Police Slang, Jargon, and New Words from Double-Tongued Dictionary

Citations in the Category Police

Police, cops, officers, correctional officers, security guards, military police. You can also see entries assigned to this category.

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blue canary n. Altschul said that the first responders to any terrorist attack would likely be police or firefighters. Like the canaries once used by miners to detect poisonous methane gas, the “blue canaries,” as police and firefighters are sometimes called, would probably suffer heavy casualties until the agent is identified. [English Firefighting Police Slang] [full cite] (Jun. 3, 2006)

blue canary n. I’ve got to admit I was only a little surprised by the fact that the cops ran in the building without gear, common sense, etc. Have you ever seen cops approach the scene of a possible Haz-Mat incident? They’re not called “Blue Canaries” for nothing! [English Firefighting Police Slang] [full cite] (Jun. 3, 2006)

blue light bandit n. Impersonating police officers has become so common that law enforcement officials refer to them as “blue light bandits.” [English Crime & Prisons Police] [full cite] (May. 29, 2005)

blue light bandit n. After nearly deadlocking Thursday, a Chatham County Superior Court jury returned Friday and delivered a guilty verdict against one of Savannah’s alleged “blue light bandits.” Jimmy Bradford, 20, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on an armed robbery charge stemming from an incident on March 14, 1984, in which robbers used a flashing light and posed as law officers to stop and frisk a motorist. [English Crime & Prisons Police] [full cite] (May. 31, 2005)

blue light bandit n. A 53-year-old Monroe High School teacher refused to stop her car Thursday after being followed by a suspect flashing a blue police-style light on his pickup truck. Reports of a blue-light bandit who stopped women using such lights have been filed in Mecklenburg and several surrounding counties in the past year. [English Crime & Prisons Police] [full cite] (May. 31, 2005)

blue Tuesday n. He said the terms Blue Tuesday or Suicide Tuesday had been coined to describe the risk of heavy weekend users becoming depressed to the point of becoming suicidal. [English Drugs Police] [full cite] (Jun. 21, 2005)

BOG n. Law enforcement agencies have begun focusing on what they say is a greater threat—small, anonymous groups of disaffected men who radicalize one another and turn to violence.…Known among counter-terrorism officials as BOGs, for “bunch of guys,” or GOGs, for “group of guys,” the cells may offer greater opportunities for detection and infiltration than the lone-wolf threat because they are more numerous and most members are amateurs. [English Police Acronym] [full cite] (Aug. 16, 2007)

box n. It’s where the drugs are. Where the crack is. An area that soft-spoken, veteran police Lieutenant Lionel Garcia calls “the box.” It’s an informal term in cop-speak that means the floating area of most concentrated crime in any given precinct. [ Language English Register Jargon Subject Police] [full cite] (Dec. 23, 2005)

Bradley effect n. Virtually all of the undecided white Democrats and Independents broke for the GOP candidate. Pollsters began to call this phenomenon—white voters who tell interviewers they are undecided and then vote 10-1 against a black candidate—the “Bradley effect.” [English Police Race] [full cite] (Nov. 6, 2006)

bulky n. In August 2003, the Miami bureau of the FBI made the startling decision to close its case on Posada. Subsequently, according to FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela, several boxes of evidence were removed from the bureau’s evidence room, or the “bulky,” as it is known. [English Police Jargon] [full cite] (Nov. 16, 2006)

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