Formed 1921 Superseding agency Hellenic Police | Dissolved 1 November 1984 Employees 10,000–12,000 | |
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Legal personality Governmental: Government agency Governing body Ministry of Public Order | ||
The City Police (Greek: Αστυνομία Πόλεων) was a Greek police force extant from 1921 to 1984, responsible for policing urban areas. It complemented the Greek Gendarmerie, which was responsible for rural and suburban areas.
History
Its creation was decreed in 1918 (Law 1370/1918) and confirmed in 1920 (Law 2461/1920). The force became operational in the city of Corfu in 1920, followed by Patras (1921), Piraeus (1923) and Athens (1929). Remarkably, in Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city, the force was not established due to the Gendarmerie's opposition, despite the law's provisions.
Unlike the paramilitary Gendarmerie, which had close ties to the Hellenic Army and was commanded by Army generals, the City Police was a purely civilian force, modelled after the London Metropolitan Police and with training provided by a British mission under Sir Frederick Loch Halliday.
From the late 1920s, the City Police, and especially its feared General Security Directory, initiated the state persecution of the nascent Communist Party of Greece, whose popularity was growing among the urban poor, the working classes and the destitute refugees from Asia Minor. In the aftermath of the Greek Civil War, the Gendarmerie and the City Police became bastions of the conservative and vehemently anti-Communist establishment, a role they would retain throughout the Regime of the Colonels from 1967 to 1974. After the fall of the Colonels, emphasis was placed on civilian policing. Despite strong opposition from the Gendarmerie, the City Police and the Gendarmerie were amalgamated on 1 November 1984 (Law 1481/1-10-1984) into the unified Hellenic Police.