Perhaps no tool in police work holds the legal or emotional significance of the badge, a few ounces of nickel alloy that is covered by an insignia and a shield number. Badges are routinely handed down from father to child in police families. As rookies, officers are taught to guard them closely and generally to keep them on hand, on duty or off.
Eliot Sash, 53, says thousands of New York officers are wearing his duplicate badges.
But in New York, a city that has become almost synonymous with high security, where office employees wear picture IDs and surveillance cameras are on the rise, some officers don’t wear their badges on patrol.Instead, they wear fakes.
Called “dupes,” these phony badges are often just a trifle smaller than real ones but otherwise completely authentic. Officers use them because losing a real badge can mean paperwork and a heavy penalty, as much as 10 days’ pay.
Though fake badges violate department policy, they are a quirk deeply embedded in the culture and history of the New York Police Department. Estimates of how many of the city’s 35,000 officers use fake badges vary from several thousand to several hundred — roughly 25 officers are disciplined each year for using them — but the practice has become more sensitive since 9/11 and the heightened concern about police impersonation.
“Let’s just put it this way: lots of people have dupe shields,” said Eric Sanders, a lawyer and former police officer who now represents officers in disciplinary actions.
