Detective Slang

Real life copying false art?

This falls under the heading of any slang: So much of the "expert" advice here in this forum actually comes from watching TV cop shows and movies that the advice is highly questionable, but here's an example of the bogus becoming real:

I help facilitate range practice for a number of law enforcement officers, and they naturally talk shop.

Veteran cops used to laugh at TV cops saying "vic" and "perp" to mean victims and perpetrator.

Here's the ironic twist: New officers coming onto the forces have picked up the bogus terms from TV and think they're using regular cop slang, and "vic" and "perp" are becoming popular.

Thus, bogus script writing to reality.

The most common term i've heard is simply "uni, as in " when a uni showed up, the guy rabbited." (rabitted=ran, obviously.)

A lot of cops refer to marked patrol cars as black and whites, even though most marked cars these days don't have that color scheme.

The feebs, for FBI. Not much love lost between the locals and the FBI.

Uniformed patrolmen/cars = patrolmen or uniforms or marked units
detectives = dicks, or whatever squad you need, i.e. get the homicide squad out here.
Lieutenants = LT or Looie
Captain = Cap

at my dept, we called supervisors above sgt (Lt, Capt, DC, Chief) "brass"
This is because Lt wore a single brass bar on each shoulder, Capt double, etc, No one below the rank of Lt wore brass. (Sgt wore three stripes and we'd abolished the corporal rank many moons before.)

uniformed ofcs were called "uniforms" as in, one dick saying to another, "Let's get a couple uniroms to help us serve that warrant."