Police Museums

Police museums preserve the rich history of law enforcement and educate the public about the role of police in the society. It is not known how many exist in the world. Fire museums, for comparison, are organized into the Fire Museum Network and number slightly more than 200 in the United States and Canada, but there is no equivalent organization for police museums. Police museums differ in size as well as scope: Some occupy just a room in a police department, some are housed in designated buildings on several floors, but all of them grew out of personal collections of police memorabilia.

The oldest known police museum is The Crime Museum at Scotland Yard. In 1874, Inspector Neame came up with the idea to use items seized at crime scenes for practical training on how to detect and prevent burglary. Officially opened in 1875 as a private institution, The Crime Museum is still closed to the general public and is used to lecture and train police professionals in subjects of investigative techniques, law, forensic science, and pathology.

The New York City Police Museum (NYCPM) dates back to the 1880s when Inspector Byrnes, the first Chief of Detectives, started an exhibit in a corner of police headquarters. The official establishment of the museum occurred in 1929. For many years, it was housed in the police academy and served as a teaching tool for the cadets. In 2001, a building at 100 Old Slip in downtown Manhattan, [Page 349]the site of the old First Precinct stationhouse, was dedicated by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani as the home of the New York City Police Museum. The NYCPM exhibits focus on the history of the police department and policing as well as crime in New York. The museum is open to the public and attracts visitors of all ages and professions. The exhibits combine historical information presented in the form of photographs, old police equipment, uniforms, badges, the whole arsenal of weaponry used by gangsters, with sensational elements of interactive computer technology providing visitors with a firsthand experience of a police officer's or forensic scien-tist's work. The NYCPM maintains a Web site where one can read curious facts about the history of the department and view photographs of current exhibits.

The first national police museum was the American Police Hall of Fame and Museum (APHF) in Titusville, Florida. Along with 11,000 exhibits and artifacts, it houses two American law enforcement associations—the National Association of Chiefs of Police and the American Federation of Police and Concerned Citizens. The museum includes a canine memorial devoted to the dogs that have either died in the line of duty or been retired from law enforcement after many years of faithful service. The museum also functions as a memorial dedicated to law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. Each year, the APHF holds a memorial service during Police Week (May 15th of every year) for the survivors of the killed law enforcement officers. When the APHF opened in 1960 in North Port, Florida, it had only 57 names inscribed on the wall of the memorial; today, there are more than 7,000 names, and new names are added weekly.

...