Police of Finland

Local police departments

The police is divided into police departments, which encompass the area of multiple municipalities; municipalities do not have police forces of their own. The function of each police department is to maintain general law and order, prevent crime, investigate crime and other events that threaten public order and safety, to carry out traffic control and surveillance and promote traffic safety, and perform all other duties prescribed by law or otherwise assigned to the police in their area. Local police departments are organized into uniformed patrol police (Finnish: järjestyspoliisi, literally "order police") and criminal investigation police (Finnish: rikospoliisi, literally "criminal police").

Local police also processes licenses and permits such as gun licenses, national ID cards and passports, and furthermore, enforces immigration decisions by the Finnish Immigration Service. Local police must also be notified when organizing public events that may significantly influence local public security and traffic. Driving licenses have been issued by the local police, but from 2016, driving licenses will be issud by Trafi (Finnish Transport Safety Agency).

Alarm services are operated by Emergency Response Centres managed by the Ministry of the Interior in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.

Local police departments as of 2014:

In addition, the Åland Islands has its own police department which falls under the responsibility of the Government of Åland (see law enforcement in Åland).

National police units

The National Bureau of Investigation (Finnish: Keskusrikospoliisi, KRP, Swedish: Centralkriminalpolisen, CKP) is responsible for major criminal investigations and certain types of specialist services such as fingerprint recognition. The NBI was formed in 1954 to assist the country's other police elements in efforts against crime, particularly that of a serious or deeply rooted nature. A special concern of the NBI is white-collar crime. To carry out its mission, the force has advanced technical means at its disposal, and it maintains Finland's fingerprint and identification files. The NBI is not apart of the police, but is a separate nation-wide law enforcement agency which assists local police with investigations. .

The Police University College (Finnish: Poliisiammattikorkeakoulu, Polamk, Swedish: Polisyrkeshögskolan) in Tampere is responsible for police training, research and development.

The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Finnish: Suojelupoliisi, Supo, Swedish: Skyddspolisen, Skypo) is responsible for national security and the investigation of related crimes. The Supo was moved directly under the Ministry of the Interior in 2016.

The National Traffic Police (Finnish: Liikkuva poliisi, Swedish: Rörliga polisen) was folded into the local police in 2013, thus local police is also responsible for highway patrol. Originally, local police districts were very small and had limited resources, so a separate mobile police organization was founded for riot control, alcohol law enforcement and reserve force duties. Political reliability and independence from local strongmen was also important because of the threat from fascists; indeed, the first task was to escort former president K.J. Ståhlberg back to his home after he was kidnapped by the Lapua Movement. The organized later evolved into a highway patrol. However, because of mergers, local police departments had become larger. Thus, the separate national organization was deemed redundant and traffic police units were subordinated to the local police departments instead, without change in the actual number of highway patrol officers.

Other nationally active formations

Police Rapid Response Unit (Finnish: Poliisin valmiusyksikkö), also known as Bear Group (Finnish: Karhu-ryhmä), is a specialized armed response unit. It is officially part of the National Bureau of Investigation.

In June 2008, the Finnish police established a Police Incident Response Team tasked with improving the prevention, detection and management of serious information security incidents.

Police ranks

The Finnish police uses the following ranks:

Criminal investigators prefix their ranks with rikos-, "Detective", literally "Criminal", e.g. rikostarkastaja.

Rank insignia on the shoulder epaulettes is all silver on blue with a silver button. The rank insignia for Senior Constable is a single bar, added with two chevrons for Sergeant. Police officers have bordered rows of oak leaves, with a Lion of Finland next to them. Additionally, on the collar there is pentagonal insignia that always has the emblem with laurel leaves and a border, but with colors slightly varying with rank; officers have a border around the pentagon.

Finnish military ranks as in the Finnish Army are also used by the Finnish Border Guard, but with some differences. The conscript rank of Private is rajajääkäri. Career border guards are NCOs that serve in the ranks of nuorempi rajavartija (~kersantti) and vanhempi rajavartija (~ylikersantti) ("Junior" and "Senior Border Guard", respectively), and there are two higher ranks, ylirajavartija and rajavartiomestari ("Supervisor Border Guard" and "Master Border Guard"), corresponding to vääpeli and sotilasmestari.

Equipment

Vehicles

The most common vehicle of police in Finland is Volkswagen Transporter, usually with 2.5 l diesel engines. In 2002 about one third of Finnish police cars were Transporters. Transporters are also used by border guards, customs, and sotilaspoliisi (military police). Due to the bilingualism of the country, the right side of the vehicles is marked in Finnish language (POLIISI), the left side is marked in Swedish language (POLIS). The siren used for the Finnish police cars are also used for the police of Sweden.

Current vehicles of the Finnish police

Marked police motorcycles are usually either BMW K1200 RS or Yamaha FJR 1300 models. Unmarked motorcycles are Yamaha YZF1000R Thunderace- and Yamaha YZF-R1 models. Motorcycles are used in pursuit situations.

Finnish police also operates snowmobiles, water scooters and boats. Helsinki police has a horse-riding unit.

Recent history

On 2 January 2016 the Finnish Police was causing confusion in the social and public media, because one of its Detective Chief Inspectors noted in public that people should run away and call emergency number if some foreigner, or as later he clarified, also a Finn, approached them with unusual, or even intimate motive. He further advised that people should avoid communicating with foreigners due to danger of misunderstanding.

On 8 January 2016, the former German State News Agency Deutsche Welle reported, citing a Finnish Deputy Police Chief, that events similar to the events in Cologne were prevented early in Helsinki due to massive police presence. The Chief further made the notion, without going further into the details, that the participants had "bad purposes in mind", clarifying that 15 refugees were taken into custody. According to the reported details, some 1000 asylum seekers were gathered to the scene on the evening. He noted, that the mobilization of Police Forces was largest ever during Finnish New Year celebrations.

On 23 January 2016, it was reported in the Finnish media that a couple of bozos had to be taken in to police custody after they had allegedly disrupted a public demonstration in support of closing the national borders. Earlier on the independence day 2015 Finnish Police was reported to have fired a compressed air gun on anarchist demonstrators who tried attack nationalist demonstration.