overpolice
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To police too much, as by patrolling a neighborhood excessively or meting out a punishment incommensurate to the severity of a crime.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "First, many veterans of protest marches believe that the police overpolice these events. Second, why are the police still willing to protect a St. Patrick's Day Parade if security concerns and costs are suddenly so important?"
- "Black people in America fit that description of being overpoliced and oversentenced."
- "Part of the difference in attitudes comes from African Americans’ experiences within a racially biased criminal justice system that overpolices black and brown neighborhoods and rarely holds officers accountable for reported mistreatment, excessive force, or even killing African Americans."
- "So if you live in a zip code that has been overpoliced historically, you are going to have overarresting. And we know that the overpolicing and the overarresting happens in Black and Latino communities. That's just a fact."
Etymology
From over- + police.