'm instantly thinking of the country's,

if not the world's, smallest police station is a little sort of cubicle on Trafalgar Square, isn't it? Yes, that's right. One of the four corners. There's a temporary holding place where if an officer sort of catches someone up to mischief, they can put them in this glorified broom cupboard until such time they can be taken somewhere proper. Well, there's a couple of interesting things about that broom cupboard. One is that there's a lamp on top of it which is actually not a blue lamp but it's a lamp from nelson's ship and it's right next to nelson's column oh really that's obscure i know it's very well even more obscure because it's at um archivaga square there are four fountains at archivaga square yes and so there is a spare dry uniform inside the the cupboard is there in case a policeman has to get wet in the

pursuit of their duty and have something to change into that's wonderful i bet you that is wrapped up in all sorts of traditional londony pomp and circumstance and ceremony. I bet there's a handing over of the dry uniform ceremony every year or something like that. Wonderful. So that's the smallest police box. What's the biggest police box? Don't know. Yes, you do. You're a nerd.

Of course you know what the biggest police box is. The very, very biggest police box um don't know yes you do you're a nerd of course you know what the biggest police box is the very very biggest police box there is is that is that the one that's bigger on the inside that's the one that's bigger on the inside so the tardis yes the doctor's tardis yeah is based on something that you don't see very often anymore no which is a police box which was a again it was a sort of refuge where police could actually hold prisoners if they needed to hold them somewhere uh only the police had the key to the inside although there was a telephone um on the outside and there are actually sort of standalone police telephones uh around the city of london still yes there are yeah um but yes so there was there was a phone

that you could actually ring that gave you a direct call to the police if you saw something happening you go to the police box open the little window pick up the receiver and you'd be connected immediately to the police oh i see right okay but i don't i don't know why um the bbc decided to use a police box yeah because you're right because you sort of watch Doctor Who now and you think, crikey, that thing stands out like a sore thumb. But when Doctor Who was first created, a police telephone box was a regular, you know, fairly reasonably regularly common occurrence.

And therefore it was hiding in plain sight. It might as well have been a red telephone box or, you know, something like that. It was an everyday object that no one would find suspicious to be sitting on the streets of London and that's why they picked it. Except if I remember rightly in the first episode it was actually in an abandoned wood yard or sort of like

a tradesman's yard. Oh okay. That would stick out like a sore thumb then wouldn't it? It absolutely would. Now so we've talked about blue lamps. That makes me think of the flashing lights on a police car. Oh, yes. That idea is sort of the blues and twos,

the blue flashing lights and the two-tone sirens. Yes. And I was sort of having a brief look at this because police sirens have changed over the years. Used to be a bell. Used to be a bell, yes. So if you watch, I'm particularly thinking of a Disney movie

called One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing. And there's a scene where there's a police chase and yeah, the car is ringing a bell. And then you sort of went through that knee-nore, knee-nore phase and a bit of a bap, bap, bap bap bap phase and now you just have this sort of very americanized noise well the neenor noise is interesting yes go on because the neenor noise the reason why there are two tones is because your ears can actually identify which direction and how far away yes uh a two-tone siren is better

than just a one tone yes oh i see okay okay i very much on the same field of that i i read something this this was so unofficial this was a reddit post someone asking um you know why why have the why have the sirens changed? And it had an ex-police officer answering the question, simply doing exactly what I've done. He uses onomatopoeia to describe the sirens. And he says that the woo-oo-oo-oo noise, as I've just demonstrated, is useful for big, long, fast roads. You can hear it from a long way away,

but it doesn't give you an awfully great amount of detail as to where it is. The middle setting is the ni-nor-ni-nor setting, which gives you a greater ability to identify exactly where it is. And then the setting used for a sort of immediate area around you, you know, in the centre of town, is the brrrr noise.

Okay. Which is reminiscent, in this guy's words, of the reversing truck ch-ch noise, which we can all picture, can't we? So, yes, you have different noises for different settings, whether you're going fast from a long distance or whether you're going slower and you need to be more specifically located by those around you. They also have like an oi noise, don't they? An oi noise?

Yeah, an oi noise that just goes whoop. Oh yes, I think that's the beginning of the woo-oo. Oh, it might be. But they just press it for a very short time. Records. Oh, go on then what's guinness got to say about the police so yes a few a few records there are actually an awful lot of them but these are some of the most interesting one um the world's smallest working dog uh is a man i know is a member of the japanese police force. It's a seven-year-old chihuahua that weighs just six and a half pounds. And she was brought in in order to sort of search smaller areas that golden retrievers and German shepherds couldn't get into.

An attack chihuahua. An attack chihuahua, yeah. So that it can sort of crawl through holes in walls or floorboards or whatever in order to sniff stuff out. I can't imagine a more sort of hyperactive and awkward dog to work with but um that's fair enough um another record was the world's longest it's brilliant the world's longest police standoff involving a video game controller what that's very precise isn't't it? In 2009, a man in Brazil carried out a 10-hour standoff with local police by holding a 60-year-old woman to hostage with a Sega light phaser. So it's a plastic light gun from a Sega video game console.

And he held this woman to ransom with this light gun for 10 hours. It adds on to the end of it um the incident ended with the woman coming to no harm um and uh the the last record i wanted to just highlight just because this is this is so italian the italian police force in 2009 um they incorporated the lamborghini galardo lp 560 hyphen 4 into the police force. These cars have a top speed of 230 miles per hour, and they're used in high-speed chases in Italy, and they look super cool.

Yeah, I think they started off with one that they kind of, like, confiscated from a drug dealer. Yes, that's right. And then realized how valuable they were. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. There are very few officers who are actually allowed to drive these things. There are about 30 Italian police officers who are allowed to drive these things because they're quite fast and quite mad. Yes. Well, that's all I've got. I've got to the end of my thin blue line.

Oh, very nice. Very nice. Yes. I have also run out of facts regarding the police, and I can't even think of any puns in which to say that. People can subscribe to this wonderful show on their favourite podcast players, and they will get a notification with the release of every new episode each week so that they never miss another one. They come out of a Thursday, don't they?

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