Reference

Police organisations

Named police organisations around the world — what each one is, the level of government it belongs to, what it covers, and the official source each fact was checked against.

These are named organisations. For the kinds of body they are instances of — what a gendarmerie is, how a municipal force differs from a national one — the institution types answer a different question and are kept separate for that reason.

Every entry is written from the organisation’s own official publications or from legislation, and every page states the date its facts were last checked. Where an official source could not be read, the page says so rather than filling the gap.

Browse by system

56 organisations across 30 systems, grouped by the system each belongs to.

Argentina

Policía Federal Argentina (PFA): One of Argentina’s four national security forces under the Ministry of Security, alongside provincial police forces it does not command.
Gendarmería Nacional Argentina (GNA): One of Argentina’s four federal security forces under the national Ministry of Security, and the country’s gendarmerie-type body.
Prefectura Naval Argentina (PNA): One of Argentina’s four federal security forces under the national Ministry of Security.
Policía de Seguridad Aeroportuaria (PSA): One of Argentina’s four federal security forces under the national Ministry of Security.

Australia

Australian Federal Police (AFP): The Commonwealth police force, which also delivers community policing to the Australian Capital Territory on the ACT Government’s behalf.
Victoria Police: The police force of the Australian state of Victoria — one of the state forces that carry out general policing in Australia.
Northern Territory Police Force: The Northern Territory’s own police force — the contrast with the Australian Capital Territory, whose policing the Commonwealth AFP delivers.

Austria

Bundespolizei: Austria’s single national police force within the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Its nine Landespolizeidirektionen are federal authorities, not police forces belonging to the Länder.
Bundeskriminalamt: Austria’s federal criminal police office, within the Federal Ministry of the Interior — a different body from the German office of the same name.

Belgium

Police Fédérale / Federale Politie: The federal level of Belgium’s integrated police service — one of two levels which, in the words of the statute, together provide the integrated police function.

Brazil

Polícia Federal (PF): The judicial police of the Union in Brazil, exercising that function exclusively, together with maritime, airport and border policing.
Polícia Rodoviária Federal (PRF): A Union body dedicated to ostensive patrol of the federal highways, under Article 144 paragraph 2 of the Brazilian Constitution.

Canada

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP): Canada’s federal police force, which also delivers provincial and municipal policing under contract to eight provinces, three territories and some 150 municipalities.
Sûreté du Québec: Quebec’s own provincial police service — one of the two provinces that do not contract policing from the RCMP.

Czechia

Policie České republiky (PČR): Czechia’s single national police force, under the Ministry of the Interior, with fourteen regional directorates that are internal units of the one force rather than separately governed police.

Denmark

Rigspolitiet: Denmark’s police, organised into twelve geographical districts, with the Faroe Islands and Greenland each forming a district of their own.
National enhed for Særlig Kriminalitet (NSK): A nationwide investigative unit established in 2022 which, in the Danish police’s own description, forms the fifteenth police district.

Finland

Poliisihallitus: The body that guides and directs operational police activity in Finland — a governance and command body rather than a police force in its own right.
Keskusrikospoliisi: Finland’s national criminal-investigation police unit, one of the police agencies the interior ministry lists beneath the National Police Board.
Suojelupoliisi (Supo): One of the police agencies the Finnish interior ministry lists — a security-intelligence service inside the police structure rather than outside it.

France

Police nationale: One of France’s two national forces. It is a civil force, bound with the Gendarmerie nationale by a single regulatory code of ethics.
Gendarmerie nationale: France’s armed force instituted to see to the execution of the laws — a gendarmerie, and the other half of the pair of national forces bound by one code of ethics.

Germany

Bundespolizei: Germany’s federal police, within the Federal Ministry of the Interior, responsible for borders, railways and civil aviation security — not for general policing, which belongs to the Länder.
Bundeskriminalamt (BKA): Germany’s federal criminal police office: a central investigative and coordinating body that takes on investigations at the direction of the Federal Prosecutor General.
Polizei Berlin: The police force of the Land of Berlin — one of sixteen Land forces that carry out general policing in Germany, each under its own Land government and police law.

Indonesia

Kepolisian Negara Republik Indonesia (POLRI): A single national police force which, uniquely among the systems in this registry, reports directly to the President rather than to a ministry.

