Grammar question. Are vs Is

First, Although English is my mother tongue, I don’t claim to be a professor of it. I make an occasional error, mainly due to laziness.

Today, in the paper, I read the following, (which was its own paragraph):

“Richmond Police is handling the investigation”.

Upon first glance, it looks incorrect. But, on second look, I think it’s technically correct, but could use the word “department” after “Richmond Police”. It could also use a “The” at the beginning. Or, it could say “Richmond police are handing the investigation”, and that would be correct, I think.

Opinions?

That said, I read a lot of news articles online and am saddened by the many errors (grammatical and spelling) that I find on major news sites. I find CNN to be a major offender. Normally, when I find errors, I e-mail the story writer with a gentle correction, and 100% of the time, I’ve gotten a nice response thanking me for pointing out the error.

Eric

I agree with your comments 100%, FWIW.

This is a matter of regional variation. In North America, where a corporate name is not structurally plural (e.g. doesn’t include a plural morpheme such as “-s”), we use the singular. In Britain they would use the plural (“Richmond Police are”).

I think the OP is correct. “Police” is plural (I can’t remember the exact term, maybe “collective noun(?);” either way, it’s represented as plural as it’s written).

Then again, if they had written “The Richmond Police Department” we’d be talking about the singular “department” and not the plural “police.”

You are thinking about it right. The writer, although awkwardly, has implied that the Richmond police force IS handling the investigation. Of course, some context might have helped that concept along. For example, if the question had come up, “Who is handling the investigation?” an answer might have been, The Richmond police force, that IS who. But because that didn’t precede it, and because the writer was thinking of a singular subject - the force - but didn’t say it, s/he wrote IS.
Whatever makes the writing easier for the reader is the best guide to what is “right” and what isn’t. Writing itself should be transparent and create no barriers to understanding. This thumby sentence is ambiguous or misleading, it’s certainly confusing, and it stopped you, and ipso facto, it’s a lousy piece of writing. QED

Police is a group or collection. Same as The government.

The government is granting a new holiday.

The police department is strictly enforcing the DUI laws on New Years Eve.

I’m not sure why but it doesn’t sound correct to say “police is”. “Police department is” sounds better.

If I were writing the sentence, I would say “Richmond Police are handling the investigation” or “The Richmond Police Department is handling the investigation.”

But I think that there is a jargon amongst municipal employees that shortens “The Richmond Police Department” to just “Richmond Police” just like “The Richmond Fire Department” may just be called “Richmond Fire” or “The Richmond Sanitation Department” may be called “Richmond Sanitation.”

Consider the following variants:
Richmond Fire is handling the investigation.
Richmond Sanitation is handling the investigation.
Richmond Internal Affairs is handling the investigation.
Richmond Police is handling the investigation.

I think if you get into the mindset of thinking of “Richmond Police” as the name of a department rather than a collection of individual officers, it doesn’t sound so strange.

It could reasonably be construed either way.

“[The] Richmond Police [Department] is handling the investigation.”

“Richmond Police [officers] are handling the investigation.”

I think the fact that *Police *is capitalized implies that it is short for Richmond Police Department, and not police in Richmond.

It only seems to be totally correct if the name of the Richmond police department is ‘Richmond Police’. Which it might be in a sense if that’s the way they answer the phone even if the actual name is different. Otherwise, ‘Police’ shouldn’t have been capitalized, because it’s just a generic plural term. All this assuming the city in question isn’t Norfolk. In that case the sentence is unredeemable.

Police is a collective noun referring to multiple policemen (or policepersons, if you are a feminazum; but wait, that would be feminaza/feminazae?).

The police are at the door. Implies several policement.
He is a police. Sounds totally incorrect. He is only one of the police.

Companies, at least in North America, generally are singular. Teams are a collective noun, plural.
Kodak is a company (so far). The Mutual Group is a company. Harrod’s is having a sale. The Hudson Bay Company was founded in Britain.
The Yankees is winning the pennant. (bad)
The Yankees are winning the pennant. (good, depending on yourpoint of view.)
He is a New York Yankee. (“member of the Yankees” is the implied usage; but we accept this.)

“A police” is used all the time on The Wire to refer to an individual cop (and jarring to hear) - apparently it’s regional Baltimore area slang/usage.

Concur - although it’s somewhat interchangeable here, the usage is very prevalent in discussion of sports, particularly football - and it’s a usage that helps disambiguate, for example:

“Southampton is utter shite” = the geographic city of Southampton is of generally very poor standard

“Southampton are utter shite” = the Southampton Football Club is not a very good team