Why are police vans sometimes referred to as paddy wagons?
Paddy, short for the Irish name Pádraic (or Patrick), was once a common pejorative form of address for an Irishman. The prominent theory is that the term paddy wagon arose at a time when Irish-Americans constituted a large percentage of the police force in many major cities, to the point that "police" and "Irish" were largely synonymous.
(Paddy wagon, 1909)
(Modern paddy wagon)
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