The Watch had a brief respite in AM 1688, following the Ankh-Morpork Civil War, when Commander Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes and his Ironheads became the city's rulers.
The Cable Street Particulars were thriving, however, having morphed from an intelligence agency into a secret police force employing torture with gusto.
They are referred to as "Sammies" (similar to "Bobbies", a term for British police officers derived from the common abbreviation of the first name of Sir Robert Peel, the man credited with the creation of the first regular, uniformed, police service in the UK) and communicate with each other by telegraph ("clacks"), a reference to real-world Interpol (mentioned in The Night Watch).
His dwarfish name is Kzad-bhat, which, roughly translated, means "Head Banger", a logical nickname for a 6-foot-6-inch-tall (1.98 m) man living in a mine built by 4-foot-tall (1.2 m) dwarfs.
His old-fashioned view of justice leads him on his first day as a constable to arrest the leader of the entirely legal Thieves' Guild, but he later understands the city better.
Captain Carrot rapidly and easily comes to know the city's one-million population by name and tax status, and is big on paperwork and organization.
When Sam Vimes plans to retire after marrying Lady Sybil Ramkin, Carrot becomes his successor, and is described as "the Disc's most linear thinker".
He is often shown getting people to do things no one else could force them to do, simply by assuming that they will: for example, his outreach programs for at-risk Ankh-Morporkian youth treat them like boy scouts.
In Soul Music, Carrot adds questions to the quiz machine in the Mended Drum, asking players who was responsible for recent crimes and frequently makes arrests as a result.
Havelock Vetinari considers him useful, as he makes any attempt to claiming to be the true heir impossible, and any complaints that only a king has the authority to do something can simply be deferred to Carrot.
Captain Delphine Angua von Überwald is a member of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, originally hired under an affirmative action plan by Lord Vetinari.
Her beauty led colleagues to predict that criminals would line up to be arrested by her, but Angua's surprising strength and tough attitude soon make her one of the most feared officers of the Watch.
Angua is a werewolf, but maintains a strict vegetarian diet in her human phase and as a wolf only eats chickens, for which she afterwards leaves discreet payment.
In the 1999 computer game Discworld Noir, and the 2001 books-on-tape version of Men at Arms, her name is pronounced "An-gyoo-uh" with a hard "g".
Angua also befriends Gaspode, a small dog with matted fur who gains and loses human speech in Moving Pictures, then by the time Men at Arms begins regains it by sleeping near Unseen University's High-Energy Magic building.
Though the widespread recognition of the werewolf presence in the Watch has not inconvenienced Angua on a human level, the city's criminal underworld learns to evade capture, for example with a scent bomb like The New Firm (Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip) use in The Truth.
A wolf named Gavin in The Fifth Elephant, provides tension, and the small wealthy mutt Mr. Fusspot in Making Money proposes marriage.
His office, in a separate building from the main watch house, is frequented by old acquaintances who want somewhere quiet to get away from the wife, hear what is happening on the street and—in Vimes' words—"gossip like washerwomen."
fairly well, is an amiable jailer, bright enough to keep his keys in a closed tin box in the bottom drawer of his desk, well out of reach of anything an inmate could use to snag them.
He might be related to Sergeant Doppelpunkt (German for the punctiaton mark colon), half of the town watch in Bad Blintz, Überwald, (The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents).
He was inspired to join the Watch after meeting Sergeant-At-Arms John Keel (Sam Vimes, due to time travel), who gave him a spoon.
In Thud an ancient artifact called a Cube reveals that the Battle of Koom Valley, the main reason for the continuing hatred between the two races, was supposed to be a chance for the two Kings to discuss peace.
Vimes works out how to make the Cube play its message in the presence of the current King of the Dwarves, and the truth of Koom Valley is heard for the first time in hundreds of years.
Nobby may be related to Corporal Knopf[6] half of the town watch of Bad Blintz, Überwald in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.
Cheery Littlebottom is a female dwarf and forensic expert working for the City Watch, introduced in Feet of Clay.
Not afraid of Visit's proselytising, his friend and fellow constable Dorfl, a golem with endless patience, wants to argue faith rationally.
Vimes eventually swore him in as a special constable for the duration of an impending street fight of roughly a thousand trolls and dwarves, to scare the man and show him what it was like to be a copper.
As a gargoyle, he is able to remain motionless in one spot and watch for days at a time, a "world champion at not moving" as Vimes once remarked.
Introduced in Jingo or possibly in The Light Fantastic, which mentions a gnome identified only as Swires, Buggy has the hard-nosed, bellicose personality typical of his species, and can shout down uncooperative witnesses despite being only six inches tall.
He has established himself as the sole member of the Watch's Airborne Section except perhaps Wee Mad Arthur, by taming various birds (acquired from the Pictsies for a crate of whiskey) as transport for reconnaissance and messaging.