Why is it that police in either fictional and real police shows are able to immediatly able to tell in what direction they are travelling? What kind of training do they receive to be able to do that?
I suspect it’s just familiarity with their turf. I can do it without any thought at all in my home city (New York), and I’m not a cop.
You make it sound like it’s unusual for people to know what direction they’re facing. Is this your experience?
Big cities are usually set up in a way that makes sense, and once you know the system, you always know where you are. Chicago, for example, is set on a big grid, and the street signs at major intersections indicate how far N, S, E, or W you are. So because you know your address and which intersection you live near, such as 1000W and 3000N, you can always find your way home. You could parachute-drop a cop anywhere in this city and they can figure out easily exactly where they are and which direction they’re facing.
If I’m in my hometown, or any one of another areas with which I’m very familiar, I can always tell what direction I’m facing.
There is a neighboring city, on the other hand, in which I am always ‘lost’…
Well, I can tell you it’s not infallible. After witnessing a car accident, I filled out a report for a police officer, who handed me the paper and pointed various directions "That’s west, that’s " blah blah. It was only that night re-reading my carbon copy that I realized his west was actually east.
Which I should have known, given I’d lived there for 20 years, but nobody called me, so whatever!
It’s a skill cops definitely work on and cultivate during their careers. Think about it, almost every time you do something (e.g., traffic stop) you are going to be advising your location. And if you need backup, you are going to be giving your location. And if you are in pursuit (car, foot) you are going to be advising your direction. Since they are constantly thinking about their location, and since most people don’t, it seems like they have super directional skills.
“Suspect is driving a 1989 Dodge Plymouth…”
I used to wonder if cops had to take vehicle-recognition classes.
“Suspect is hatless. I repeat: hatless.”
I guess they also take some lessons on how to describe people (the usual carny tricks of estimating height and weight, plus picking up on things you can’t change with five minutes in a truckstop bathroom).
There’s a great scene at the beginning of Season 3 of The Wire that deals with this very issue. Major Howard “Bunny” Colvin has two new recruits in his office, on their first day in his command. The conversation goes like this:
Colvin: Do you know where you are? You too. Where are you?
Officer Baker: The Western, Major.
Colvin: Right at this very second you’re getting your hind parts kicked and you’re on the horn screaming for help. And you got your backup looking all over the place because he don’t know where the fuck you are. And that means, I gotta explain to your next of kin how you went and got yourselves killed on my watch.
Officer Castor: Sir, we’re at 1034 North Mount, first floor rear.
Colvin: Good. Now which way’s north? (Pause) Point!
[Officer Castor points to his left; Officer Baker points upwards]
Colvin (to Castor): That’s east. (Looks at Baker’s upward pointing finger in disbelief)
Colvin: Now, if you’re in a foot pursuit, don’t you think it might help your backup to know what direction you’re running?
Colvin (walking back behind his desk): Even numbers tell you north and west; odd, south and east. (Throwing something to the officers) Compasses. Until you learn that much, you carry one. Welcome to the Western. Gentlemen, scuff yourselves up a little, and learn the stare.
[Back in the corridor, as the new recruits exit Colvin’s office]
Detective Hauk: Hey Carv, where you at?
Sargent Carver: I’m at a desk outside the rollcall room in the first floor of 1034 North Mount. My feet are facing west, and my dick is pointing south-south-west.
Hauk: Bunny Colvin’s been giving that speech as long as you guys been suckin’ air.
If you look at a map of Baltimore, you’ll see that Colvin’s comments about house numbers was right. Evens are on the north side of east-west streets, and on the west side of north-south streets. Odds are on the south and the east sides of the streets.
You know the area and where you are. Freeways are usually north/south east/west. Most streets are roughly the same as well throw in some land marks and it makes it easy
It’s worth noting, by the way, that it’s much easier to get a feeling for compass directions in North America than it is in many other places, due to the American/Canadian tendency to actually use directions in street names.
In Baltimore, i lived for a while on North Calvert Street. I knew, very soon after arriving, that Charles Street separated east and west, and that Baltimore Street separated north and south. And every time you went to a new address, and it was something like 347 East 27th St or 2910 North Guilford Avenue, this sense of directionality was reinforced. Same in other North American cities that i’ve lived in (Vancouver, San Diego) or visited (too many to name).
By contrast, growing up in Sydney, and living in Australia and the UK as an adult, i often had very little sense of direction, except in certain times and in places with particularly prominent landmarks or large main roads. This is further complicated by the fact that cities like London and, to a lesser extent, Sydney, are not laid out on a regular grid pattern in the way that many North American cities are.
Sure, if you’re on one of Sydney’s main downtown streets like George or Pitt Street, it’s easy to remember that you’re on a north-south street. But get out of that central area, and into one of the nests of small streets in places like Surry Hills or The Rocks, and it’s very easy to get turned around in a hurry.
Hell, this can even happen in a place like New York, if you’re wandering around Chinatown or Tribeca. Of course, all you need to do is catch sight of a tall landmark like the Empire State building, the Brooklyn Bridge, or (before 2001) the World Trade Center, and you can reorient yourself pretty quickly.
