beat cop vs detective

beat cop

noun
  • A police officer who patrols the streets on foot (walks the beat) 

detective

noun
  • A police officer who looks for evidence as part of solving a crime; an investigator. 

  • A person employed to find information not otherwise available to the public. 

adj
  • Employed in detecting. 

How often have the words beat cop and detective occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )