A police car is a vehicle used by a police force to assist with their duties. Typical uses of a police car would be for officers to use to reach the scene of an incident quickly, to patrol an area for suspected trouble, to provide a high visibility deterrent to criminal or to temporarily detain and transport individual criminal suspects.
As the police themselves have, police cars have picked up a number of nicknames and may be known as police cruiser, squad car, prowler, radio car, panda car, area car, scout car, pork wagons, or patrol car. In some places a police car may also be nicknamed a cop car, a Black & White, a cherry top, or a jam sandwich.