I was involved in law enforcement for a long time. I saw ideas come and go, some good, some not so good. Sometimes the margin between a good idea and a great idea was a single letter in an acronym. Here are some that made it and others that fell by the wayside.
SPECIAL WEAPONS AND TACTICS (SWAT) everybody has heard of SWAT it is part of the lexicon but how about some of the also-rans; TACTICAL WEAPONS ASSAULT TEAM (TWAT), BI-LATERAL OFFENSIVE WEAPONS JUMP OUT BOYS (BLOW JOB).
Texas was home to a variety of Narcotics Task Forces, some more successful than others. My unit the Alamo Area Narcotics Task Force aANTf was required to drop the longstanding name by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Not to be deterred we came up with a new name and logo. DPS was amused until some asshole explained it to them, then they were offended
Cops were always on the lookout for offensive terms that weren’t on their face offensive and therefore acceptable to use in mixed company.
Joseph Wambaugh and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) came up with Choir Practice. Choir Practice was an after shift party that involved drunken debauchery, sex if they could get it, fistfights and firearms usually held outside.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) coined the phrase “Rackett.” It involved all the same elements as the LAPD Choir Practice but was help indoors. Rackett sounded a little bit too corrupt and everybody except NYPD and those within fifty miles of New York prefer Choir Practice. No way in hell that NYPD is playing second fiddle to LAPD.
One of Wambaugh’s Choirboys, Roscoe Rules, advanced the term “Scrote” as an innocuous alternative to asshole, worthless motherfucker, shithead and all other terms of endearment that cops tend to use directed at somebody that pissed them off. I had a roommate that tried to advocate for the change, but it didn’t take.
New York came up with the simple but elegant “Scumbag.” To the uninitiated Scum can be found in ponds, in a sink full of dirty dishes and anywhere standing water is. A bag is just a bag until somebody puts scum in it. Perfect! In NYPD parlance a scumbag is a discarded, used condom. The only relation the scum within has to a pond is the gene pool.
In the seventies, somebody came up with the following graphic:
The Happy Face was usually accompanied by the admonition to “Have a Nice Day!” I used this for thirty years. At the end of a contact, translated it means “Fuck You!” Accompanied by a shit-eating grin, it means “Eat shit and die, fuck you.” “Have a Nice Day is still a common refrain the conclusion of traffic stops, in Texas.
Everybody has heard of groupies, they hang around rock stars and cops. They are also known as Badge Bunnies, and my favorite “Fender Lizards.”
Sometimes a term will take on disparate meanings. A “piece” is a gun. It is also a woman who is sexually available. A “throw down piece” is a gun that can be conveniently left at a crime scene and not be attributed to the police. “A piece on the side” is a woman to have sex with over and above a wife, girlfriend, second girlfriend, mistress, groupie, and fender lizard.
Alibi, a story guilty scumbags come up with in an attempt to prove they couldn’t possibly have done what they are accused of because they were someplace else. Alibi, the assertion of five brother officers that the accused officer was working at the time that the wife, girlfriend, second girlfriend and mistress claims they were otherwise engaged. In an extreme instance, a sixth officer can provide pictures to prove it. Groupies and fender lizards do not qualify for an explanation.
I’m sure that with Twitter, texting, and means I have never heard of there is a whole new set of acronyms out there. However, for my generation, there is a deeper meaning when a scumbag police Chief finds a butchered hog’s head in his front yard. Unfriending him on Facebook just wouldn’t have carried the same message. It wasn’t a threat, just a sign that he had missed the barbeque.