History
Early police vans were in the form of horse-drawn carriages, with the carriage being in the form of a secure prison cell. In the modern age, motorised police vans replaced the older Black Maria and paddy wagon types as they were usually crudely adapted for accommodation of prisoners.
The need for a secure police van was realised when prisoners who were resisting arrest needed to be transported. The concern, was that if transported in a conventional patrol car, the prisoner may attack the officers during the journey.
To combat this, police vans were designed with a fixed steel cage in the rear of the vehicle effectively separating the prisoner from the officers.
Read more about this topic: Police Van
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“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)