police work

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English

Etymology

From police +‎ work.

Noun

police work (uncountable)

  1. (law enforcement) Work performed by police; the investigation of criminal activities.
    • 1899, Carl Schurz, George Brinton McClellan Harvey, George William Curtis, Henry Loomis Nelson, Henry Mills Alden, John Bonner, John Foord, John Kendrick Bangs, Montgomery Schuyler, Norman Hapgood, Richard Harding Davis, Samuel Stillman Conant (editors), Harper's Weekly, page 1090:
      The complement will consist of 290 persons, and these cruisers should prove valuable additions to our service, especially in the line of police-work—the peace time duty of most of our ships not assigned for manœuvres.
    • 1927, National Probation Association (U.S.), Annual Report and Proceedings of the Annual Conference, Volume 21, page 243:
      Many who are unfamiliar with real police work little realize the extent to which police science has developed.
    • 1951, Anthony K. Martienssen, Crime and the Police, page 96:
      All the ordinary developments in telecommunications can be applied to police work.
    • 1967, Albert J. Reiss, Donald J. Black, Studies in Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas: Patterns of Behavior in Police and Citizen Transactions, page 16:
      White officers were more likely to select skilled or other protective service positions (such as fireman) as a preferred employment at the time they entered police work.
    • 1980, Susan Ehrlich Martin, Breaking and Entering, Policewomen on Patrol, page 81:
      Many puzzling aspects of police work fall into place when one ceases to look at it as primarily concerned with law enforcement and crime control, and only incidentally and and often incongruously concerned with an infinite variety of other matters.
    • 1999, James Vadackumchery, Indian Police and Equal Justice Under Law, page 160:
      As a result, there exists little or no transparency in police work at the station house level.
    • 2012, Håkan Nesser, Münster's Case, An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery:
      That's not a bad motto for police work overall, he thought. A vain and arbitrary search for a needle in a haystack, that's exactly what it always seemed to be like.

Alternative forms