cardboard cop
n.— «South Yorkshire Police want to increase the numbers of police community support officers…, commonly known as “cardboard cops” or “plastic police” within the service.» —“‘Real police’ jobs could be cut to fund more support officers” by Paul Whitehouse Yorkshire Post (U.K.) Dec. 10, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...