Police Trivia
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This police trivia quiz has 109 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 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which British Home Secretary founded London's Metropolitan Police in 1829?
Robert Peel
Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 created the force, whose first constables went on patrol on 29 September 1829; 'bobbies' and 'peelers' both take his name.
Q 02How did the Metropolitan Police headquarters get its famous nickname?
From the street its public entrance faced
From the street its public entrance faced: the first headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place had its public entrance on Great Scotland Yard, and the name became shorthand for the whole force.
Q 03Which magistrate and novelist founded the Bow Street Runners, London's first professional police, in 1749?
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones, recruited a handful of paid constables in 1749 from his Bow Street magistrate's office; his blind half-brother John carried the force on after him.
Q 04Which of Peel's principles is the most often quoted?
'The police are the public and the public are the police'
'The police are the public and the public are the police' is the seventh of the nine principles, stressing that officers are simply citizens paid to give full-time attention to duties incumbent on every citizen.
Q 05The British police custodian helmet was adopted in 1863 to replace what?
A stovepipe top hat
A stovepipe top hat, stiffened with cane and leather, was the Met's headgear from 1829 until the custodian helmet replaced it in 1863.
Q 06Interpol is headquartered in which French city?
Lyon
Lyon has hosted Interpol's General Secretariat since 1989, when it moved from the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud; every member country runs a National Central Bureau.
Q 07What was the FBI called when it was established in 1908?
Bureau of Investigation
Bureau of Investigation was the original name, formally given in 1909 to the special-agent force Attorney General Charles Bonaparte assembled in 1908; it became the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935.
Q 08For how many years in total did J. Edgar Hoover lead the FBI and its predecessor?
48
48 years: appointed by Coolidge in May 1924, Hoover ran the bureau under eight presidents until his death in May 1972.
Q 09Which is the oldest US federal law enforcement agency, created by the Judiciary Act of 1789?
US Marshals
US Marshals were created by the Judiciary Act of 24 September 1789, the same law that set up the federal courts, and George Washington appointed the first thirteen.
Q 10The Texas Rangers trace their founding to a 1823 call to arms by whom?
Stephen F. Austin
Stephen F. Austin, leading the first Anglo colony in Mexican Texas, called in 1823 for ten men to 'act as rangers' against raids; the Rangers' 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
New York City's police department, created in 1845 on the model of London's Metropolitan Police, has more sworn officers than any other US city force.
Q 12The Miranda warning stems from a Supreme Court decision in which year?
1966
1966 was the year of Miranda v. Arizona, decided 5-4 on 13 June; the warning also promises a court-appointed attorney to those who cannot afford one.
Q 13In 1920 the Royal North-West Mounted Police absorbed which force to become the RCMP?
Dominion Police
Dominion Police, the federal force formed in 1868 to guard government buildings in Ottawa, merged into the Royal North-West Mounted Police on 1 February 1920 to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Q 21The UK's 999 number, launched on 30 June 1937, holds what distinction?
World's oldest emergency call service
World's oldest emergency call service: 999 started in London after a 1935 Wimpole Street fire in which five women died, and the first week brought more than a thousand calls.
Q 22The first US 911 call was made in 1968 in Haleyville, in which state?
Alabama
Alabama's Haleyville hosted the first 911 call on 16 February 1968, placed by state House Speaker Rankin Fite and answered by Congressman Tom Bevill.
Q 23The radio code '10-4' reached the public in the 1950s through which TV series?
Highway Patrol
Q 14Ireland's police, the Garda Síochána, translate their name as what?
Guardians of the Peace
Guardians of the Peace is the sense of Garda Síochána, the force formed in 1922 as the Civic Guard; it is largely unarmed, with only specialist units carrying firearms.
Q 15A kōban is a small neighbourhood police station found in which country?
Japan
Japan's kōban system puts small staffed police boxes in every neighbourhood; the one at Kameari in Tokyo inspired the long-running manga Kochikame.
Q 16The Carabinieri, instituted in 1814, are the national gendarmerie of which country?
Italy
Italy's Carabinieri began on 13 July 1814 as the Corps of Royal Carabinieri of the Kingdom of Sardinia; a gendarmerie is a military force with civilian policing duties.
Q 17Which US state has the country's second-largest municipal police department, behind New York?
Illinois
Illinois takes second place through the police department of its largest city, which fields more sworn officers than any other US city force bar one; Los Angeles ranks third.
Q 18The first police car, used in 1899 by the Akron, Ohio, police, was powered by what?
Electricity
Electricity powered the 1899 Akron patrol wagon, built by Frank Loomis for $2,400 and fitted with lights, a gong and a stretcher; its first call was to pick up a drunk.
Q 19The world's first traffic lights, installed in December 1868, stood outside which building?
The Houses of Parliament
The Houses of Parliament had the gas-lit semaphore signals outside, at the junction of Bridge Street and Great George Street, installed on 9 December 1868 to protect MPs crossing; they exploded within weeks, injuring the policeman operating them.
Q 20Which colour were Glasgow's police boxes, unlike the blue ones everywhere else in Britain?
Red
Red was the colour of Glasgow's cast-iron police boxes, a few of which survive in the city centre; the blue Metropolitan Police design became famous as the TARDIS in Doctor Who.
Highway Patrol, the 1955-59 syndicated series starring Broderick Crawford barking '10-4' into his radio, made the code a catchphrase; APCO devised the ten-codes from 1937 to save airtime.
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
Indiana State Police captain Robert Borkenstein built the Breathalyzer in 1954; he later became a professor at Indiana University, where Rolla Harger's earlier Drunkometer had been developed in 1938.
Q 26The polygraph's 1921 inventor, John Larson, was also an officer of which police department?
Berkeley
Berkeley's police department, under reforming chief August Vollmer, employed John Larson, a medical student who built the first modern polygraph there in 1921.
Q 27Who developed Kevlar, the fibre in modern body armour, at DuPont in 1965?
Stephanie Kwolek
Stephanie Kwolek, a DuPont chemist, discovered the liquid-crystal polymer solution that became Kevlar in 1965; 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
The mug shot in its standard form, a full-face and a profile photograph, was Bertillon's innovation in the 1880s; his anthropometry was later displaced by fingerprints.
Q 29The Vucetich fingerprint classification system was developed in which country?
Argentina
Argentina's Juan Vucetich, a Croatian-born police official in La Plata, devised his system in 1891 and used it in 1892 to solve the Francisca Rojas murder, the first conviction by fingerprint evidence.
Q 30DNA profiling was discovered in 1984 by Alec Jeffreys at which university?
Leicester
Leicester's university is where Alec Jeffreys hit on DNA fingerprinting on 10 September 1984; the technique first cleared a wrongly suspected youth, then caught Colin Pitchfork, convicted in 1988 of murdering two teenagers.