Keystone Kop

American  

[kop] / ˈkiˌstoʊn ˈkɒp /

noun

1. Usually Keystone Kops. (in early silent movies) a team of comic policemen noted for their slapstick routines.

2. Also Keystone Cop a person noted for bungling inefficiency.

   a backfield of Keystone Kops.

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Example Sentences

That brings us all the way to Kevin McCarthy who was ousted after less than nine months as speaker, in a parliamentary maneuver much like the one the Keystone Kop coup plotters of '97 used to threaten Gingrich.

From Salon

Family friends urged Slim to get into movies “because he was such a character,” Clark said, “so in the early ’20s, he hitchhiked to Hollywood” and became a Keystone Kop and then a character actor.

From Los Angeles Times

This time, though, I loved the novel as a frenetic, over-the-top farce, packed with Keystone Kop action.

From Washington Post

The obsessive CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, which because none succeeded have a Keystone Kop incompetence to them, included contracting Momo Salvatore Giancana, Al Capone's successor in Chicago, along with Miami mobster Santo Trafficante to kill the Cuban leader, attempting to poison Castro's cigars with a botulinum toxin, providing Castro with a tubercle bacilli-infected scuba diving suit, booby-trapping a conch shell on the sea floor where he often dived, slipping botulism-toxin pills in one of Castro's drinks and using a pen outfitted with a hypodermic needle to poison him.

From Salon

I identified the Keystone Kop on Main Street, U.S.A., as an official undercover policeman.

From Los Angeles Times