Law Enforcement Officers use Police Patches, Insignia, Decorations and badges as signs of authority, rank, position, or standing that typically indicates authoritative positions and special recognitions. The American Law Enforcement ranking model is military-like by design and order. There are many large and differing divisions of federal, state, and local law enforcement, including sheriff’s departments and together, they have various ranks but operate using the insignia to uphold the basic command model.
Decorations and Honor Insignia function for a different purpose. They recognize bravery, honesty, and effectiveness in the line of duty. Generally speaking, law enforcement honorable decorations are presented from a specific division and should just be added to the uniform and shown when the officer is working actively as a member of that specific law enforcement action. Usually, these awards are supplied by city government, counties and state officer.
Many different types of these emblems are available for many groups besides the military, including. Sheriff, police, highway patrol, marshal, constable, park rangers, law enforcement explorer scouts, or other law enforcement related personnel. Emblems worn on uniforms have been exchanged between officials as a sign of cooperation for decades, and displays of patches are frequently found in police stations. The publishing of reference books on law enforcement insignia over the past decade has made law enforcement patch collecting a popular way to preserve law enforcement history.
The collecting of Police Badges, Police Shields, Police Patches, Police Emblems, Police shoulder Flashes, Police Stars, Police Cap Badges, Police Helmet Badges has become a very large market within police memorabilia collecting and has over the years created some difficulties and cases of misuse of these symbols of authority by non-police personnel and criminal elements within society. Sheriff’s Stars and specific Stars such have Texas Rangers Stars have become specialist collector’s items due to there link with the history of the American West. Likewise many collectors seek to collect Helmet and Cap badges that denote specialist areas of Policing such as Transport
Because of the September 2001 assault on America, numerous bylaws have been passed, controlling ownership of police insignia for safety precaution reasons, and these laws indeed impacted public collecting considering now that patches should only be authorized or issued to only police officers. If you consider the rising problem of emblems, police, and badge patch reproductions, these issues have contributed to a modern challenge for collectors, considering most serious collectors treat the copies as being worthless. Various organizations, such as the California Law Enforcement Historical Society, sponsor annual events spotlighting the historical significance of preserving accurate information for future generations and keeping a historical record of insignia used. Some states, such as West Virginia Law prohibits trading patches, yet North Carolina law only prohibits departments selling patches.
