This police trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and covers law enforcement from Bow Street to Brooklyn Nine-Nine: how Scotland Yard got its name, why officers are called bobbies, who invented the mug shot, the polygraph and the Taser, where the first 911 call was made, and which sergeant told his squad to be careful out there. It takes in the FBI, the Mounties, Interpol, the Carabinieri, Japan's kōban boxes and Ireland's unarmed Garda alongside Dragnet, Columbo, Hill Street Blues and Law & Order. It starts easy (which city is Brooklyn Nine-Nine set in?) and ends with questions for retired detectives, so it works for a police-themed party, a retirement do, a classroom civics warm-up or a themed round at quiz night. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry on the force, the invention or the show, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which British Home Secretary founded London's Metropolitan Police in 1829?
Robert Peel
Its first constables walked out on 29 September 1829, and officers are still nicknamed 'bobbies' and 'peelers' after him.
Q 02How did the Metropolitan Police headquarters get its famous nickname?
From the street its public entrance faced
The original HQ was at 4 Whitehall Place; over time the name became shorthand for the whole force and its detectives.
Q 03Which magistrate and novelist founded the Bow Street Runners, London's first professional police, in 1749?
Henry Fielding
The author of Tom Jones started with just six men.
Q 04Which of Peel's principles is the most often quoted?
'The police are the public and the public are the police'
Charles Reith distilled the force's General Instructions into nine principles in his 1948 history.
Q 05The British police custodian helmet was adopted in 1863 to replace what?
A stovepipe top hat
Some sources say it was modelled on the spiked Prussian pickelhaube.
Q 06Interpol is headquartered in which French city?
Lyon
It has 196 member states, each with a National Central Bureau, and seven regional bureaus.
Q 07What was the FBI called when it was established in 1908?
Bureau of Investigation
It kept the shorter name until 1935.
Q 08For how many years in total did J. Edgar Hoover lead the FBI and its predecessor?
48
He served under eight presidents, from his 1924 appointment by Coolidge to his death in 1972.
Q 09Which is the oldest US federal law enforcement agency, created by the Judiciary Act of 1789?
US Marshals
George Washington was president when the office was created under the district courts.
Q 10The Texas Rangers trace their founding to a 1823 call to arms by whom?
Stephen F. Austin
Their museum and Hall of Fame is in Waco.
Q 11Which US municipal police department, founded in 1845, is the country's largest?
New York City
Chicago is second and Los Angeles third.
Q 12The Miranda warning stems from a Supreme Court decision in which year?
1966
Miranda v. Arizona is the case; the warning also promises a court-appointed attorney to those who cannot afford one.
Q 13Canada's Mounties were formed in 1920 by merging the Dominion Police with which older force?
Royal North-West Mounted
The famous red serge, Stetson and boots are now worn only for ceremonial duties.
Q 21The UK's 999 number, launched on 30 June 1937, holds what distinction?
World's oldest emergency call service
It began in the London area only.
Q 22The first US 911 call was made in 1968 in Haleyville, in which state?
Alabama
It was placed by the state's Speaker of the House, Rankin Fite.
Q 23The radio code '10-4' reached the public in the 1950s through which TV series?
Highway Patrol
The APCO ten-codes were developed from 1937 to save airtime on crowded police channels.
Q 14Ireland's police, the Garda Síochána, translate their name as what?
Guardians of the Peace
Since 1923 it has been predominantly unarmed; more than three-quarters of officers do not routinely carry firearms.
Q 15A kōban is a small neighbourhood police station found in which country?
Japan
One in Kameari, Tokyo, was the model for the police box in a long-running manga.
Q 16The Carabinieri, instituted in 1814, are the national gendarmerie of which country?
Italy
A gendarmerie is a military or paramilitary force with civilian policing duties.
Q 17Which US state has the country's second-largest municipal police department, behind New York?
Illinois
Chicago's is second; the LAPD, with about 8,800 officers, is third.
Q 18The first police car, used in 1899 by the Akron, Ohio, police, was powered by what?
Electricity
The $2,400 wagon carried electric lights, gongs and a stretcher.
Q 19The world's first traffic lights, installed in December 1868, stood outside which building?
The Houses of Parliament
They stood on Parliament Square outside the Houses of Parliament.
Q 20Which colour were Glasgow's police boxes, unlike the blue ones everywhere else in Britain?
Red
The blue version is now best known as the TARDIS in Doctor Who.
Q 24The Taser is named after a 1911 novel about which boy inventor?
Tom Swift
NASA researcher Jack Cover began work on it in 1969 and named it after 'Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle'.
Q 25Robert Borkenstein, who invented the Breathalyzer in 1954, was a captain in which state's force?
Indiana
An earlier 1927 device by a Chicago chemist changed colour as breath passed through chemicals in water.
Q 26The polygraph's 1921 inventor, John Larson, was also an officer of which police department?
Berkeley
Its chief August Vollmer was famous for modernising American policing.
Q 27Who developed Kevlar, the fibre in modern body armour, at DuPont in 1965?
Stephanie Kwolek
Its first commercial use was replacing steel in racing tyres.
Q 28Besides his body-measurement ID system, what is French police officer Alphonse Bertillon credited with inventing?
The mug shot
His anthropometry was later displaced by fingerprints.
Q 29The Vucetich fingerprint classification system was developed in which country?
Argentina
It spread across South America, while the Henry system, developed in India, took over the English-speaking world.
Q 30DNA profiling was discovered in 1984 by Alec Jeffreys at which university?
Leicester
Its first forensic use caught Colin Pitchfork, convicted in 1988 of murdering two teenagers in Leicestershire.