The "Ankh-Morpork Watch & Ward" was founded in AM 1561 by King Veltrick I. They had full copper armour and a copper shield inscribed "Fabricati Diem, Pvncti Agvnt Celeriter" ("Make the Day, the Moments Pass Quickly", Veltrick's motto). Four days later Veltrick's son assassinated him, and became Veltrick II. Since he had little interest in maintaining a police force, the equipment of the Watch quickly deteriorated.
At this time there were four separate forces:
- The "Palace Guard", who guarded the palace.
- The "Cable Street Particulars", a political police force concentrating on discovering "plots" against the current rulers of the city. The name may have been inspired by the Baker Street Irregulars from the stories of Sherlock Holmes, and perhaps by the Battle of Cable Street, a riot started between Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists and anti-fascist protesters in 1936. They are also known as The Unmentionables (a colloquial British term for underwear), possibly a parody of The Invincibles, an Irish extremist nationalist group, or of The Untouchables, a prohibition-era law-enforcement group, who served as government intelligence.
- The "Ward", who acted as gate-guards, thief-takers etc. during the day.
- The "Watch", who served the same purpose in the hours of darkness. The force comprised one commander, five captains, ten sergeants, forty corporals, lance-corporals, constables and lance-constables, and, in times of emergency, a "citizens militia" of varied size.
Public opinion of the Watches (the Ward became known as the Day Watch) was never high, and reached an all-time low when a Commander, who had told the public not to take the law into their own hands, was thrown onto the Ankh with a cry of "If it's not in our hands, whose hands is it in?" The Guilds were policing themselves by this point, so the Watch was becoming increasingly irrelevant.
This changed when Constable Carrot Ironfoundersson joined, and the Night Watch saved the city from a dragon. Following the destruction of their Watch House, they moved to larger premises in Pseudopolis Yard (a name reminiscent of Scotland Yard) and started recruiting more members, especially from ethnic minorities such as dwarfs, trolls and the undead. The Watch has even admitted a vampire, a werewolf, an Igor and a Nac Mac Feegle. When they saved the Patrician's life Vetinari agreed to increase the force's stature, with new Section Houses being built around the city. The remains of the Day Watch were incorporated into a new City Watch, commanded by Sam Vimes.
Since then, the Watch has become a proper police force, dealing in crime prevention and investigation, rather than simple "thief-taking". They now have a forensics section, a Traffic Division and the long-gone Cable Street Particulars have been replaced by a plain-clothes division. A Watch Academy has been set up, although watchmen trained there often get "poached" by other Sto Plains city-states who have seen the advantages such a force has. Vimes tolerates this, because it is useful that coppers all over the plains have been trained to obey him.
#3 : Sergeant Fred Colon
Colon is a sergeant in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and appears to have been so for a long time. He was a corporal in the Watch at the time Samuel Vimes first joined, and subsequent to this spent some time in the army (the Duke of Quirm's Middleweight Infantry and then the Duke of Eorle's First Heavy Infantry), before returning to the Watch.
He is described on several occasions as "one of nature's sergeants". He is overweight, and prefers to avoid trouble and exertion. He is also rather unimaginative. When not on desk duty (a post he gets more often than other sergeants, due to being responsible for working out the rota), he generally "guards" bridges or large buildings against theft. His reasoning is that until someone attempts to steal the geographic feature in question, he can lean against it and stay out of danger (as well as the wind).
In The Fifth Elephant, Colon became the head of the Traffic Squad, which also included his best friend Nobby Nobbs. This role perfectly fit the above described qualities, especially as the Traffic Squad is "self financing" (i.e. they keep the fines). A brief promotion to acting-captain confirmed what everyone, himself included, had suspected, and he has returned to his previous rank. Once he put clamps on various buildings for "causing serious traffic congestion". Among the clamped were the Opera House, three other buildings, six fountains, three statues and a gibbet. He also clamped the Patrician's Palace for the same reason, but he let it slide because Vetinari parked it on business.
He is currently holding dual position of Custody Officer and Watch Liaison Officer; jobs so vague that no one is entirely sure what they entail, least of all Colon himself. They serve the dual purpose of preventing his brain from becoming overburdened with responsibility and avoiding the catastrophic possibility that he might be given a task of any real importance.
Colon is married, though his wife works during the day; since he works at night, the two seldom see each other and instead communicate by leaving notes. Vimes even goes as far as to privately attribute the longevity of Fred's marriage to this fact. They have a son (now grown up), who is attributed to a particularly persuasive note. In Jingo, his name is misspelled as Cohen. Pratchett was probably thinking of Cohen the Barbarian.