LAPD phonetic alphabet

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The LAPD phonetic alphabet is not a phonetic alphabet in the sense in which that term is used in phonetics, i.e., it is not a system for transcribing speech sounds. See the phonetic alphabet disambiguation page, and also phonetic notation.

At some point in the early history of emergency service mobile radio systems, the Los Angeles Police Department developed its own phonetic alphabet for relaying precise word spellings. For example, the license plate "8QXG518" might be read by a civilian as "eight cue ex jee five eighteen" but with accuracy being paramount, the police dispatcher would voice it as "eight queen x-ray george five one eight." Despite the development in 1941 of the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet and its replacement, circa 1956, by the NATO phonetic alphabet (currently utilized by U.S. military, civil aviation, telecommunications, and some law enforcement agencies), the LAPD and other law enforcement and emergency service agencies throughout the United States continue to use it.^{[citation needed]}

The LAPD phonetic alphabet is also known as the APCO phonetic alphabet, named after the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International (APCO) [1], which was responsible for making the LAPD alphabet known and adopted by other law enforcement agencies in the US.

The origin of the name Adam-12 from the television show is believed to have come from this alphabet. To this day the LAPD calls the basic two-man patrol car an "A" unit - and the letter "A" is spoken as "Adam". So 1-Adam-12 translates to the 12th Adam unit assigned to geographic area one.

The LAPD phonetic alphabet represents the letters of the English alphabet using words as follows:

LAPD Phonetic Alphabet
Letter	Phonetic	Letter	Phonetic	Letter	Phonetic
A	Adam	M	Mary	Y	Young
B	Boy	N	Nora	Z	Zebra
C	Charles	O	Ocean	0	Zero
D	David	P	Paul	1	One
E	Edward	Q	Queen	2	Two
F	Frank	R	Robert	3	Three
G	George	S	Sam	4	Four
H	Henry	T	Tom	5	Five
I	Ida	U	Union	6	Six
J	John	V	Victor	7	Seven
K	King	W	William	8	Eight
L	Lincoln	X	X-ray	9	Niner

There are local variations of this system in use. Agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the California Highway Patrol, use a version that maps the letter "Y" to "Yellow" and other agencies' versions map the letter "B" to "Baker" or "Bravo". Other agency variations include mapping the letter "N" to "Nancy" instead of "Nora" or mapping the letter "Y" to "Yesterday."