There, for a long time, the moustache was reserved as a marker of high caste (and so extreme respectability). One police force in India definitely thought so. A moustache is, after all, old-fashioned, and so to many embodies old respectable values – exactly what people are looking for in the police. In fact, that could be the real reason for the moustaches – respectability. As with the other forces, the military also bans beards but considers moustaches perfectly respectable. In fact, one legendary requirement for West Point Military Academy was that cadets could have “ no horse, no wife, no moustache”, at least until they graduated.
#Cop stache full#
In the military, the moustache often serves as a distinction between a trainee and a full officer – echoes of the comment about “rookies” not having grown their moustache out yet.
Perhaps a third option is that they both inherited the tradition from the US military, which does have historical and traditional ties to them both. Image via the American Mustache Institute Officers of the Village of Greendale police department in Wisconsin show off their facial hair. Others point to that same breathing gear as the reason, since a full beard would interfere with the seal of a mask. Some people say they started as a makeshift filter for air breathed through the nose, before breathing gear was available. Why they do is just as much a matter for debate, though. Others claim that the police wear them because firefighters do, and it’s true that firefighters in the US do also tend to wear moustaches. Yet the ‘stache is equally common in the cities, which have no such tradition. Rural police forces especially trace much of their terminology and tradition back to the frontier sheriff, and claim to wear the facial hair to honour those predecessors. Some trace it back to the Old West, and the ornate moustaches which were common in the 19th century. John Doherty, moustached sheriff of Mora County in New Mexico and my great grand-uncle Clearly, then, the Cop ‘Stache is serious business.
And officers take this right seriously – enough so that when several other police forces were merged into the Massachusetts State Police (which, unusually, forbids moustaches) then several members of those forces sued rather than shaved. It’s not just an empty fad either – the right to grow a moustache is enshrined in most of their regulations, even when all other facial hair is banned. A running joke among officers is that a rookie is someone who hasn’t had time to grow a moustache yet. (Outside of Movember, at least.) Yet in police forces across the US they’re not only popular, they’re practically mandatory. Now, moustaches, as a general form of facial hair, haven’t really been fashionable since the 1980s. However no tradition of the US cop is more visible, or more often discussed, than the venerable Cop ‘Stache. In America, these include the playing of bagpipes at an officer’s funeral, or the rule to never use the word “ quiet” in a squad room. Perhaps it’s the inherent danger of the job that drives this desire for ritual, and a similar drive can be seen in military forces, firefighters and other such professions. The police forces of the world have, it sometimes seems, more than their share of traditions. Douglas Scott, police chief of Arlington County and owner of a classic cop moustache
0 kommentar(er)
