Police court

The name of a kind of inferior court in several of the states, which has a summary jurisdiction over minor offenses and misdemeanors of small consequence, and the powers of a committing magistrate in respect to more serious crimes, and, in some states, a limited jurisdiction for the trial of civil causes.

In English law

Courts in which stipendiary magistrates, chosen from barristers of a certnin standing, sit for the dispatch of business. Their general duties and powers are the same as those of the unsaid magistracy, except that one of them may usually act in cases which would require to be heard before two other justices.

Wharton.