Keyword "Police-Officer" and Gender-Versions: multiple keywords with same meaning, hundreds of combinations

Thank you for your very informative answer.
This i would have needed months ago.
It means i will stop changing these keywords, cause i do not have the knowledge to choose the right keyword.
We will have to wait till someone cares about.
There could be already hundreds of wrong keywords for both, male and female police officer.
Do you think it could be helpful for users who are not experienced in this many differences, to just add the terms (male/female) police-officer?  

I was thinking about what I stated before about detectives, and one more of the things that stands out about them is how they are almost never part of the regular emergency response apparatus, likewise rarely part of the tactical response apparatus.

Thank you for your informative answer.

Yes, it should be a simplification for users who are not very familiar with these many differences - like me.

As i answered to jeorj_euler, there might be already hundreds of wrong keywords for both male and female police officers.

Do you think it could be helpful for users who are not experienced in this many differences, to just add the terms (male/female) police-officer?  

I've no knowledge of the words "policeman" and "policewoman" being used to refer to anybody other than an actual police officer, and these words are somewhat colloquial since police departments don't refer to anybody in their employ as "policeman" or "policewoman", not even contractors. In terms of personnel bearing the police badge, the lowest rank in a police force is "police officer". There may be some other employees of the department, but any such employee who lacks a police badge is not a police officer, and no police officer answers to him or her in the context of law enforcement work. (The police commissioner is probably not considered an employee of the department that he or she oversees, like how the Secretary of the Navy is not a member of the Navy.) I'm not sure about police academies, but I'd imagine that they only train and certify police cadets, just as a police explorer program only certifies police explorers (who are minors with no special responsibilities imposed upon them by a government, likewise no special powers granted thereby, only knowledge and experience). We don't refer to police cadets as "polceman" or "policewoman", and we don't refer to police explorers in that way. Of course, with fifty States in the union that be the United States, anything is possible in terms of slight variations of customs and terminology. Most of the States contain counties (just like England), but Louisiana has parishes (just like France) instead, and Alaska has neither. Be the municipality a county or a parish, it is at that level of jurisdiction guarded by a force commanded by a sheriff, a "shire reeve". Alaska has no sheriffs, though. Local law enforcement there is facilitated and organized in slightly different way from the rest of the States. There isn't really a term "police rookie", as this invariably refers to a rookie police officer, one who is either new to having a police badge altogether, or new to working in a particular specialty under the umbrella of law enforcement. Such is borderline colloquial and better known even more colloquially as "rookie cop".

I agree jeorj_euler.
I think it should be more about simplification - not accuracy.
A movie-database cannot be something like a dictionary or wikipedia and most people just cannot know all these differences in for example police-ranks. 
They just search terms and want to watch a movie.
So i believe it would be helpful to think of this from the perspective of an outsider - not a police-member.
Surely there are more experienced users who may search for an exact rank and want to watch exactly that. But i think this is a minority. 

A simple example to show the problem of too much accuracy (i tried this keyword search 1 minute ago):
 
You search for a female police officer and singing (2 keywords search). 
I believe nobody wants to search for all single police ranks (from which some might be unknown). This might be many keywords to search instead of one or two.
A search with just the keyword police and singing is not the same - cause then it could be both - male and female.
female-police-officer + singing : 58 results
police + singing : 916 results
Surely you cannot know, if the keyword singing is related to the female-officer or someone else, but it is far more simple to search 1 or 2 short result lists, then many more or a very long result list.

So in my opinion a general keyword to differ male and female police members should not be describe an exact rank, but should be a term everybody just understands. 
Male and female police officers are terms everybody understands immediately - even if it is not the exact description.
Maybe a better description then can be found in the cast.
In addition to the general term there could be keywords of exact ranks or descriptions, too - and who knows and searches these will find them, too. 

Well, we go by the content of the movies. If a character is identified as police sergeant, then we know that a "police-sergeant" can and ought to be attached as a keyword. We also know that most police departments will have their police sergeants' uniforms bear three chevrons on each shirt/jacket/coat arm, much like the military, meaning that police corporal uniforms have two chevrons instead of three. I personally don't happen to know what only one chevron constitutes in salutation as far as police departments are concerned, only that the member wearing it would be at a lower rank than police corporal. To my understanding, the occupation of police corporal is a somewhat rare one. Other adjectives or prefixes can be attached, simply to provide detail that movie goers might be interested in utilizing for search purposes, like "male" and "female". I've not really formulated an opinion about the need or common desire for keywords like, say, "male-police-sergeant" and "female-police-sergeant". I do agree that "police officer" can be the umbrella description of every member of a police force that contains police officers, but I'm not sure if we ought to go that route, because we run back into the question of the distinction between "police officer" and "police detective", or for that matter, "police inspector", but invariably most police detectives started out as police officers when joining their respective police departments, and they don't stop being police officers simply for being promoted.

