A police van (also known as a paddy wagon, meat wagon, divisional van, patrol van, patrol wagon, police wagon, Black Mariah/Maria, police carrier, or in old-fashioned usage, pie wagon) is a type of vehicle operated by police forces. Police vans are usually employed for the transport of prisoners inside a specially adapted cell in the vehicle, or for the rapid transport of a number of officers to an incident.
Early police vans were in the form of horse-drawn carriages, with the carriage being in the form of a secure holding cell. Frank Fowler Loomis designed the first police patrol wagon. [1] These panel trucks became known as "pie wagons", due to their fancied resemblance to delivery vans used by bakeries. That usage had faded by the 1970s. [2] In the modern age, motorised police vans replaced the older Black Maria and paddy wagon types as they were usually crudely adapted for accommodation of prisoners.
The need for a secure police van was realised when prisoners who were resisting arrest needed to be transported. The concern was that if transported in a conventional patrol car, the prisoner might attack the officers during the journey.
To combat this, police vans were designed with a fixed steel cage in the rear of the vehicle effectively separating the prisoner from the officers.
The precise origin of the term is uncertain and disputed, though its use dates back to the 1800s. [3]
One theory holds that "paddy wagon" was simply a shortening of "patrol wagon", in the same way police cars are called patrol cars today. [4]
In the United States, "Paddy" was a common Irish shortening of Padraig (Patrick in English) which is an ethnic slur to refer to Irish people. [5]
These vehicles were usually painted black or a very dark blue. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, a police wagon was also sometimes called a Black Maria ( /məˈraɪə/ mə-RY-ə). The origin of this term is equally uncertain. The name Black Maria is common for race horses –cf. Black Maria (horse) –beginning with an 1832 appearance in Niles Weekly Register (October 10) and then again in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine and Humorist (1841). [6] The OED lists the first usage in 1835. [7] An example from Philadelphia was published in 1852. [8] Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable suggests the name came from Maria Lee, a large and fearsome black keeper of a sailors' boarding house whom the police would call on for help with difficult prisoners. The English translation of the French detective novel Monsieur Lecoq , published in 1868 by Émile Gaboriau, uses the term Black Maria when referring to a police van. The term is featured heavily in Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago . In his 1949 song "Saturday Night Fish Fry", Louis Jordan mentions a Black Maria. In a 1962 article in the Hackensack, New Jersey newspaper The Record , it claims that the name Black Maria is named after a "large and riotous London woman...She was often picked up by the police for excessive drinking on Saturday nights. When the van went by, people would say 'There goes Black Maria again!' and the word stuck." [9]
The term is still used today[ when? ] in parts of Britain for the vehicle that transports prisoners from gaol to court. Frequently, blackened-windowed buses are also used for the same purpose. [10] Popular British band, The Clash, makes reference to the Black Maria in the song "The Guns of Brixton" on their seminal 1979 album London Calling:
"You know it means no mercy
They caught him with a gun
No need for the Black Maria
Goodbye to the Brixton sun"
The song refers to the London police tendency of using citizen possession of a firearm to justify use of lethal force, therefore "No need for the Black Maria", i.e. no need to arrange for transporting anyone to custody because the police will not attempt to bring them in alive.
Individual police stations may have a van for the accommodation of prisoners and transportation of officers. [11] The Metropolitan Police Service in England makes extensive use of these, particularly among the Territorial Support Group, which carries out public order duties and adapts the vans to carry riot protection equipment.
Police vans may have a flip down wire shield across the windscreen, [11] which helps prevent projectiles from damaging the vehicle.
Many forces now differentiate between a "Carrier"—a vehicle used for Public Order situations and therefore equipped with shields etc.—and what is commonly known as a "Cub Van", a small van with a cage in the back.
Some police departments, such as the Baltimore Police Department and Philadelphia Police Department, have been accused of braking abruptly or steering sharply in order to inflict injuries on unbuckled prisoners, a technique called a "rough ride". Most notably, Freddie Gray allegedly died as a result of such a ride in 2015. Other prisoners have received large settlements after becoming paralyzed during transportation in police vans. [12]
A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. There is some variation in the scope of the word across the different English-speaking countries. The smallest vans, microvans, are used for transporting either goods or people in tiny quantities. Mini MPVs, compact MPVs, and MPVs are all small vans usually used for transporting people in small quantities. Larger vans with passenger seats are used for institutional purposes, such as transporting students. Larger vans with only front seats are often used for business purposes, to carry goods and equipment. Specially equipped vans are used by television stations as mobile studios. Postal services and courier companies use large step vans to deliver packages.
This is a list of British words not widely used in the United States. In Commonwealth of Nations, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Australia, some of the British terms listed are used, although another usage is often preferred.
