Sillitoe Tartan

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Firearms officers wearing body armour. Note the Silltoe Tartan bands on their hats.
Firearms officers wearing body armour. Note the Silltoe Tartan bands on their hats.

Sillitoe Tartan was originally developed by Percy Sillitoe a pattern of black-and-white or blue-and-white chequered markings. Sillitoe tartan key function was to clearly identify a person as being linked to the Scottish police, and later to the rest of the British police, and was originally based on that used by several Scottish regiments on the Glengarry. It was first introduced by City of Glasgow Police in the 1930s, and subsequently adopted as a symbol of police services as far away as Chicago, Pittsburgh and Australia. While the checkered band is a common police symbol in the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries, the Chicago Police and the Pittsburgh Police are the only police forces in the United States that have adopted it as part of their police officer uniforms. In some forces the tartan was worn in the form of a removable brassard on the left arm, worn to designate on-duty from off-duty police officers.

Patrol car of the New South Wales Police (Australia) showing blue-and-white Sillitoe Tartan markings
Patrol car of the New South Wales Police (Australia) showing blue-and-white Sillitoe Tartan markings

Subsequent to the launching of Battenburg markings on police vehicles in the 1980's, the police introduced retro-reflective versions of the Sillitoe tartan markings to their uniforms, usually in blue and white, rather than blue and yellow used on vehicles.

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