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International Police Association

image by António Martins, 16 December 2007

International Police Association
Detail of badge
Belgian (and other international) versions

See also:

International Police Association

The International Police Association was founded in 1950 to create friendly links and encourage cooperation between individual police officers around the world. It is therefore nothing like Interpol, but rather a free association of policemen with no official, and scarce professional ties. It has 300,000 members and sections in 61 countries. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Police_Association.
Its emblem is a golden-rimmed yellow dense eight-pointed star bearing a round Earth map in light blue with dark red landmasses and yellow gridlines under them, surrounded by a golden-rimmed dark blue ring bearing the lettering "International Police Association" in sans-serif yellow capitals and a small yellow five pointed star at the bottom. The whole is bracketed by two relatively small stylized golden laurel branches and at the bottom a golden-rimmed dark blue scroll reading "Servo per amikeco" (Esperanto for "Service through friendship") in yellow sans-serif capitals. This according to http://www.haenni-buerglen-ur.ch/ipa-star.gif, a very large image on line. This emblem is used on a light blue flag, according to this photo on line at http://www.esperanto.no/esperantonytt/2003/IPA_banner.jpgg.
António Martins, 16 December 2007

Detail of badge

image by António Martins, 16 December 2007

Belgian (and other international) versions

The elaborate IPA flag has a modest counterpart in the attached Belgian version, table size, doing away with the star and keeping only the globe, placed in the middle stripe of the national flag (found on German eBay as item no. 190107390727, end 6 May 2007). The ring around the globe unites the acronym and the motto.

Bib. reference [Lup93] i.e. ‘Drapeaux et insignes de police dans le monde’ (Police flags and badges in the world) by Michel Lupant dedicates pages 17-18 to IPA flags, Belgian as well as international. The international flag is shown as fig. 23 with an emblem slightly smaller than the one shown on the esperanto.no site; furthermore the emblem is said to be white.
Jan Mertens, 16 December 2007

Local sections of the International Police Association seem to use the same emblem, on modified flags. I saw recently the guidon of the Portuguese section, also light blue like the main organization's, but with the Portuguese national flag on the canton and a the laurels (IIRC missing from around the emblem) on an orle all around the edge (external to the canton).

At http://www.ig-yachting.de/images/ipastander_000.gif, the yachting burgee of the German section of IPA, a ~3:5 yellow triangular flag with the logo on the hoist square modified (I suppose to offer contrast on the background) to show a white (not yellow) eight-pointed star and encircled by dark blue (not yellow) laurels; on the fly the lettering "International Police Association" in two lines above smaller "Deutsche Sektion e.V.", set in serif dark blue letters.

Furthermore, the emblem seems to have received its current form in 1974, as most depictions include a copyright note "(c) by IPA, 1974".
António Martins, 17 December 2007