The Royal Irish Constabulary was the police force in Ireland from 1822 until 1922, when all of the country was part of the United Kingdom. A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), patrolled the capital and parts of County Wicklow, while the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police forces, later had special divisions within the RIC. For most of its history, the ethnic and religious makeup of the RIC broadly matched that of the Irish population, although Anglo-Irish Protestants were overrepresented among its senior officers.
Military police (MP) are law enforcement agencies connected with, or part of, the military of a state. In wartime operations, the military police may support the main fighting force with force protection, convoy security, screening, rear reconnaissance, logistic traffic management, counterinsurgency, and detainee handling.
A gendarmerie is a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population. The term gendarme is derived from the medieval French expression gens d'armes, which translates to "men-at-arms". In France and some Francophone nations, the gendarmerie is a branch of the armed forces that is responsible for internal security in parts of the territory, with additional duties as military police for the armed forces. It was introduced to several other Western European countries during the Napoleonic conquests. In the mid-twentieth century, a number of former French mandates and colonial possessions adopted a gendarmerie after independence. A similar concept exists in Eastern Europe in the form of Internal Troops, which are present in many countries of the former Soviet Union and its former allied countries.
The Ulster Special Constabulary was a quasi-military reserve special constable police force in what would later become Northern Ireland. It was set up in October 1920, shortly before the partition of Ireland. It was an armed corps, organised partially on military lines and called out in times of emergency, such as war or insurgency. It performed this role most notably in the early 1920s during the Irish War of Independence and the 1956-1962 IRA Border Campaign.
Constabulary may have several definitions:
The Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary (ADRIC), generally known as the Auxiliaries or Auxies, was a paramilitary unit of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Irish War of Independence. It was founded in July 1920 by Major-General Henry Hugh Tudor and made up of former British Army officers, most of whom came from Great Britain and had fought in the First World War. Almost 2,300 served in the unit during the conflict. Its role was to conduct counter-insurgency operations against the Irish Republican Army (IRA), acting mainly as a mobile striking and raiding force. It operated semi-independently of the RIC and was mainly deployed to southern and western regions where fighting was heaviest.
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary (RNC) is the provincial police service for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group, more commonly known as the Jewish Brigade Group or Jewish Brigade, was a military formation of the British Army in the Second World War. It was formed in late 1944 and was recruited among Yishuv Jews from Mandatory Palestine and commanded by Anglo-Jewish officers. It served in the latter stages of the Italian Campaign, and was disbanded in 1946.
Mounted police are police who patrol on horseback or camelback. Their day-to-day function is typically picturesque or ceremonial, but they are also employed in crowd control because of their mobile mass and height advantage and increasingly in the UK for crime prevention and high visibility policing roles. The added height and visibility that the horses give their riders allows officers to observe a wider area, and it also allows people in the wider area to see the officers, which helps deter crime and helps people find officers when they need them. When employed for crowd control, there is a risk that some people may be trampled. Due to this, authoritarian regimes often use mounted police to supress protests, as the public generally does not view these "accidental" deaths as resulting from a deliberate use of deadly force. In at least one case this has resulted in the police officer riding the horse to be sued.
Auxiliary police, also called special police, are usually the part-time reserves of a regular police force. They may be armed or unarmed. They may be unpaid volunteers or paid members of the police service with which they are affiliated. The police powers auxiliary units may exercise vary from agency to agency; some have no or limited authority, while others may be accorded full police powers.
Norfolk Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for policing Norfolk in East Anglia, England. The force serves a population of 908,000 in a mostly rural area of 2,079 square miles (5,380 km2), including 90 miles of coastline and 16 rivers, including the Broads National Park. Headquartered in Wymondham, Norfolk is responsible for the City of Norwich, along with King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth and Thetford. As of September 2022, the force has a strength of 1,921 police constables, and as of March 2022, 179 special constables, 1,226 police staff/designated officers, and 100 police support volunteers. The Chief Constable is currently Paul Sanford, and the Police and Crime Commissioner Giles Orpen-Smellie (Conservative).
Auxiliaries are support personnel that assist the military or police but are organised differently from regular forces. Auxiliary may be military volunteers undertaking support functions or performing certain duties such as garrison troops, usually on a part-time basis. Unlike a military reserve force, an auxiliary force does not necessarily have the same degree of training or ranking structure as regular soldiers, and it may or may not be integrated into a fighting force. Some auxiliaries, however, are militias composed of former active duty military personnel and actually have better training and combat experience than their regular counterparts.
The British South Africa Police (BSAP) was, for most of its existence, the police force of Rhodesia. It was formed as a paramilitary force of mounted infantrymen in 1889 by Cecil Rhodes' British South Africa Company, from which it took its original name, the British South Africa Company's Police. Initially run directly by the company, it began to operate independently in 1896, at which time it also dropped "Company's" from its name. It thereafter served as Rhodesia's regular police force, retaining its name, until 1980, when it was superseded by the Zimbabwe Republic Police, soon after the country's reconstitution into Zimbabwe in April that year.
The Special Night Squads (SNS) was a joint British-Jewish counter-insurgency military unit, established by Captain Orde Wingate in Mandatory Palestine in 1938 during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt. The SNS basically comprised British infantry soldiers, together with some men drawn from the Jewish Supernumerary Police. Total unit strength was 100 by 1938.
The Jandarmeria Română is the national Gendarmerie force of Romania, tasked with high-risk and specialized law enforcement duties. It is one of the two main police forces in Romania, both having jurisdiction over the civilian population.
The Gendarmerie (French) or Rijkswacht (Dutch) was the former national Gendarmerie force of the Kingdom of Belgium. It became a civilian police organisation in 1992, a status it retained until 1 January 2001, when it was, together with the other existing police forces in Belgium, abolished and replaced by the Federal Police and the Local Police.
The National Gendarmerie is one of two national law enforcement forces of France, along with the National Police. The Gendarmerie is a branch of the French Armed Forces placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior, with additional duties from the Ministry of Armed Forces. Its responsibilities include policing smaller towns, suburbs and rural areas, along with special subdivisions like the GSPR. By contrast, the National Police is a civilian law enforcement agency that is in charge of policing cities and larger towns. Because of its military status, the Gendarmerie also fulfills a range of military and defence missions, including having a cybercrime division. The Gendarmerie has a strength of around 102,269 people.
Provosts are military police (MP) whose duties are policing solely within the armed forces of a country, as opposed to gendarmerie duties in the civilian population. However, many countries use their gendarmerie for provost duties.
The Palestine Police Force was a British colonial police service established in Mandatory Palestine on 1 July 1920, when High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel's civil administration took over responsibility for security from General Allenby's Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (South).
The Trans-Jordan Frontier Force was formed on 1 April 1926, to replace the disbanded British Gendarmerie. It was a creation of the British High Commissioner for Palestine whose intention was that the Force should defend Trans-Jordan's northern and southern borders. The TJFF was also an Imperial Service regiment whose Imperial Service soldiers agreed to serve wherever required and not just within the borders of their own colony, protectorate or, in the case of the Transjordan, mandate. This was in contrast to the Arab Legion, which was seen more as an internal security militia, deriving from the troops of the Arab Revolt and closely associated with the Hashemite cause. The Amir Abdullah was an Honorary Colonel of the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force from its inception. However, the local commanders thought it unnecessary to form an additional force, believing that the expansion of The Arab Legion would be a better action.