Page 340 - NIXBOOK

When we wore slacks most of us had shiny black shoes instead of boots, and so when we went to the wash and wear shirts we
got new pants, that had cargo pockets on the sides and everybody switched over to boots. The first few years were a mish mash
of different styles and brands as we experimented with different vendors, but eventually we figured it out and settled on a
permanent look. Not coincidentally, there was a national trend from uniform companies to offer more tactical clothes, and in
time we wound up with functional tactical uniforms that looked pretty sharp and worked well for us. Every two years we could
get the department to pay for new footwear. I started out with the shiny corfam type shoes, but eventually went to boots, and
after a few years discovered the joy of side-zip boots that only had to be laced up once. Because why spend a minute or two every
day lacing and unlacing boots when a zipper option is available?
Jackets: When I first started, the police jackets were plain solid color, and most were made with a kind of a shiny satin finish
that looked like these things:

And yep, those are real fake fur collars. Because that was in style back then I guess. I found these on the internet by searching
for sigh…“vintage police jackets”… I had one of these for only a few years and nobody ever took a picture of me wearing one. (I
took the fake fur collar off before ever wearing it though) Back in those days we also had some officers wearing one-piece
jumpsuits that were also made out of this same kind of shiny nylon material. It looked normal and fine back then, but in
retrospect they were pretty, erm, cheesy looking.

In the late 1990’s some creative police uniform designer person invented the two-tone blue over black jacket style, that even had
POLICE in big letters on the back. That was actually a significant change, and in time, more and more uniform manufacturers
started offering their own versions, and eventually those became very popular. We got ours custom made so they fit everybody
nicely. They cost about $350 bucks each, and they came with a warm removable fleece liner inside. It was a considerable
improvement over the old styles.