@jeorj_euler, @bradley_kent  , @keyword_expert , @Michelle 
I remember there were news from amazon studios some weeks ago, about diversity and how to cast roles (roles should be casted with people that have the same gender-identity, ethnic,... according to their role).
I thought about this news and today i have read some articles about gender-identity (means the personal sense of one's own gender) and nonbinary-genders.
As i found out, it might be 2-3% of population, who do not identify themselves as man or woman. I think that's a lot. 
As far as i know there are already existing many genders (i do not know the number, but there seems to be many).

I just wanted to add this gender-identity information because the word "gender" is in the topic title. Maybe users searching for it to find something about nonbinary-genders, too.
With this new perspective of a minority i dind't thought of much before, i like @jeorj_euler  and @bradley_kent  replies to add just gender-neutral job-descriptions even better - because it includes all genders.
 
But as i am not contributor anymore and have too few time to follow this community, i will in future only read and post if i get notified.
Cheers.

Edit: Made a longer text shorter.

The simplest answer is that there is a difference between official terms and informal/colloquial terms. For example, in the USA it has historically been common for the public to informally use the terms "policeman" and "policewoman," but their official title is "police officer."

The words "policeman" and "policewoman" are used less and less often these days, and never for their official titles.

Interestingly, Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary dates the terms "police officer" to 1790-1800, the term "policeman" to 1795-1805, and the term "policewoman" to 1850-1855. 

Keywords should be BOTH general AND specific.  But they should, most importantly, accurately reflect the content of a title, not what is assumed to be most commonly understood.  Searches are BOTH general AND specific, just as keywords should be..

By the way, let me be a seer for a moment: This ever changing world may lead us beyond primary and basic "binary thinking" as we dissolve division  between male and female. and, yes, transgender and fluid.  Why, as any member of SAG/AFTRA like me knows, we are all now designated as "actors," NOT "actors" and "actresses."  

But, from where we are now, and not where we will be in the future, I think most of us still observe that the majority is considered male and the minority is considered female, as history has somewhat biasedly instituted (despite the fact that the world is almost evenly split, 50% male and 50% female.). Right now, "police-officer" means a male-police-officer, so we need the female-police-officer to represent a minority, but may not need "male-police-officer."  In binary thinking, however, I guess, if you have one (male), you must have the other (female).  But is EVERY job going to be prefaced by "male-" or "female-"?

I predict a future where actors will be cast DESPITE their sex, as we are beginning to see in casting despite race, ethnicity, culture, whatever. (Look at the recent historical Mary, Queen of Scots, where such things were irrelevant to casting that was based on talent.). Some subject matters will still demand traditional casting, but we are in the process of "opening up" to a new world. It's a long, log way off, but I see it coming.

Back to the subject:  I still think that "police" (gender neutral) is the best GENERAL keyword, with the more specific job designations also listed as keywords according to their specific descriptions or designations in each specific title.  Don't eradicate the "specifics" in lieu of an attempt to find an all encompassing "generalization."

You cannot assume that everyone "understands" something, because they probably don't.

Thank you again for your thoughts.

I predict a future where actors will be cast DESPITE their sex, as we are beginning to see in casting despite race, ethnicity, culture, whatever.

That are really great words and i am totaly with this, as with hopefuly a whole world where these things do not matter any more.

@Michelle 

Thank you very much.

@bradley_kent 

I just came across my first instance of the keyword spammer adding "feline" along with "cat."

I also found a few instances of him adding the keyword "swine" for police that he particularly dislikes. I deleted those.

Another idiosyncratic keyword he likes to use is "xian," which is a (sometimes derogatory) word for "christian." I suspect that in his case, he is using "xian" in a derogatory fashion. There is obviously no reason to have this as a separate keyword--it should be consolidated into "christian."

It is interesting how each IMDb contributor leaves their own unique digital signature or fingerprints with their keyword choices. 

@DataOrganizer Thank you for the clarifications. After I wrote my previous comment to you, I did wonder if perhaps there is a distinction here between police officers whose deaths are and are not on-screen. Your response confirms that to be the case.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that as currently drafted, the keywords I pointed out are not grammatically correct. 

I don't plan to edit these particular keywords for now, but at least our public dialogue serves as a record of how these keywords originated. 

@keyword_expert With pleasure. 
I will look in here from time to time and answer if questions should come. 
For me it is a really, really bad feeling after so much work and changes to notice, that i made a lot of mistakes and my work often seems not to fit the needs of imdb-users.
I don't want to make things worse - and I don't know enough about how to do it correctly.

Hope others will correct things in time. 

@DataOrganizer 

I have included some of your "deceased" keyword for some mass cleanup in this list:

Duplicate Keywords - List #55 (Proposals for Permanent Merger and Auto-Conversion) (death keywords)

If you are still receiving emails from this thread, please take a look at that list and let me know if anything in there looks incorrect to you.

Also, please let me know if you do receive this message, because I have at least one more question for you about some of your other keywords.

@keyword_expert

I still read your messages and i'm around on imdb again :-)

Thank you very much for the interesting suggestions in your linked post.

I'll comment there and we will work it out together.