Talk:Tag:amenity=police

A white "P" on a blue background looks a lot like a Parking symbol, there must be a better symbol.

How about a gold/silver star inside the blue shield? TomChance 10:21, 20 October 2006 (BST)

How about a sheriff's badge with the left red and the right blue? Fusionstream 09:22, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Only for nodes?

Why is this only for nodes? I think it would make sense for areas too. So you can tag the whole building...

I think so too. At http://openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.6002&lon=13.57913&zoom=17 there is a large area owned by the Bundespolizei (German federal police), with barracks, a helipad, etc. At the moment it is tagged as landuse=military, but this is not correct. What shall we do with this? --Head 18:38, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Same here: Bereitschaftspolizei Brühl. Looks especially strange in osmarender because military=baracks fills the area with little tanks. --Head 02:30, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Since Tordanik has changed tag:amenity=police and amenity=police is now OK for areas, I have removed the military tag from the two examples I mentioned above. --Head 02:54, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Different types of police?

How to make a difference between various forms of police? In Brazil we have Policia Federal, Policia Civil (for each state), Policia Militar (not military police, they are more enforcement police, also for each state), Policia Rodoviaria Federal (federal highway police), Policia Rodoviaria Estadual (state highway police, for each state), Policia Turistico (only some places, to protect tourists), some cities have even types of Guardia Municipal, Guardia Civil or Policia Municipal, some of them have police authority and some not. That means it can be up to 7 or 8 different police head quarters in a city for you to contact, and rendering different symbols on a map could help you go to the right one as they have different areas of responsebility. I.e of there are Policia Turistico in the city, a tourist should go there to report crimes against him, though all others should go to Policia Civil. Of there are some fighting going on in your street you should probably contact Policia Militar, and when you need to renew your passport you should go to Policia Federal, etc. Brazil is not unique here but I use it as an example as I do not know the system in other countries with several different police forces. --Skippern 11:01, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Here in Spain we've got the same problem. We've got the Policía Nacional (who operates in the whole country), the Guardia Civil (some kind of military organized police, with very specific tasks), Policía Local (who depends of the cities/towns/villages), and even in some regions, Policía Autonómica (that works only in a limited region). Maybe we've got to consider including some kind of "operator" modifier, the same way we do with banks, ATM's, and so on. --Jonay 17:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

It would really be a big help if it was possible to specify different types of police "dwellings". In Russia you still have police checkpoints, but some are manned 24/7 and some are only manned during the daytime. The latter being not so helpful in a nightly emergency. --Dommel5 00:06, 14 October 2011 (BST)

emergency=police

What about moving this tag to emergency=police? I have heard many complain that amenity=* is overcrowded, and other similar tags, such as emergency=ambulance_station is already put under emergency=*. Food for thought. --Skippern 16:08, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree with moving police to emergency=*. --Dommel5 00:08, 14 October 2011 (BST)

Types ?

I think we should also add some other tag to distinguish which kind of police is, e.g. in Italy we have at least three different types and another one in many Regions... And looking for in wikipedia I found that almost in every country is the same, with the common name being "armed force"

What do you think about using the emergency call number in each country. For example:

Key: country Value: Germany would make a blue sign with a white 110 in it.

Key: country Value: Italy would make a blue sign with a white 113 in it.

The same system could be used for hospitals and firefighters.

Indeed I could like it very much but then I suppose we'll see a proliferation of many country specific icons for rendering a lot of different things (really Country are much different). I am not against it but we should carefully specify when and where using different icons for same object is permitted... I see it is hard but we can do it :) Emilio 13:03, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Wrong Rendering example at map under Tag:amenity=police#Gendarmerie_Nationale

It shows currently an area with tagging landuse=military instead of amenity=police--MalgiK (talk) 23:19, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Can you explain the problem? AFAIK the French Gendarmerie is in similar position as the Italian Carabinieri. --Dieterdreist (talk) 10:44, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I can try. So far i understand carto is using for rending of tag amenity=police this colour , but for the map example under Tag:amenity=police#Gendarmerie_Nationale you can see an object (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/629239454), which is not tagged as amenity=police, currently it is tagged landuse=military, and landuse=military has a diffenert carto-rending like this: . Or maybe the example object (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/629239454) is a correct example for amenity=police, but it has wrong tagging (landuse=military)...--MalgiK (talk) 14:13, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Security guards

Mention what if the building is not full of police, but instead full of security guards. building=guardhouse? Jidanni (talk) 15:05, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

office=security_office  ?Jidanni (talk) 15:19, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

How to tag Police+10 in Iran

There are offices in Iran called "Police+10". They are related to police but the office is not a police station. They provide some so called electronic services for different things like applying for new passport, making inquiry for driving license and many others. There is debate in Iranian OSM community over how to tag these offices and as the result some people tag it with amenity=police and some tag it as government office. Any suggestion on this issue? Ahangarha (talk) 12:30, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Based on your description it sounds like office=government. Is it also handling more police-like things? You mentioned "many others". Is it staffed/operated by police? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 18:29, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Services are related to Police. What other tags should be included to make it more useful and meaningful? Ahangarha (talk) 20:25, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Can add police=offices. ---- Kovposch (talk) 04:29, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

And these two tags should be used alongside amenity=police? Ahangarha (talk) 07:43, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The answer is no. I think I got the answer. Thanks. Ahangarha (talk) 08:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Alongside office=government should we use tags like government=public_service or anything else related to police? Ahangarha (talk) 05:11, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Military police

For military police forces aka Gendarmerie (e.g. French National Gendarmerie and Italian Carabinieri) would it be correct to add a military_service=police value? The military_service tag is newly approved, though the police value was not in the original proposal, it seems it could be suited to these militarised police forces. Casey boy (talk) 10:57, 22 January 2021 (UTC)