Newscasters often talk about the police in 52 Division making an arrest
Dear Urban Decoder: Newscasters often talk about the police in 52 Division making an arrest. What’s the origin of the number 52? How many of these divisions are there in the city?—Emmett Meringer, Riverdale
The city is divided into five main police districts, arranged in a fan pattern: district one is located in the southwestern part of downtown, two in the far west, three the north, four the far east, and five the downtown southeast. There are between two and five stations per district and a total of 17 cop shops in the city. So the 52 is actually two numbers: the five stands for district five, the southeastern one, and the two represents the station. We hear a lot about 52 Division because its jurisdiction covers the heart of the city (the rectangle formed by Spadina, Dupont, Jarvis and the waterfront), where a lot of the action goes down.
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