By the looks of it, this was definitely a police revolver. If you bought it anywhere around New York, there’s a good chance it was NYPD.
However, by the time of that serial you will not find any stamping on the gun indicating that it was an NYPD gun. All through the revolver era NYPD officers were required to purchase their guns, usually from the department’s Equipment Bureau, but also elsewhere as long as the model was on the (very short) approved list.
About 90% of officers bought the M&P/Model 10 in whatever the current iteration or dash-version was. That’s why so many of these are available on the collector market. Since these became the officers’ private property, none were ever stamped NYPD. Until the early- to mid-1950s, officers were required to stamp their shield number on the gun, usually the backstrap but sometimes squeezed in next to the butt serial; this practice faded away, and was gone by the time of your gun.
So only a history letter can confirm that the gun shipped to the NYPD.
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