User:Fr33kman/Color of the day (police)

__NOINDEX__ The color of the day is a recognition signal used by undercover officers of major police departments in the USA. It is most commonly associated with the Police Department of the City of New York (NYPD), the Transit Bureau (formerly the New York City Transit Police) and the Housing Bureau (formerly the New York City Housing Authority Police Department) (and other law enforcement agencies when working in NY). An undercover police officer will wear a headband, wrist band or other conspicuous clothing in the "color of the day" ; which is relayed to officers via to officers at the station house or could formerly be heard on early morning radio in New York. The system is about officer safety and arose out of the violence of the 1970s/80s New York City.

Purpose
New York City is a major metropolitan area with a residential population of 8,274,527 with over double that living in the urban area surrounding it. It has a multiple agency police and law enforcement presence including; the NYPD, the MTA Police (formerly the Metro North Commuter RR Police), the Port Authority Police, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and US Customs amongst others. The color of the day system is first and foremost about officer safety. With such a varied armed presence in the city, undercover police officers need to have a rapid system in place to identify their presence to other officers in the area. While some use of the color of the day system include; recognition so a uniformed officer will not "hassle" a transient person who is actually a police officer acting as a victim decoy.

History
The NYPD Street Crimes Unit began in 1971. During the late 1970s, the 1980s and early 1990s, New York City had a higher crime rate than it does today. Undercover officers were called to go into the subways in plain-clothes or dressed as a homeless person as a decoy victim. Many of these officers were black and had a fear that as they blended in very well they would be mistaken for a criminal by other police officers, especially in case of drawing their gun in an emergency. Many of these officers dressed to blend into the scene on the transit system and some would pose as drunken transients or as decoy victims in order to catch muggers taking advantage of a helpless target. The color of the day system was developed in order to alleviate these fears and was rolled out to all undercover police officers. Initially elastic sweatbands were issued to each street crime unit member, based on the chosen color of the day: beginning the use of the color of the day recognition system. Later this expanded to include wrist bands with today's officers often dressing in the color: i.e.: T-shirts, shoes, hats, etcetera.

Knowledge of COD by others
The color of the day recognition system is written about by authors and academics yet is not widely known to the average New Yorker. Books that discuss the subject include; Roger Abell's The Black Shields ( a discussion of black policing in New York), Greg Faliis' Just the Facts Ma'am, and Leslie Glass' novel, A Killing Gift.