Police as "pigs"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 21:03:11 -0800, Kathy Seal <kathyseal at ADELPHIA.NET>
wrote:

>> > Do you know when in the sixties college students, activists, etc.
>> > started referring to police as "pigs"?
>>
>> My guess is 1965. I *know* that it was before 1969, since, by then,
>> local high-school all-stars had begun to play an annual flag-football
>> game against the younger local cops in a game which was called the "Pig
>> Bowl." This was in Sacramento, CA.
>
>Wow, that's early on. Thank you.

Berkeley students were calling police "pigs" as early as the Sproul Hall
Sit-In of December 1964.  From the Free Speech Movement Archives:

     http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt1v19p3vr/
     Summary of the Sproul Hall Sit In and Arrests

     Police officers were apparently goaded by the passive courage
     demonstrated by most students. They were called "commies,"
     "pigs," "whores" and other similar names.

It's unclear from this, however, if "pig" was already a specific epithet
for a police officer or just a general term of abuse.  In any case, I
don't think it was really popularized until the rise of the Black Panthers
in 1967-68, in slogans like "off the pig(s)".

--Ben Zimmer