Police uses comedy to make pointed – if glancing – social statements which over the years became central to Chaplin’s work. The film arguably is the most mature in the series and anticipates such later films as Easy Street (1917), The Pilgrim (1923), and Modern Times (1936).

The Tramp, released from prison (the first in a long list of de-institutionalized screen characters that future Chaplin audiences would encounter), is “once again in the cruel, cruel world” where he meets a former cellmate and sets about to rob the home occupied by a young woman. POLICE, Chaplin's final Essanay comedy, was altered after Chaplin had edited the film, removing an extended doss-house sequence that Essanay would insert into Triple Trouble (1918) two years later.