The Cities Police () was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

police The police are Law enforcement organization, a constituted body of Law enforcement officer, people empowered by a State (polity), state with the aim of Law enforcement, enforcing the law and protecting the Public order policing, public order ...

force extant from 1921 to 1984, responsible for policing

urban areas An urban area is a human settlement with a high population density and an infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas originate through urbanization, and researchers categorize them as cities, towns, conurbations or suburbs. In urbani ...

. It complemented the

Hellenic Gendarmerie The Hellenic Gendarmerie (, ''Elliniki Chorofylaki'') was the national gendarmerie and military police (until 1951) force of Greece. History 19th century The Greek Gendarmerie was established after the enthronement of Otto of Greece, King Ot ...

, which was responsible for rural and suburban areas.

History

Band of the Cities Police marches down Irodou Attikou Street

Band of the Cities Police at the Temple of Olympian Zeus

Its creation was decreed in 1918 (Article 12 of the Law 1370/1918 ''On the organization of the Gendarmerie'') and confirmed in 1920 (Law 2461/1920). The force became operational in the city of

Corfu Corfu ( , ) or Kerkyra (, ) is a Greece, Greek island in the Ionian Sea, of the Ionian Islands; including its Greek islands, small satellite islands, it forms the margin of Greece's northwestern frontier. The island is part of the Corfu (regio ...

in 1920, followed by

Patras Patras (; ; Katharevousa and ; ) is Greece's List of cities in Greece, third-largest city and the regional capital and largest city of Western Greece, in the northern Peloponnese, west of Athens. The city is built at the foot of Mount Panachaiko ...

(1921),

Piraeus Piraeus ( ; ; , Ancient: , Katharevousa: ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens city centre along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf in the Ath ...

(1923) and

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

(1929). Remarkably, in

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...

, 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 The Hellenic Army (, sometimes abbreviated as ΕΣ), formed in 1828, is the army, land force of Greece. The term Names of the Greeks, '' Hellenic'' is the endogenous synonym for ''Greek''. The Hellenic Army is the largest of the three branches ...

and was commanded by Army generals, the Cities Police was a purely civilian force, modeled after the Metropolitan Police of

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, and with training provided by a British mission under Sir Frederick Loch Halliday. From the late 1920s, the Cities Police, and especially its feared General Security Directorate, initiated the state persecution of the nascent

Communist Party of Greece The Communist Party of Greece (, ΚΚΕ; ''Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas'', KKE) is a Marxist–Leninist political party in Greece. It was founded in 1918 as the Socialist Workers' Party of Greece (SEKE) and adopted its current name in Novem ...

(KKE), 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 Greek Civil War () took place from 1946 to 1949. The conflict, which erupted shortly after the end of World War II, consisted of a Communism, Communist-led uprising against the established government of the Kingdom of Greece. The rebels decl ...

, the Gendarmerie and the Cities Police became bastions of the conservative and vehemently anti-Communist establishment, a role they would retain throughout the

Greek junta The Greek junta or Regime of the Colonels was a Right-wing politics, right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. On 21 April 1967, a group of colonels with CIA backing 1967 Greek coup d'état, overthrew the caretaker gove ...

of 1967–74. After the fall of the junta, emphasis was placed on civilian policing. Despite strong opposition from the Gendarmerie and the Cities Police, both forces were amalgamated on 1 November 1984 (Law 1481/1-10-1984) into the unified

Hellenic Police The Hellenic Police (, ''Ellinikí Astynomía'', abbreviated ) is the national police service and one of the three security forces of Greece (the others being the Hellenic Fire Service and the Hellenic Coast Guard). It is a large agency with res ...

Ranks insignia

References

{{Greek security forces 1921 establishments in Greece Defunct law enforcement agencies of Greece 1984 disestablishments in Greece