Name/Title
A pair of Sussex Police embroidered epaulettes c1995 - 2000Entry/Object ID
2478Description
A pair of blue cotton epaulettes each with a small blue plastic button embroidered in silver tread with the letters and numbers "CM900"Use
For a Sussex Police officer to wear on a uniform shirt or other items of uniformContext
The alpha numeric warrant numbering system introduced in Sussex Constabulary in 1968 (see item 2409) continued to be used without change until the late 1980s. By this time there were only a limited amount of unique letter and number combinations that had not already been used. As these warrant numbers were intended to only be used once, the system was altered. The old "A" and "B", to designate sex ("A" for male and "B" for female") were exchanged for "C" and "D" respectively, and were included on the alpha numeric combinations attached to uniforms, meaning that new officers in Sussex now had two letters displayed on their uniforms, instead of the old system of just showing the first letter of their surname.
To begin with the same style of chrome plated metal letters and numbers as used previously (see item 2436) were used on epaulettes and other items of uniform. However in around 1995 the use of metal letters and numbers was replaced with embroidered ones as shown here. Interestingly exactly the same size of lettering and font was used as with the old metal numbers. Both tongue and sleeve style epaulettes, with this type of embroidery continued to be use in Sussex Police, until 2018. Since then the force has used epaulettes embroidered with a Sussex Police coat of arms badge and an alpha numeric number in a smaller plain font (see item 2473). Also the old "C" and "D" letters and surname letter were replaced with gender neutral letters.
These particular epaulettes were issued to PC Stuart Mullins who joined Sussex Police in September 1989. At that time he was issued with one with metal letters and numbers. These date from c1995 - 2000, after the introduction of the embroidered version.