Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bogey n.1

also bogie, bogy
[f. bogie, the devil; play on this devilishness]

1. a landlord.

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

2. a police officer, a detective.

[[UK]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]].
[UK]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’.
[UK]Gloucester Citizen 19 Dec. 7/3: Their lordships now knew all about ‘gazoophing the sarkers,’ ‘Smitzing the bogey,’ ‘Slinging the gee’.
W.F. Brown in Police Journal Oct. 501: She told a detective (bogey) she knew that Jack was in the brothel (case).
[UK]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.
[UK]S. Jackson An Indiscreet Guide to Soho 113: The boys are deciding if you are a ‘bogey’ (copper).
[UK]‘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.
[UK]F. Norman Fings II i: You wouldn’t know how to be anything else but a bogey.
[UK](con. 1920s) J. Sparks Burglar to the Nobility 39: As we drove through Southport [...] a bogey spotted this [registration] number.
[UK]F. Norman Guntz 23: I clocked a bogie on the other side of the street.
[UK]P. Fordham Inside the Und. 39: First thing you knew was bogies all over the place.
[UK](con. c.1900) A. Harding in Samuel East End Und. 148: You twisters – you always have the bogies on your side.
[UK]J. Morton Lowspeak.

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

[UK]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.

[UK]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.
[Scot]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.

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

In compounds

straight bogey (n.) (also straight bogy) [straight adj.1 (10) ]

(UK Und.) a corrupt policeman.

[UK](con. 1900–30) A. Harding in Samuel East End Und. 284: Straight bogy – A crooked policeman (i.e. one who works with crooks).