This is something that just popped into my head when I was reading a news article the other day.
Without googling, what do you think of when you hear ‘Scotland Yard’, if you ever have heard of it? I’m interested if non-British people have a perception of what it is. And Brits, for that matter.
I think of it as the police department of London.
More like our FBI.
London police.
Vague memory that it started as the name of the headquarters, but…it’s the cops.
Isn’t it some kind of police/detective/investigative agency based in London?
That’s what I’ve always thought.
It’s the headquarters of the London Police Department. I also have a general notion that they do policing outside of London itself, almost like a British version of the FBI, but that may just be early 20th century murder mysteries clouding my good sense.
The Metropolitan Police HQ, and by extension the force itself.
I think of it as the building that houses the headquarters for the Metropolitan Police Service in London, England.
Having read an awful lot of British mystery novels, I assumed it was a higher police force than just the Metropolitan police, because they seem to to investigate all over the country.
I see I was pretty much correct.
I know that it’s the headquarters of London’s police, but if you ask what I think when I think of it, I tend to view it as the place where the real detective work is happening and not just an administrative headquarters. I recognize that this isn’t the real truth, but it’s what I think of. I think that I also probably give it more prominence in my head than is warranted. I probably on a gut level think of it being for the whole UK and not just London.
I think of a nerve center sort of cop shop. With a largeish walled in square stocked with tamed but burly bearded gingers wandering about in kilts, sort of as exotic decorations like having emus or camels strolling about in an English garden. And it’s always overcast.
I also think of it as the UK equivalent of the US FBI.
It is a building with a spinning name tag.
I think of it as the investigative branch of the London police, once, or possibly still, headquartered in that location, and to some extent investigative for more than just London since a rural police station isn’t going to have the expertise to investigate a less than straightforward murder case. Except of course for rural murder capitals like Midsomer.
I’ve always thought it to be England’s bureau of detectives, the investigative branch of their police department.
I fear that popular culture has not entirely accurately portrayed Scotland Yard 
I picture it as the detective headquarters specifically of the London PD. Like, if you’ve got a bobby who’s assigned to be at some public event to keep the peace, or someone making a raid on some location where a crime is expected to be occurring, that guy probably wouldn’t be based at the Yard, but the guy whose job is figuring out that there’s a crime occurring there might be.
Mind you, I don’t know if this is actually correct, but it’s what I picture.
And it can’t really be “equivalent to the FBI”, since the UK doesn’t have the same sort of federal vs. local distinction as the US.
I have always considered it somewhat akin to the american FBI.
It is a parody of Pseudopolis Yard.
There really is no British version of the FBI. The types of things the FBI does is spread out between a few agencies.