Troy

Whoever chose the name of the city's Police Objective Review Committee seems to have overlooked the fact that its acronym evokes a particularly derogatory slang term for cops — an echo that has been incorporated into the City Code for a generation. But that's likely to change next week.

The law setting up PORC to review police force operations dates back to 1997 and has survived multiple charter rewrites despite the shorthand name's proximity to "pig," an anti-police slur that goes back at least half a century.

Laughter exploded from Police Commissioner Anthony Magnetto when he was asked what Troy police think about the acronym. "It didn't keep people up at night," Magnetto said.

"It's not bothering me as an insult," Police Chief Brian Owens said. "We've been called a lot worse things."

But it's annoying to some officers, retired and active. Most take it in stride, helped by the fact that PORC hasn't had significant impact, and has only been fitfully functional since its creation.

"The whole point of the committee is to improve the police. You don't want the perception of the police to be 'pork,'" said City Council President Carmella Mantello, who called the name derogatory.

Pork is the flesh of a pig, hog or swine, according to various dictionary definitions. "Pig" became an insult flung at officers in the 1960s during student demonstrations and race riots. (It also was adopted by feminists around the same time to describe the worst sort of male chauvinists.)

"It's those ... hippies," Deputy Police Chief Dan DeWolf said with a smile, adding an expletive of his own. "I feel like it's so old."

In October, Mayor Patrick Madden announced during his successful re-election campaign that he would appoint the members of a new police oversight board in consultation with the NAACP's Troy chapter and other leaders.

That's when the old name caught the eye of law enforcement.

The committee is responsible for monitoring police operations and internal affairs, and hears reports about internal investigations after they are completed. The committee can make recommendations to the mayor about internal affairs investigations, recruitment and training — but it can't compel officers or witnesses to testify before it.

Police leaders "don't like the review process; to have this name on top of it makes it more annoying," said Richard Lachmann, a sociology professor and pop culture expert at the University at Albany.

Mantello introduced a resolution last week to substitute "Board" for "Committee" in the code, making it the Police Objective Review Board, or PORB. The council approved the change unanimously in committee; it goes up for a final vote Thursday.

This happened after Mantello's father, retired Detective Jim Mantello, urged her to push for the change. He remembers when "pig" was flung around more commonly. The council president's nephew, Officer Nick Laviano, serves as president of the Troy Police Benevolent Association. Laviano said the name change might seem trivial, but it's important to get rid of the connotation.

Former Deputy Mayor Jim Conroy said the name's association was never considered when the push was made in the 1990s to put the review board in place. Conroy recalled no hassles — and insisted no one intentionally coined PORC as a putdown to cops.

"If you're going to be in public service in Troy, you have to have a thick skin," Conroy said.

There was a national effort by police to claim "pig" itself as an acronym — for "pride," "integrity" and "guts." Some cops even had their own little pig statues.

Some Troy historians claim that the city is the source of the word "cop" as the familiar word for police.

According to various accounts, including a 1930 Times Union article, the term originated with Amasa Copp, the chief of Troy's night police force in the 1850s. The perhaps apocryphal story was that kids would say, "Here comes Copp" — a name that ended up being extended to all police.

The word is more likely believed to have originated in London, when constables wore large copper buttons.