What do you call this in your language? In Romanian, we call them mascați – the masked.

22 comments
  1. Let’s see: барети (bareti – berrets), качулки (kachulki – hoods), маскирани (maskirani – masked), спец части (spets chasti – spec ops), командоси (komandosi – commandos) and maybe something else that I forgot.

    Edit: Ah, yes, sometimes анти-мафиоти (anti-mafioti – anti-mafiosos).

  2. Polish GISW (Prison Guard Intervention Group), which dresses similarly, is reffered in Polish prison slang as _Atanda._

    But we don’t have one unitary name for all masked law enforement servies. All of them have ,,masked” units – Police has BOA (Anti-terrorist Defense Bureau), some units in CBŚP (Central Police Investigation Bureau, Polish FBI) and OPP (Police Prevention Forces, Polish riot Police), there’s also ABW (Internal Security Bureau), KAS (Country’s Tax Administration; Polish IRS and ,,cousin service” of Police), some units in Polish Board Guard, and Marshall Guard and BOR (Government Security Bureau, both are meant to protect polliticians) – yeah, large majority of them have masked units.

  3. In Czechia we have URNA (in English translation very promising word “Urn”). Its abbreviation of Útvar Rychlého NAsazení ~ Rapid Response Unit.

  4. In Finnish I’d call them Karhu-yksikkö as in bear squad 🐻 but apparantly there are other more localised special responce units too

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