How to Use secret police in a Sentence

secret police

noun
  • Ricin is still used by secret police agencies around the world.
    — Michael Loria, USA TODAY, 8 Mar. 2025
  • But a few months later, that plan foundered when some of his generals and secret police agents launched a coup against him.
    — Ronald Suny, The Conversation, 31 Aug. 2022
  • But in the frantic final days of the regime, the secret police began tearing up files.
    — Fox News, 10 Nov. 2019
  • She is hounded by the secret police, and suffers the deaths of her baby and mother-in-law.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 5 Nov. 2017
  • Among those freed with Korolev was someone who had denounced him to the secret police.
    — Andrew Stuttaford, WSJ, 18 Apr. 2021
  • These days many governments that want to cow their critics are as likely to use the taxman as the secret police.
    — The Economist, 30 Sep. 2017
  • The crime was ultimately traced to agents of Pinochet’s secret police.
    — Pamela Constable, Washington Post, 25 Sep. 2023
  • Scores of new books and films portray the era in glowing colors, and vintage secret police uniforms are on sale.
    — Adam Hochschild, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2018
  • The White House has built a massive secret police force tasked with ethnic cleansing.
    — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 24 Feb. 2026
  • But knowing they could get snatched by secret police didn't stop the people of Portland from protesting then.
    — W. Kamau Bell, CNN, 16 May 2021
  • Within hours, a horde of Saudi secret police were deployed to her apartment.
    — Rafia Zakaria, New Republic, 11 Oct. 2017
  • In the church vault were sound recordings of the sermon that had been made by the East German secret police.
    — Jefferson Chase, USA TODAY, 4 Apr. 2018
  • Olga, too, was imprisoned and only released thanks to his appeal to the head of the secret police.
    — Douglas Smith, WSJ, 14 June 2019
  • We are followed by [the secret police], we are forbidden to listen to certain music, to read certain books.
    — Christopher Vourlias, Variety, 15 June 2022
  • The guards here are closely connected with the Russian secret police, indeed are almost a part of it.
    — Maxim Osipov, The Atlantic, 16 May 2022
  • The Game, a thriller set among the secret police in 1960s Budapest.
    — Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 June 2022
  • What starts as public policing becomes masked ICE agents—a modern secret police.
    — Stacey Abrams, Time, 28 Aug. 2025
  • Exiles like al-Hail dismiss any sign of public support of the government as the coercive fear of the secret police.
    — Jon Gambrell, The Seattle Times, 4 Sep. 2017
  • Eilish Stack lives in a Dublin ruled by secret police, who sweep in one night and detain her union-official husband; her son joins the rebel forces.
    — Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times, 29 Nov. 2023
  • It was spell binding to hear Ken talk Russia back in the day, about being followed by secret police & the final 7th game.
    — Karl Moore, Forbes.com, 6 Sep. 2025
  • Lavrenty Beria, the secret police chief who bid for power after Stalin’s death, was shot through the forehead.
    — Chris Miller, WSJ, 9 Mar. 2018
  • This was the method East German secret police, or Stasi, used to control the population.
    — Trudy Rubin, The Mercury News, 30 Jan. 2025
  • Oh, and anyone who speaks out or against the government is taken away by The Eyes — the state’s secret police — and most likely never seen again.
    — Katherine Singh, refinery29.com, 23 Apr. 2021
  • In January 1921, he was shot in his sleep by the Soviet secret police.
    — New York Times, 13 May 2022
  • Hearsay was already common currency in a place where press censorship and the secret police prevailed, and the war in Europe stoked the rumor mills.
    — Time, 3 Jan. 2020
  • The Russian authorities threw him in jail for setting fire to the door of the secret police headquarters in Moscow.
    — Andrew Higgins, New York Times, 28 Feb. 2020
  • At least one Republican has compared the orders to the Gestapo, the secret police force of Nazi Germany.
    — Andrew Solender, Forbes, 12 Sep. 2021
  • And so the forerunners of the secret police that the Tsarist era and then the Soviet era, modernized and expanded, were created in that time frame.
    — CBS News, 7 Dec. 2022
  • Into that not-so-sunny situation dropped a federal court ruling this week that offers a ray of hope for at least unmasking federal agents and doing away with secret police.
    — Los Angeles Times, 11 Feb. 2026
  • At the beginning of the occupation the résistants distributed leaflets, and were easy prey for the Gestapo, the German secret police.
    — Alan Furst, New York Times, 2 Feb. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'secret police.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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