Ireland

An Garda Síochána: Ireland’s national police and security service, governed by the Garda Síochána Act 2005, with the statutory function of providing policing and security services to the State.

Italy

Polizia di Stato: Italy’s civil national police force, directed by the Department of Public Security within the Ministry of the Interior — one of several national police forces, not the only one.
Arma dei Carabinieri: An armed force of the Italian state in permanent public-security service: a gendarmerie answering to the Minister of Defence as a military service and to the Minister of the Interior as a police force.
Corpo della guardia di finanza: One of the police forces listed by Italy’s Law 121/1981, alongside the Polizia di Stato and the Carabinieri.

Japan

National Police Agency (NPA): Japan’s central police organisation. It draws up policy, coordinates and supervises on matters of national concern — it does not command a national operational police force, because there is none.
National Public Safety Commission (NPSC): The commission that supervises Japan’s National Police Agency, and over which the Prime Minister is not empowered to exercise direct command or control.
Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department: The prefectural police of Tokyo — one of the forces that actually carry out policing in Japan, not a branch of the National Police Agency.

Kenya

National Police Service (NPS): Kenya’s national police service, constituted by the National Police Service Act and comprising the Kenya Police Service, the Administration Police Service and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.

Netherlands

Politie: One national police force for the Netherlands, headed by one Commissioner, comprising ten Regional Units, the Central Unit and the Police Services Centre.
Koninklijke Marechaussee (KMar): A component of the Dutch armed forces under the Ministry of Defence that also carries police tasks — the gendarmerie-type body alongside the civil national police.

New Zealand

New Zealand Police: A single national police force of twelve districts, whose Commissioner must act independently of ministers on investigations and prosecutions.

Nigeria

Nigeria Police Force (NPF): The single police force the Nigerian Constitution provides for — and which it provides shall be the only one, for the Federation or any part of it.

Norway

Politiet: Norway’s national police service: the Police Directorate, twelve police districts, and a set of national special agencies (særorganer).

Poland

Policja: A single uniformed, armed national formation established by the Law of 6 April 1990, headed by the Chief Commissioner of Police and subordinate to the Minister of Internal Affairs.

Portugal

Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR): A Portuguese security force of military nature, made up of military personnel organised in a special corps of troops, and one of the three general-competence criminal-police bodies.
Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP): One of the three general-competence criminal-police bodies named by Portugal’s Law on the Organisation of Criminal Investigation.
Polícia Judiciária (PJ): Portugal’s criminal-investigation police, to which Law 49/2008 reserves the most serious offences.

Scotland

Police Scotland: The police service of Scotland, established on 1 April 2013, covering some 28,168 square miles — about a third of the United Kingdom’s landmass.

Singapore

Singapore Police Force (SPF): A single national police force under the Ministry of Home Affairs, in a city-state with no state or municipal police.

South Africa

South African Police Service (SAPS): South Africa’s police service, whose National Commissioner answers directly to the Minister of Police, with national policing policy determined under section 206 of the Constitution.

Spain

Policía Nacional: Spain’s civil national police force, under the Minister of the Interior — one of two state security forces in a system that also has autonomous-community and local police.
Guardia Civil: Spain’s armed institute of military nature, with a traditional dual dependence on the Ministries of the Interior and of Defence.
Ertzaintza: The police of the Basque Autonomous Community, within the Basque Government’s Security Department — an instance of Spain’s second policing tier.

Sweden

Polismyndigheten: A single national police authority for Sweden, organised into seven police regions, twenty-five police districts and ninety-five local police districts.

Switzerland

fedpol: Switzerland’s federal police office. It is expressly not a national police force, and expressly not superior to the cantonal forces that do the policing.

United Kingdom

British Transport Police (BTP): A police force defined by an estate rather than a territory: the railway across England, Wales and Scotland, under the Department for Transport rather than the Home Office.
National Crime Agency (NCA): A United Kingdom law-enforcement agency against serious and organised crime. It is not a territorial police force, and does not present itself as one.

United States

United States Marshals Service (USMS): The enforcement arm of the United States federal courts — a federal agency defined by its relationship to the judiciary rather than by a territory.
New York City Police Department (NYPD): A municipal police department — by its own account the largest and one of the oldest in the United States — policing a city of 8.5 million people.
California Highway Patrol (CHP): A state agency established in 1929 to provide uniform traffic law enforcement throughout California — a state force with a defined remit, not a state-wide general police.