Scotland Yard’s Vice Squad Succumbs to the PC Police

by Jeffery Racheff

London’s Vice Squad is starting to sound more like the Nice Squad.

The special Scotland Yard division tasked with battling prostitution and various underworld activities in the Greater London area will now officially be called Serious Crime Directorate 9: Human Exploitation and Organized Crime Command, or SCD9 for short. And it’s all so hookers don’t get their feelings hurt.

According to sources within the department, the change is part of an effort to do away with the perceived negative connotations of the word vice. Richard Martin, SCD9’s chief, says the old name was “no longer appropriate” because the unit has taken on “wider responsibilities for areas such as human trafficking.” Former officers, however, describe the move as nothing more than bureaucracy buckling to political correctness.

Now, there’s a reason folks are upset about the change. If Vice Squad sounds perfect for a CSI spin-off or a punk band (which it is), that’s because it’s a terrific name. Short, sweet and tough — like something Charles Bronson would name his children. Since its creation in 1932, the unit has built a reputation as a tough-as-nails crime force that can’t be bothered with red tape and namby pamby pencil-pushers. It’s pure old-school police justice.

But this is the new school, and these bobbies want a more benign brand. The importance of having a benevolent image, even if it’s dull, seems to be just as necessary nowadays as fulfilling a duty to protect the people.

Some say the Vice Squad’s name-change comes as part of a larger effort to characterize prostitutes as victims rather than criminals. But the real problem is not protecting the fragile feelings of street-walkers (I’m sure what they do has been called a lot worse than vice). It’s that the word vice does not exactly have a legal definition. Vice crimes themselves are generally considered crimes of morality — sex-for-hire, gambling, alcohol — because they are activities where the line of legality is blurred. Unlike jaywalking, or murder. And since one person’s sin is another’s daily routine, London’s top cops don’t want to offend the average Nigel by calling it all wicked.

Okay, so no Vice. But why Serious Crime Directorate 9? The name is so cold and clunky that I hesitated to even type it out again. It sounds like the phone listings to a prison cell block. Even worse is that it manages to cloud what the unit actually does, which would violate the first rule of naming a government agency.

On the other hand, maybe cops will benefit from the yard-long name. By the time criminals manage to warn each other about who is actually coming, they’ll already be arrested.