one of the three main police forces of France. Controlled by the Ministry of the Interior, it provides the preventive police force for Paris and the Seine département. Its uniformed members, known as gardiens de la paix (“guardians of the peace”), are responsible for traffic and crowd control and are highly motorized. By contrast, their plainclothes members, who are known as the directorate of judicial police, investigate all serious crime throughout France. Their work frequently overlaps, not without occasional friction, that of the juges d'instruction (“examining magistrates”) in the early stages of prosecution for a crime.