Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets - The Slang

The Slang

The book details a number of slang terms used by the city's homicide detectives.

• Billyland - area of South Baltimore inhabited by "billies" (hillbillies), the city's "white trash redneck" population.

• Billygoat- derogatory term for whites, specifically those with roots in Appalachia, and their descendants. As with blacks, "billies" do not include those with decent jobs, such as Worden or Kincaid, and Simon suggests that the two discriminations are more class-based. One typical description is that "Billies do not reside in Baltimore, they live in Bawlmer."

• Board, The - A dry erase board kept in the squad room. Every squad sergeant's name is listed in columns on the top. Below their names are the names of the cases which their detectives are investigating, and a letter indicating which detective is the "primary" on the case. Open cases are listed in red. Closed cases are listed in black. This allowed supervisors to get a quick assessment of how productive each detective/squad was and acted as motivation for detectives. Use of "The Board" was discontinued in 1998 due to public relations and morale concerns, but was restored in 2000 at the request of the detectives. Closed cases from previous years are written in blue ink, as noted briefly in the afterword regarding Worden's current work on cold cases, "putting blue names on the Board." The show followed this convention as well, though the layout of "the Board" was different: each shift used one full side, with a separate column for every detective on the shift in alphabetical order.

• Bunk/Bunky- A term of affection (short for "bunkmate") typically applied to friends and co-workers. McLarney regards McAllister as "my bunky," while Requer is known as "the Bunk." The veteran cops in the Southern District think of Waltemeyer in this way and readily help him find a car used by a murder suspect. Also used sarcastically towards suspects.

• Citizen or Taxpayer - A 'real' murder victim, as opposed to a drug dealer or gang member murdered in the course of criminal activity.

• Dunker - An easily cleared case (from the basketball term slam dunk). An example from the book: a husband who is arrested while standing over his wife's dead body, covered in her blood, telling cops he killed her and would do so again if he got the chance.

• Dying declaration - A dying person is able to speak and identify their attacker and definitely knows they are dying. However, useful declarations are rare and instead they tend to become the stuff of homicide legend. For example, one man, dying from a gunshot, "assured detectives that he would take care of the matter himself." Garvey solves a case using a dying declaration during the book.

• Eyefuck - To look at someone disrespectfully or in anger. A ceremonial eyefuck takes place in the book when an unrepentant criminal is convicted. Garvey is disappointed when one criminal, convicted for two brutal murders, does not follow this tradition, describing him as "no fun at all".

• Jake - A semi-derogatory term for a Jamaican-American

• Number One Male - Police Radio Description for an African American (Number One) Male Suspect. Number Two is for a White suspect, Number Three is for a suspect of another race. Numerical Order is most likely based on either Baltimore's African American majority or African Americans being the most common criminal suspects in Baltimore in the eyes of the BPD.

• Polygraph-by-Copier - A folk tale in police circles in which detectives use a photocopier as a faux-polygraph machine on a particularly dumb suspect; pages are loaded into the machine with "TRUE" or "LIE" on them and questions are asked to match them ("What is your name? Truth. And where do you live? Truth again. And did you or did you not kill Tater, shooting him down like a dog in the 1200 block of North Durham Street? Lie. Well, well: You lying motherfucker."). This was used in one episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, and also a Season 5 episode of The Wire. A story from the book notes that several cops in Detroit were punished for using this technique during interrogations.

• Put down/Clear - To close a case, either by arresting a suspect or by establishing that the perpetrator is dead.

• Red ball - A high-profile case that draws media and political attention. Red ball cases are investigated by all detectives on a shift and take precedence over existing active cases. They can and often do make or break a detective's career. They are also known as "shitstorms" and "clusterfucks." Examples during the book include the Latonya Wallace case (Pellegrini's first assignment as primary detective) and the Scott police-involved shooting. Red balls also include major cases that usually fall outside Homicide's jurisdiction, such as nonfatal police shootings.

• Secretaries with guns - Derogatory term typically used by less reconstructed veterans for incompetent female detectives. There are some exceptions to this rule, Jenny Wehr and Bertina "Bert" Silver.

• Smokehound- Derogatory term for a drunk

• Squirrel - A criminal, a suspect, a rodent. Typically too cooperative during interrogations.

• Stone Whodunit - A difficult case.

• Toad - A derogatory term for blacks, specifically those who have or had a criminal history. Not usually applied to black policemen such as Sgt. Nolan or Detectives Brown, Edgerton, or Requer or Blacks in other legitimate jobs- if you earn a legal wage and do not have a BOI photograph in the system the book explains, "then you are a black man".

• Ten Seven - police radio code for "out of service", may be applied to a homicide victim.

• Ten Seventy-Eight - police radio code invented by McAllister to refer to "your basic blowjob-in-progress interrupted by police gunfire." This occurs twice in the course of the year, though only one is described in detail.

• Yo - An insulting term for a black youth; often used as shorthand for black criminals along with "toad".

• Yoette - A young black female. Unlike "yo", the term doesn't refer to the individuals as criminals.