plainclothes

[playn-klohz, -klohthz]

adjective

1. wearing civilian clothing, or plain clothes, instead of a uniform, especially of police officers on duty.

Example Sentences

Local media quoted witnesses who said they saw the musician being shot by a man they accused of being a plainclothes police officer.

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He recognizes that he is unpopular in America right now, that the polling for his individual initiatives, like the One Big Beautiful Bill or his warrantless plainclothes masked immigration and U.S. citizen roundups, is not good.

Read more on Slate

In other words, officers in the field must have visible ID unless they are undercover or regularly work in plainclothes.

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For that offense, she was grabbed off the street by a half-dozen plainclothes federal agents and detained for weeks in a decrepit ICE facility, thousands of miles away.

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The fine new indie drama “Plainclothes,” which takes place in 1997 in Syracuse, N.Y., and centers on a young police officer in the throes of desire, wants to remind us that the reality of such reckonings was a bit more fraught.

Read more on Los Angeles Times