Definition of "secret police" [secret police]

• A police force operating largely in secret and often using terror tactics to suppress dissent and political opposition. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "What he provides the AVO is a sociological and psychological profile of a world as foreign to the nasty, brutish, paranoid universe of the secret police as life on Mars."
• "“In the event that he shirks from [being a good Hungarian],” the secret police colonel noted, “we can always rely on [the name is blacked out] to put pressure on him.”"
• "Now, jammed between two blue-uniformed, sullen secret police agents, he could not even think of escape."