sergeants go through a 13-week training process instead of the 36-week training that other officers do. A distinctive feature of the uniform of a station sergeant is that they wear the white shirt typically worn by commissioned officers as opposed to the cornflower blue or dodger blue shirts worn by sergeants and all ranks below. However, acting station sergeants may wear the blue shirts with station sergeant insignia. Ireland The Irish Garda Síochána used the rank until at least the 1960s. United Kingdom Metropolitan Police In the Metropolitan Police, the station sergeant, or station police sergeant (SPS), was the senior sergeant in a police station. He either acted as the station inspector's deputy or commanded a smaller station that had no Inspector. When introduced, the rank insignia consisted of four chevrons. From 1921, this arrangement was replaced by a crown over three chevrons - the same insignia as a staff sergeant in the British Army. The rank of station sergeant was officially introduced to uniform grades in 1871. In 1890, a station sergeant's pay started at 45 shillings a week (a sergeant's maximum pay was 40 shillings a week), rising by an annual increment of 1 shilling a week to 48 shillings a week. The Criminal Investigation Department equivalent was the first class detective sergeant, who was in charge of the allocation of cases to the detectives in each division. Originally, station sergeant was a mandatory step between sergeant and inspector, but later it became common to miss out the rank entirely and it became more of a reward for long-serving sergeants who did not wish to be promoted to inspector. The rank was never available to women officers. No further promotions to the ranks of station sergeant and first-class detective sergeant were made after 1973. The last officer to hold the rank was Station Sergeant William Palmer, who retired in 1980. The last officer to be promoted to the rank was Station Sergeant Kenneth Humm, who retired in 1983 following promotion to inspector in 1980. However, the term continued to be used to denote the senior sergeant in a station, although it was no longer a separate rank with its own insignia. Possibly the most famous fictional station sergeant was George Dixon in the long-running television series Dixon of Dock Green. An equivalent rank was clerk sergeant, or clerk police sergeant (CPS), held by the officer responsible for all