police department
179
1.3
- noun
- /pəˈliːs dɪˈpɑːrtmənt/
- US
- The rate of loss has slowed down, but police departments, especially in big cities, are not growing.
- a local police department
- police department officers
- reform a police department
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Watch on YouTubeSo she called the Phoenix Police Department and I said, what?
- So she called the Phoenix Police Department and I said, what?
- They run all the public schools, fire departments, police departments, most of the parks.
- And then we saw the whole Detroit Police Department rushed the stage.
- We are facing a real crisis with police departments around the country not having enough cops.
- So it could be I'm a member of the Police Department.
- I'm not going to tell you that there are no racists on the Police Department.
- After the laptop started up, an article on the website of what seems to be the local Police Department is displayed on the screen.
- They're dismantling the police departments in in certain cities.
- And that's really very critical of the Police Department on that issue.
- And that's what it was very critical of the Police Department on that issue.
Examples
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Does that put a lot of pressure then on Police Department to then try and get answers?
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You guys got one hell of a police department around here.
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But yet in my life in Chicago with the Police Department, it seemed like good times.
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The government, the Police Department, these things need to be a part of a whole.
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We turned it in and we went to the police department.
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Officially, June is the end of the Chicago Police Department career as we know it.
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This is from a study of the San Francisco Police Department, which we can link as well.
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Informed sources say, however, that the police department has no real clues.
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The symbolic issue of authority helped make the police department the focus of Black demands.
Academic text (1992) -
The rate of loss has slowed down, but police departments, especially in big cities, are not growing.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
People who enforce laws, prevent crime, and keep public order
146
2.0
A group of officers who keep order and safety in a town or city
50
3.1
A group that makes sure people follow rules and stops crime and finds who did it
6
8.1
A local police force that serves a county or town
4
5.4
The police force that serves a city
How Large
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'police' (law-enforcement organization) with 'department' (an organizational unit): it simply denotes the unit responsible for policing in an area. This noun‑noun composition is a common, regular pattern cross‑linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
The compound police department comes from two plain words: police are people whose job is to keep order and department means a part or office of a government. Together they create the image of a local office that deals with crime and keeps the peace, so the phrase means 'the part of local government that enforces laws'.