page_title: Thin blue line
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Thin blue line / History
caption_attribution_description: Painting entitled The Thin Red Line, oil on canvas, by Robert Gibb, 1881
context_page_description: The "thin blue line" is a term for the police that is used to assert that they are the line which keeps society from descending into violent chaos. Colloquially, the term also refers to the idea of a code of silence among police officers used to cover up police misconduct.
  The term began as an allusion to the British infantry regiment The Thin Red Line during the Crimean War in 1854. The regiment of Scottish Highlanders — wearing red uniforms — held off a Russian cavalry charge. The "blue" in "thin blue line" refers to the blue color of the uniforms of many police departments.
context_section_description: The term is derived from the Thin Red Line, a formation of the 93rd Highland Regiment of Foot of the British Army at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854, in which the Scottish Highlanders stood their ground against a Russian cavalry charge. This action was widely publicized by the press and recreated in artwork, becoming one of the most famous battles of the Crimean War. The name is now used for firefighters today.
  In the book Lawtalk, James Clapp and Elizabeth Thornburg say the term spread to other professions, e.g. a "thin white line of bishops".
  An early known use of the phrase "thin blue line" is from a 1911 poem by Nels Dickmann Anderson, titled "The Thin Blue Line". In the poem, the phrase is used to refer to the United States Army, alluding both to the Thin Red Line and to the fact that US Army soldiers wore blue uniforms from the eighteenth century through the nineteenth century.
  It is unknown when the term was first used to refer to police. New York police commissioner Richard Enright used the phrase in 1922. In the 1950s, Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker often used the term in speeches, and he also lent the phrase to the department-produced television show The Thin Blue Line. Parker used the term "thin blue line" to further reinforce the role of the LAPD. As Parker explained, the thin blue line, representing the LAPD, was the barrier between law and order and social and civil anarchy.  
  The Oxford English Dictionary records its use in 1962 by The Sunday Times referring to police presence at an anti-nuclear demonstration. The phrase is also documented in a 1965 pamphlet by the Massachusetts government, referring to its state police force, and in even earlier police reports of the NYPD. By the early 1970s, the term had spread to police departments across the United States. Author and police officer Joseph Wambaugh helped to further popularize the phrase with his police novels throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
  Colloquially in the United States, "thin blue line" also refers to an unwritten code of silence used to cover up police misconduct. This code is an expectation that police officers will not blow the whistle on other officers who commit unlawful arrest, falsification of evidence, or other crimes against citizens, and that officers will not speak to outsiders about hazing and harassment within the police force itself. This use of the term has a meaning similar to blue wall of silence. It has been used in this way since at least 1978.
  The term was used for the title of Errol Morris's 1988 documentary film The Thin Blue Line about the murder of the Dallas Police officer Robert W. Wood. Judge Don Metcalfe, who presided over the trial of Randall Adams, states in the film that prosecutor "Doug Mulder's final argument was one I'd never heard before: about the 'thin blue line' of police that separate the public from anarchy." The judge admitted to being deeply moved by the prosecutor's words, though the trial resulted in a wrongful conviction and death sentence.
caption: The Thin Red Line
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