Caravan or caravans may refer to:
In British slang, a "jam sandwich" or "jam butty" is a police car with a red stripe applied to the side.
A wagon is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by draft animals or on occasion by humans, used for transporting goods, commodities, agricultural materials, supplies and sometimes people.
There are many types of car body styles. They vary depending on intended use, market position, location, and the era they were made.
The 1981 Brixton riot, or Brixton uprising, was a series of clashes between mainly black youths and the Metropolitan Police in Brixton, London, between 10 and 12 April 1981. It resulted from racist discrimination against the black community by the mainly white police, especially the police's increased use of stop-and-search in the area, and ongoing tensions resulting from the deaths of 13 black teenagers and young adults in the suspicious New Cross house fire that January. The main riot on 11 April, dubbed "Bloody Saturday" by Time magazine, resulted in 279 injuries to police and 45 injuries to members of the public; over a hundred vehicles were burned, including 56 police vehicles; almost 150 buildings were damaged, thirty of which were burnt out, and many shops were looted. There were 82 arrests. Reports suggested that up to 5,000 people were involved. The Brixton riot was followed by similar riots in July in many other English cities and towns. The Thatcher government commissioned an inquiry, which resulted in the Scarman Report.
A police car is an emergency vehicle used by police for transportation during patrols and responses to calls for service. A type of emergency vehicle, police cars are used by police officers to patrol a beat, quickly reach incident scenes, and transport and temporarily detain suspects.
A panda car, or just panda, is a small- or medium-sized marked British police car.
"Hold your horses", sometimes said as "Hold the horses", is an English-language idiom meaning "wait, slow down". The phrase is historically related to horse riding or travelling by horse, or driving a horse-drawn vehicle. A number of explanations, all unverified, have been offered for the origins of the phrase, dating back to usage in Ancient Greece.
Police vehicles in the United States and Canada consist of a wide range of police vehicles used by police and law enforcement officials in the United States and in Canada. Most police vehicles in the U.S. and Canada are produced by American automakers, primarily the Big Three, and many vehicle models and fleet norms have been shared by police in both countries.
A horse-drawn vehicle is a piece of equipment pulled by one or more horses. These vehicles typically have two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have mostly been replaced by automobiles and other forms of self-propelled transport but are still in use today.
The Baltimore County Police Department is the primary law enforcement agency for Baltimore County, Maryland. They have been accredited by Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (C.A.L.E.A.) since 1984.
A prisoner transport vehicle, informally known as a "Sweat Box" or “Court Bus” amongst British prisoners, is a specially designed or retrofitted vehicle, usually a van or bus, used to transport prisoners from one secure area, such as a prison or courthouse, to another. Less commonly, aircraft, railcars or vessels are also similarly fitted. These vehicles must be highly protected and may feature bars or wire mesh over the windows, bulletproof glass, segregated prisoner compartments, and additional seating for escorting officers.
Illegal taxicabs, sometimes known as pirate taxis, gypsy cabs, or jitney cabs, are taxicabs and other for-hire vehicles that are not duly licensed or permitted by the jurisdiction in which they operate. Most major cities worldwide require taxicabs to be licensed, safety-inspected, insured as for-hire vehicles, and to use taximeters, and there may also be requirements that the taxi driver be registered or accredited. However, many unlicensed cabs are in operation. Illegal cabs may be marked taxi vehicles, and others are personal vehicles used by an individual to offer unauthorized taxi-like services. Illegal cabs are prevalent in cities with medallion systems, which restrict the number of legal cabs in operation. Since their introduction in 2009, vehicles affiliated with ridesharing companies have been classified as illegal taxicabs in some jurisdictions.
Akron Police Department is the primary municipal law enforcement agency for the city of Akron, Ohio, United States with 451 employees. The current Police Chief is Brian Harding.
Police transport refers to any form of transportation used by police in their duties. These primarily include methods for patrol and prisoner transport.
A rough ride is a form of police brutality in which a handcuffed prisoner is placed in a police van or other patrol vehicle without a seatbelt, and is thrown violently about as the vehicle is driven erratically. Rough rides have been implicated in a number of injuries sustained in police custody, and commentators have speculated that the practice contributed to the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, in April 2015. Throughout the U.S., police have been accused of using aggressive driving tactics to "rough suspects up", resulting in numerous injuries, and millions of dollars of damages awarded to victims and their families.
Frank Fowler Loomis was an American engineer and inventor who worked for the Akron, Ohio fire department. In 1874, Loomis, with the help of another engineer, developed four telegraph fire alarm boxes, which were patented in 1885. Loomis developed the city's fire alarm and control system, and built the world's first police van.
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