Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
Just because I'm weird I sometimes wonder whether or not things in real life are as they are depicted on television. I can hear a few readers laughing hard because the obvious answer is
Of course not! Still, that line of thought led me to a few polls Officer.com has hosted recently and the return information is worth a peek.
In popular television shows today the large majority of police officers are wearing navy blue uniforms; what we, in my area, refer to as "utility blues". They aren't particularly flashy or dressy but they look sharp (if properly maintained and worn) and present a clean professional image. Our poll asking what color the usual duty uniform is returned support for the "average television" uniform. The results were:
59% wear a shade of blue
14% wear black
9% wear a shade of brown
7%wear a shade of gray
6% where a shade of green
3% wear a mix of other colors
The voter response that surprised me was the number of officers who wear
white uniforms: 2% of those who voted. Wow... I can't imagine going to work wearing an all white uniform.
So in looking at those numbers it appears that television may be depicting things accurately - at least 59% of the time.
My next ponderance was the patrol vehicle / color stereotype. Unless it's an unmarked car or an LAPD
black and white the large majority of police cars you see on television are white with some kind of markings. And usually they are a sedan - mid-size or full-size - but some kind of sedan. So the poll questions went out, and lo and behold...
76% of the voters drive a sedan.
12% drive an SUV.
4% patrol on foot.
3% drive a pick up truck.
2% are blessed with patrolling in a sports car (listed as Mustang, Camaro, etc).
The remaining 3% broke down nearly evenly across such patrol vehicles as horse, boat and motorcycle.
But what color is the majority of those vehicles? The poll results showed...
50% of patrol vehicles are white.
15% are black.
7% are blue.
6% are gray.
12% of those polled patrol in unmarked cars so no color was specified. The poll question was specific to the color of a marked patrol vehicle. Brown and green were also available as answers and netted 1% of the votes each.
So, it seemed my ponderance was answered. The average cop wears a blue uniform and drives a marked white sedan on patrol. My goodness... television might actually have this one right most of the time.
Stay safe!
