The high-way police: German officers spotted by motorists wearing cannabis motifs on their uniforms

By ALLAN HALL
Last updated at 5:37 PM on 29th October 2010

A legal row has begun after police officers in a German town began wearing cannabis leaf emblems on their uniforms.

Bemused motorists reported sightings of the white, green and red motifs on the shoulders and arms of officers stopping them at routine checks in Hamburg.

The reports prompted one local newspaper to run the headline: 'New fashion or bad joke?'

Drug force: A legal row has emerged after motorists spotted German police officers wearing uniforms with cannabis motifs in Hamburg

German police have resembled foresters since World War Two with supposedly non-threatening brown and green uniforms adopted after the days of the black-clad Gestapo.

Forces across the country have only recently begun getting more modern, sober uniforms.

It is these new uniforms that the 'cannabis patch', as the German media has dubbed them, have begun appearing.

Authentic? The arm badge shows as green cannabis leaf with a police emblem, but Hamburg and Bremen officers are unsure if it is legal

Mystery now surrounds whether the logos are official after Hamburg police said they had not authorised their officers to wear it and blamed the sightings on officers carrying out a drugs exercise for rival force Bremen.

Bremen police have also shrugged their shoulders and admitted they do not know if the badges are legal or renegade.