Yahoo Autos Why Are Cop Cars Black and White?
“That is such a great question, an obvious question,” Edwin Sanow says, “and I am embarrassed to say I don’t have an answer!” If Sanow, author of several authoritative books on the history of police cruisers, doesn’t know how or when black and white became the default scheme for them, then chances are no one knows.
This story originally appeared in Volume 24 of Road & Track.
Police agencies work on tight vehicle budgets, and most new cars a century ago were factory-finished with cheap japan black paint (famously on Ford’s Model T). The most economical way to distinguish law--enforcement machines was to paint parts of the cars contrasting white.
Until the California Highway Patrol formed in 1929, traffic officers in the Golden State were part of a joint county/state system that did not always have consistency in its vehicles, says Rick Mattos, chairman of the CHP Museum. “We have a 1923 Hupmobile that was used by a seasonal officer in El Dorado County that is painted green,” he shares. When the CHP began, the cars were white to contrast with most civilian vehicles, which were largely black.
Monty McCord’s Police Cars: A Photographic History identifies a photo of a white 1929 Hudson coupe with a black roof as an early CHP prowler (not to nitpick, but it’s probably a 1930 model). It’s a good-looking cop car and about as close to an early black-and-white as anyone will likely get. A trip to the Los Angeles Police Museum was fruitless for identifying that agency’s first black-and-white. But it’s the LAPD’s machines that epitomize the black-and-white in popular culture, because so many movies and TV shows have been made around Southern California.
Even before the lifeless William Holden floats face down in a decrepit estate’s pool, Billy Wil-der’s 1950 masterpiece, Sunset Boulevard, opens with shots of LAPD black-and-whites—motor-cycles, a Ford, and a Plymouth—and a black Dodge detective’s coupe screaming along the titular thoroughfare. But this is a fleeting glimpse of the LAPD liveries. More important in forming the image of the LAPD was Jack Webb, whose day job was producing, directing, often writing, and always starring in the radio version of Dragnet.
Beginning in 1949, Dragnet was a hagiographic celebration of the LAPD’s supposed virtues and unchallenged professionalism. And when the show ported to television in 1952, LAPD black-and-whites were supporting players to Sergeant Joe Friday’s and Officer Frank Smith’s unmarked 1952 Ford Customline sedan. By the mid-Fifties, Ideal Toys sold model kits of a black and white LAPD 1955 Ford with ads inviting kids to “Build the authentic Dragnet police car you see on television!” And the cars on Dragnet were authentic; Webb often borrowed LAPD units for his productions.
Meanwhile, in 1955, Ziv Television Programs began its low-budget production of the syndicated half-hour series Highway Patrol starring Broderick Crawford. Filmed in the rural San Fernando Valley, Highway Patrol used actual CHP cruisers for a time. That included the burly 1955 Buick Century Model 68 two-door, which was likely the first production model specifically engineered for police-pursuit duty. For American kids watching the ubiquitous afternoon reruns of Highway Patrol for decades after the show ended in 1959, cop cars always wore black and white.
Webb’s LAPD fetish didn’t go fallow, however. In 1968, he created Adam-12, which put actors Martin Milner and Kent McCord in black and white Plymouths for four seasons and AMC Matadors for another three. Nearly 50 years after NBC canceled the series, the 174 half-hour episodes still circulate on high-numbered cable channels and streaming services such as Amazon Prime.
But it’s not just the LAPD and the CHP that drive black and white patrol cars, bikes, trucks, and, increasingly, SUVs. City police across the U.S., from Miami to Milwaukee, do too. As do the Texas Department of Public Safety, Mexico’s Guardia Nacional, Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department, and endless other agencies the world over. Heck, Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife patrolled Mayberry in a black and white Ford.
The exact moment when black and white became the default cop-car paint job is lost to the misty past. But the combination is here to stay.
Of course, there are other, radically different paint schemes on police vehicles around the globe. So what? When the world dreams of cop cars, it dreams in black-and-white.
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