Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a police officer; also as v., to police; thus gendarmerie, the police force.

1829		Vidocq Memoirs (trans. W. McGinn) I 218: All that is very fine, if one’s scrag was not in danger [...] but with Jack Ketch on one side, and the black sheep (clergyman) on the other, and the traps (gendarmes) behind, it is not quite so pleasant to be turned into food for flies.
1839		Crim.-Con. Gaz. 30 Mar. 97/1: The New Police Agony Bill [...] Now Lord John Russell, Oh! what a pity, / Wants the gendarmes to rule the city.
1859		Farnie & Offenbach [perf. Bury & Marshall] ‘The Gendarmes Duet’ 🎵 We show them we're the bold gendarmes / We run them in, we run them in.
1895		Mirror of Life 8 June 13/1: ‘If the gendarmes come upon the ground where you are fighting we have the power to shoot them, as it is private property; and they must stand and look at you’.
1904		Phila. Inquirer 22 May Pt II 3/5–6: If a confidence gentleman is restrained from his industry by the arrival of the ‘bulls,’ or policemen, his play has been crabbed by the interfering gendarme.
1911		Wash. Post 10 Dec. 4/4: In to the discard with ‘cop’ [...] if you want to be up to the very minute you will refer to the guardian of the peace as a ‘dick,’ or a ‘gendarme’ or a ‘buttons.’.
1931		D. Runyon ‘Breach of Promise’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 23: She will be running up the road calling for the gendarmes.
1941		V. Davis Phenomena in Crime 254: Bogies, Busies, Gendarmes, Johns, Dicks. Detectives. Plain clothes men are called P. men.
1944		Joe Archibald ‘Skip Tracer Bullets’ in Popular Detective June 🌐 Satchelfoot Kelly was in charge of the gendarmes.
1953		R. Chandler Long Good-Bye 72: I want you to have this money because I don’t need it and the local gendarmerie would swipe it for sure.
1953–4		Mad mag. Dec.–Jan. 9: We’ll sic John Law on him [...] we’ll get the gendarmes!
1959		J. Gosling Ghost Squad 24: Thieves’ argot, spoken properly, is a foreign language which needs to be learned [...] for instance [...] ‘gendarme’, one of the words for a policeman.
1960		G. Swarthout Where the Boys Are 122: Then they gendarme us off the beach.
1965		H.S. Thompson letter 9 Aug. in Proud Highway (1997) 536: Last night I was grabbed by the gendarmes at Ken Kesey’s loony bin in La Honda.
1966		J. Holledge Great Aust. Gamble 124: [T]he game [i.e. greyhound racing] has at times harbored characters who have been well and unfavorably known to the gendarmerie.
1976		N. Thornburg Cutter and Bone (2001) 41: The gendarmes had me in there almost two hours.
1981		J. Sullivan ‘Big Brother’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] We were expecting a visit from the local gendarmes.

2. (Aus.) a large, tough man employed to keep order in a club.

1953

T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake 182: What about the gendarmes from the club, Kerry?