Police = plural always?

- The police have arrested the killer.

What if you see a police (just one police) in a television who just arrested the killer. Do you still have to say “The police have arrested the killer” or “That police are awesome”?

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“One police” is impossible under normal circumstances: “the police” is the organization as a whole, not a person. It would be very childish or informal, maybe slang.

If you want to speak of a “member” of the organization, you would say a “policeman” or “police officer” (or short “officer”).

When a criminal is arrested, you could say that the organization arrested him (“the police have arrested…”), or that a member of the organization arrested him (“a police officer has arrested…”). In practice there is little difference: if the organization arrests him, it must be a policeman who did the physical arrest; if a policeman arrests a criminal, he does it as a representative of the organization.

The regular way to say it is by “the police”; if there is something special about the policeman that did it, you would use officer/policeman.

Note that there are also other names for members of the police that do different jobs or hold different ranks, such as “detective” and “sergeant”.

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I’ve been learning so much here in the forum! Thanks Cerberus! :smiley:

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Hi Cerberus™
you are really helpful…I do remember you, Kitos and Maliya help me to understand compound adjectives better.
Thank you…

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You two are very kind, it is a pleasure to be of help. Oh, and it is “Milanya”.