What do cops call us?

There’s a thread about people calling police “cops”, and I got to wondering. What do cops call us non-cop folks?
Some I’ve heard are “perp” (even if you didn’t do anything), Joe Citizen, civilian, hink??? and some others I don’t remember.
No need to be gentle.
Peace,
mangeorge

suspects

“skells”

Really?

From military experience I would guess “civilians.”

My experience in talking with friends in law enforcement, most of the names I can’t repeat in mixed company. :wink:

According to every episode of NYPD Blue I’ve ever seen. :slight_smile:

Googling skells +cops seems to back it up…

Working with a lot of cops at one of my jobs:

Residents of the jurisdiction where they partolled: residents
Others who weren’t law enforcement officials: civilians
Criminal-types, repeat offender residents not in custody: skells
Residents of the adjacent town: whisky tango

Geeze. None of this sounds particularly mean.
C’mon, Ruby, out with the dirt.
I’ll start, Original SNL style;
“Pigs”

For ordinary citizens I’ve heard:
Sheep
Sheeple
K-Mart Shoppers
Dickheads (when they are annoying you by telling you a story that ends with “can a cop do that?”, usually involving some sort of White Trash Lawn Theater they were involved in; but, I digress.)
Civilians or citizen is usually used when non-cops can hear you. Public relations are big in law enforcement.

Teens are sometimes call “tots.”

For actual criminals, the most common I’ve heard is scrotes, which is short for “scrotums.” I never heard skell until NYPD Blue, but NY is different in a lot of their nomenclature.

There was a comment that somebody made on the boards in times gone by about how police refere to the general public. He said that it is becoming more common for police to refer to people as civilians, but that is probabaly a bad thing. Cops are civilians also, that is why they are civil servants. By taking themselves out of the civilian context they are promoting an us against them attitude that probably has been fostered for too long. I’ll see if I can find the thread.

Unrelated, but kinda funny.

In Key West, FL there is a big yacht race. When the yacht people are there, the locals refer to them as “snotty yachties”. They, in turn, refer to the locals as “dope heads on mopeds”.

;j

Civvies?

Cub Mistress, thanks for the laugh. I never heard the phrase " White Trash Lawn Theater" before. Hilarious

In the Army Reserves we are taught that we serve the civilians. We are civilians on our own time . The term civilians has a much higher context in that civilians are a good group of people. We are also not taught that we are out of the civilian context rather that we are held more accountable for our own actions as we represent an orginazation. IMO the term civilians does not promote us against them. It may be diffrent elsewhere.

Listen to a police scanner- “male mental” comes to mind. In LA County " a 415 male" means often drunk, disturbing the peace, & usually in a fight. In private conversation asshole is a cop favorite

Perps.
Suspects.
Defendants.

Depends on when you ask them.

shea241
I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think the police referring to non-police as “civilians” is offensive and almost implies a “we’re better than they are” attitude. We put our life on the line everyday, blah, blah, blah…
Also, their use of civilian implies a military context. Really ?? Far form it.
If you don’t like the Police Chief, Commissioner, etc you literally could speak your mind to them. You might get fired but I think it would be a “tad” worse in the military.

If a police officer gets assigned to a lousy district, if nothing else, he (or she) can always quit. Not so for someone in the military.

There are other comparisons I could make but you get the idea.

What does “415 Male” mean? Is that a dis on San Francisco (area code 415)?

Wnorthr: Thanks, but it’s not original to me. I stole it and now use it liberally. Feel free to do the same, if you are so inclined.:slight_smile: