Author: Shanna Campbell

By Shanna Campbell · Updated August 29, 2026. Fire department badges run on an entirely different symbolic system from police badges. Where law enforcement speaks in stars and shields, the fire service speaks in the Maltese cross, the scramble, and bugles — an iconography with its own centuries-deep history andRead More

By Shanna Campbell · Updated August 29, 2026. If American law enforcement has one original badge, it is the five-point star. It rode west pinned to frontier lawmen before most cities had police departments, and it still means one thing at a glance: the sheriff. This entry covers where theRead More

By Shanna Campbell · Updated August 29, 2026. The United States Marshals Service is the oldest federal law enforcement agency in the country — created by the Judiciary Act of 1789, in the first Congress, before there was an FBI, a Secret Service, or a single municipal police department inRead More

By Shanna Campbell · Updated August 29, 2026. The six-point star is the badge American deputies have worn for a century and a half, and almost nobody who wears one can say exactly why it has six points. The honest answer is that the shape arrived through several doors atRead More

By Shanna Campbell · Updated August 29, 2026. A sheriff’s office issues two kinds of badges: the sheriff’s own, and everyone else’s. This entry is about everyone else’s. Deputy badges are where a sheriff’s office actually spends its badge budget — one elected sheriff, dozens or hundreds of deputies —Read More

By Shanna Campbell · Updated August 29, 2026. Every metal badge on a duty belt was made one of two ways: struck or cast. That single fork in the process decides nearly everything a wearer experiences — the weight, the sharpness of the seal, how the finish ages, and whatRead More

By Shanna Campbell · Updated August 29, 2026. Shape conventions described here are traditions, not laws — individual agencies choose their own designs. A badge’s shape is the fastest read on who is wearing it. Long before you can make out a seal or a rank line, the silhouette saysRead More