BALTIMORE POLICE SET OF HISTORICAL ROCKER SHOULDER PATCHES, NEW UNUSED

Description

We'll ship these out as soon as possible, we normally ship one day a week, on Saturdays - even so with USPS mail is moving SLOW SLOW SLOW. So give it time, it will arrive we have never not sent a patch. All patch sales go toward helping to fund the Police History Site.
THESE WERE MADE TO HELP TELL OUR STORY FOR HISTORICAL PURPOSES, AND TO ADD TO THE POLICE MUSEUM, WE FIGURED COLLECTORS MIGHT WANT A SET TO HELP TELL THE STORY AND HAVE SOMETHING INTERESTING FOR THEIR BPD COLLECTIONS. - BUYER WILL GET TWO PATCHES, ONE OF EACH.
This 28 June 1952 article not only gives us info as to when the "rocker patch" was first used, giving us our first shoulder patch, it also mentions plans they had for a separate patch to be used on the shirt sleeves. We made a mock-up of what that patch would have looked like and we may have some sets made of the two patches, for collectors and educational purposes.
This is the orange/gold and black rocker patch proposed for use on left coat/blouse sleeve only.
Initially when the colors were ordered for a patch circa 1905, they ordered "Or" and "Sable." The patch maker at the time knew "Sable" was "Black," but mistakenly though, "Or" was an abbreviation for, "Orange," so they used Orange and Black. Later they learned, "Or" was "Gold" or "Goldenrod" and "Sable" is "Black."
OR 3  (Ôr) n. Heraldry - Or is English Heraldry for Gold or Goldenrod. In the Maryland the best way to describe it, is to look at our state flag, "Or" is the Yellow/Goldenrod color found along side the Black in the two Calvert quarters of our flag.
Gold, represented in heraldic engraving by a white field sprinkled with small dots.[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin aurum.]
This was initially applied to new officer’s uniforms as part of the uniform; veterans however had to pay 30 cents per patch to bring their issued uniforms up to date, their later uniforms came with the patches at no additional costs.
While the first thoughts were to put these patches on coats and summer blouses only, and having a Blue/White patch made for the shirts. That plan never came to fruition, and shirts didn’t get patches until much later. Though, we were told about this patch long before we found the article, and the officer that talked about them said he once saw a Baltimore City Police rocker patch where the Black portion of the patch was White and the Gold portion was done in Blue. He said he didn't know a thing about it, he was working headquarters security and saw it and a bunch of other Baltimore Police items, that he thought may have been designing, uniform trials, logos etc. We took note of what he said, but until we found this article we didn't know anything about the Blue/White BPD rocker patches that he described as being White where we normally saw Black and Blue where the Gold is expected to be found. Jim said it was a nice looking patch, and he didn't understand why they never used it. We had researched his claims and couldn't find anything, so like we do with many of these kinds of things, we storied it in our memory banks until we found something that could help us understand what he had been telling us. Then we found this article, that introduced the 1952 Shoulder Patch, and during the interview, someone told the reporter about the Blue/White patch and what it would have been used for.
Proposed white and blue to have been used on left shirt sleeve. When the rocker was devised it was to set us apart from the county police and from special police that used to design uniforms to look like us. Pomerleau put an end to that, he used an old 1907 law that allowed the BPD to approve or deny uniforms of “Special Police,” security guards etc. His first rule was no left sleeve patches, no collar pin rank, or Md insignia, and a 1" red seam down the pant legs etc. He was tired of not just having them try to look like us, but us having to answer for their errors from a public that was mistaking them for us..
The blue and white patch was an idea from 1952 when they first started wearing a shoulder patch on the left sleeve of the coats and summer blouses. At the time no patch was worn on the shirt sleeve, and the thought was we should have a patch that blends with the white shirt as much as the patch did with the dark coat. They wanted the patch to be visible, but look like it belonged, not as if it was out of place, so a dark patch with yellow/orange lettering and marrow on the dark coat/blouse with that in mind a patch for a white shirt would have to be white, so they chose blue letters and a blue marrow.
The blue patch was never done, for a while they went without a shirt patch
Here you get one Black and Gold Rocker Patch and one White and Blue Rocker shoulder patch, both full size, for .00 shipping is free