British English Question: 'family' as collective noun

I think there are really only a few examples where British and US English differ in their treatment of collective nouns, and even then both uses are flexible. Brits would equally say ‘the BBC are’ or ‘the BBC is.’ Would Americans say ‘Fox are’ as readily as ‘Fox’? I’m sure I’ve heard that.

The term you want is uncountable noun: police is an uncountable noun. That’s not the same thing as a collective noun or a word that’s the same in the singular and plural.

There are situations where you could say polices (plural, not verb), as in ‘the different polices of the world,’ though admittedly police forces would be more elegant. That’s a common feature of uncountable nouns.

It is not correct to say that the plural of “police” is “police”. Rather, “police” is a plural word that has no singular. You can’t say “there is a police waiting for you”, except in some dialects.

Cat Stevens does this:

“'Cause there’s a million things to be, you know that there are”