I’ve also noticed that, probably because of the way their cities are laid out and the way their streets are named, Americans are much more likely to give you directions using compass points (“Head north on 8th Avenue, then turn east on 34th street.”) This is, in my experience, less common in places like Australia and England. Different directional instructions are used.
I’m sure this is true for many freeways in many cities. It is also totally not true for many freeways in many cities. In New York State alone, it’s not true for 33, 190, and 990 in Buffalo; 490 in Rochester, parts of 81 and 481 in Syracuse; 87 and 90 around Albany; 88 from Albany to Binghamton, and 390 from Rochester to Elmira. I won’t even list them for New York. I’m not sure there is a NSEW highway anywhere in the metro region.
Even if you count all the large beltways around cities as mostly NSEW, you can find numerous freeways that run northwest-southeast and northeast-southwest almost everywhere.
Same for this. Many cities are gridded on a NSEW pattern, but Philadelphia is distinctly slanted off true, Pittsburgh has almost no grid, and Boston is radial. Few cities in the older northeast part of the country have any kind of regular grid at all compared to the newer western cities, where boundaries were laid out before development began. Even in Manhattan, where people might talk about north and south, the famous grid is almost purely southwest-northwest.
I can identify virtually any car made in the last 30 years by a single glance of a front or rear quarter panel typically within 2-3 years of model, and can often identify the make (if not model) of a car by the headlights alone. I’m not quite at the level of Marisa Tomei’s character in My Cousin Vinny (a phenomenal performance well deserving of her Oscar) but I’m surprised by the number of people who have no idea of even common car models. I’m not even a car enthusiast by any measure; the last time I picked up an issue of Car & Driver or Automobile was probably four or five years ago. I just recognize cars by seeing them on the road.
As for direction, I typically orient by direction. I suppose it helps that you can’t be hardly anywhere in Southern California without seeing some recognizable mountains, but even in the flat and brown Midwest I never had much difficulty knowing which direction was north.
Stranger
Well, sure, but for the purpose of the OP’s question, does that really matter?
If a cop in Manhattan says he’s headed north on 5th Avenue, or east on 14th street, is the dispatcher going to respond, “Car 15, don’t you mean you’re headed north-north-east on 5th?” And if someone in Philly tells you to head west on Market, are you going to be in any confusion about which way they are telling you to go?
Both of my personal vehicles have compasses in them that always tell me what direction I’m going with glance at the mirror.
I would assume that police cars have the same.
I’m sure they also develop pretty keen internal compasses as well, though.
On a tangentially related note, a good friend of mine once had a housemate for a while who was a cop. He (the cop) had done a lot of radar work for a few years. He was one of those cops that found a sneaky spot to park and busted speeders. After a few years of doing that, he got so he could eyeball the speed of a passing vehicle within 2 or 3 mph, and as often as not, could nail it on the nose. He said it wasn’t unusual for cops who had done that job a long time to be able to nail speeders on eyeball observation alone, and not even need to look at the radar.
I guess if it’s your job to really pay attention to something, you develop a sharpened awareness.
There is a defined pattern for Interstate freeways; you can tell the direction just from the number. [ul]
[li]even numbered freeways run from east to west. Low numbers start in the south, and get higher as you go north. From I-10 in Florida to southern California, to I-94 going across MN, ND, & MT just below the Canadian border.[/li][li]odd numbered freeways go from north to south. Like I-35 which goes from near Canada in Minnesota roughly down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.[/li][li]3-digit numbers starting with an even number identify beltways running around a city. The last 2 digits are the same as the main freeway running through the city.[/li][li]3-digit numbers starting with an odd number identify spokes going outward from the city central area. Again, the last 2 digits are the same as the main freeway running through the city. So I-94 is the main E-W freeway in Minneapolis, 494 & 694 are the beltway around the city, and 394 is a spoke going west from downtown to the beltway.[/li][/ul]
Obviously, this is a general, overall pattern. Individual roads don’t follow exactly in the cardinal directions, but vary a bit to match the terrain and destinations. For example, I-94 goes west through Minneapolis-St. Paul, then it heads heads for Fargo, ND, about 200 miles north. So obviously it is really going northwest across most of Minnesota. When it gets to Fargo, it straightens out and goes pretty much straight west from there, until in Montana it drifts southwest to merge up with I-90. But the basic directional pattern of the road matches the number.
33, 81, and 87 run north-south, 90 and 88 run east-west, and 190, 990, 490, and 390 are all bypass loops around a city. They may run diagonally in places, or even twist around backwards, but every road that’s part of the interstate highway system either has one direction that’s officially east and the other direction is officially west, or one that’s officially north and the other is officially south. And you can tell what it is by whether it’s 2 or 3 digits, and whether it’s even or odd.
OK, I think I got a bit mixed up on the three-digit ones; listen to t-bonham, not me.
It’s the same in Chicago, should you ever find a need for that information. My mnemonic is Indiana is Southeast of Chicago and Indiana is odd.