Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a landlord.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 110/1: from ca. 1860 ob.

2. a police officer, a detective.

[1882		Bristol Magpie 29 June 4/2: Talking about the police [...] With all the money that is spent in making some of the men look ridiculous on horseback at assize times [and] in keeping half a score of others daily playing ‘bogey’ to the little tram boys [etc]].
1894		Morton & Barry [perf. H.C. Barry] ‘Ghost of Sherlock Holmes’ 🎵 ‘Sinners shake and tremble / Wherever this bogie roams, / And people shout, 'He’s found us out, / It’s the ghost of Sherlock Holmes’.
1928		Gloucester Citizen 19 Dec. 7/3: Their lordships now knew all about ‘gazoophing the sarkers,’ ‘Smitzing the bogey,’ ‘Slinging the gee’.
1931		W.F. Brown in Police Journal Oct. 501: She told a detective (bogey) she knew that Jack was in the brothel (case).
1938		J. Curtis They Drive by Night 107: He’d left enough dabs on the window to let them know the job was his, and the bogeys wouldn’t come examining all the walls.
1946		S. Jackson An Indiscreet Guide to Soho 113: The boys are deciding if you are a ‘bogey’ (copper).
1956		‘Charles Raven’ Und. Nights 9: When the bogies were about to search him on some very hot sus, he swallowed a flipping great sapphire. [Ibid.] 75: Bent bogies – i.e., unscrupulous police officers.
1959		F. Norman Fings II i: You wouldn’t know how to be anything else but a bogey.
1961		(con. 1920s) J. Sparks Burglar to the Nobility 39: As we drove through Southport [...] a bogey spotted this [registration] number.
1962		F. Norman Guntz 23: I clocked a bogie on the other side of the street.
1972		P. Fordham Inside the Und. 39: First thing you knew was bogies all over the place.
1981		(con. c.1900) A. Harding in Samuel East End Und. 148: You twisters – you always have the bogies on your side.
1989		J. Morton Lowspeak.

3. (UK und.) an excise man, a customs officer.

1896

Illus. Police News 18 July 7/3: He wasa going to take them to the ss. India [...] in order to ‘cheat the bogie man’ — criminal slang for defrauding the Excise.

4. an informer.

1924		S. Scott Human Side of Crook and Convict Life 23: Men will listen to the vilest epithets, but call them ‘bogey’, ‘brassey’, ‘copper’, or ‘policeman’, and they will be at your throat.
1934		Dundee Courier 23 Aug. 3/4: Notyre wrote [...] the word ‘bogey’ [...] then wrote [...] ‘The geeser talking to the plain clothes copper is a mouthpiece’.

5. (US) a police car.

1992

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) 2 June 6A/3: Bogey — Cop car.