Police

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Metropolitan Police Service officers

A police force is any organized body of civilians directed by a government to maintain law enforcement and public order. While they often undergo combat training and are legally authorized to employ violence as necessary, they are distinct from the military in being a civil body entrusted only with domestic security.

History

Historically, the role of law enforcement was generally served by guards, soldiers who were garrisoned within a city for its defence. The existence of the police as a distinct body independent of the military is a relatively recent development. In ancient times, the responsibility of law enforcement was often bestowed upon specific arms of a military, such as the Medjay and Phylakitai of Egypt, or the Jinyiwei of Ming dynasty China, a secret police which enforced the emperor's will against judicial rulings and purged dissenters under the pretense of preserving societal harmony. In the Arab world, the police were known as shurta and were employed by the Abbasid Empire in Baghdad, where their headquarters were located in the Round City.

The concept of the police as a professional, civilian organization did not develop until the late 18th to early 19th century. The United Kingdom did not have a unified force which specialized in the prevention and investigation of crime until they founded the Metropolitan Police Service in 1829, and this is sometimes regarded as the first modern police force because it was decidedly intended to be civilian. ^{[citation needed]} By the time of the French Revolution, however, a force dedicated to criminal investigation had already been operating in Paris. Its development subsequently flourished under Eugène François Vidocq, a former criminal who pioneered the deductive method of detective work and founded the France's premier crime-fighting body, the Sûreté. Apart from this, the National Guard established by the French revolutionaries to protect themselves was also intended to be independent of the French Army. ^{[citation needed]}

Police and the Assassins

Frederick Abberline and Jacob Frye discussing the Templars

The relationship between police and the Assassins can be complicated by the tendency of the latter to operate like vigilantes outside of the law in their quest to save humanity from the Templars. In one notable example, British police sergeant Frederick Abberline worked closely with Assassin twins Jacob and Evie Frye throughout 1868 in solving crimes and toppling the control of Templar Grand Master Crawford Starrick over London. However, the twins also founded a gang of their own, the Rooks, in their fight against Starrick's syndicate, the Blighters, and were by all means an extrajudicial party.

In later years, Abberline felt morally conflicted over his past partnership with the Assassins, but two decades later in 1888, he enlisted Evie's aid once again to stop the serial killer and rogue Assassin Jack the Ripper. Ultimately, Evie killed the Ripper, but in spite of Abberline's misgivings, he agreed to her request to safeguard the mass murderer's fate and identity so as to protect the Assassins as a friend.

Police and the Templars

Because the police were susceptible to corruption, they occasionally found themselves an unknowing pawn in the Assassins and Templars' age-old struggle, being bribed by one faction to deliberately target members of the other or turn a blind eye to their own criminal activities. In 1862, the Templar Cavanagh bribed police officers to keep people away from his construction site in London, where he secretly searched for an Apple of Eden. Other times, the police were simply manipulated into helping either one of the two factions, as was the case during the Russian Revolution, when both the NKVD and Cheka targeted the Assassin Nikolai Orelov after he was framed as a criminal and member of the White Army by the Templars.

In modern times, thanks to the establishment of Abstergo Industries as a legitimate front company, the Templars have outgrown the need to bribe or manipulate the police due to operating publicly within the confines of the law. Still, there have been occasions when Abstergo enlisted the services of the police, such as in 2017, when they bribed the Hong Kong police to leave a damaged skyscraper office untouched. In 2023, the police in Cebu were also contacted by Abstergo after a convoy containing Doctor Shimazu Sei, her bodyguard Yuki, and test subject Noa Kim was attacked by the Doom Eagle criminal organization, though the police were ambushed before they could arrive on the scene, leaving Abstergo's Sigma Team to deal with the assailants alone.

Behind the scenes

While Arno Dorian helps police chief Charles Cochon de Lapparent solve crimes in the 2014 video game Assassin's Creed: Unity, the police do not appear as a distinct gameplay faction until the 2015 game Assassin's Creed: Syndicate. There, they are color-coded blue on the mini-map. Although players are not penalized for killing them in free-roam, doing so in various story memories costs full synchronization.

The de facto police in Assassin's Creed: Origins are referred to as phylakitai, both collectively and singularly, but the correct singular form is phylax. Even more confusingly, there is also a group of enemies called the phylakes which act like bounty hunters, but they are erroneously referred to as phylake in the singular rather than phylax.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed III (first mentioned)
• Assassin's Creed: Memories (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Unity (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
  • Jack the Ripper
• Assassin's Creed: Underworld
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia
• Assassin's Creed: Templars (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: The Official Movie Novelization (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Uprising (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Origins
• Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece (mentioned only, as astynomoi)
• Echoes of History (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Forgotten Temple (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Mirage (as Shurta)
• Assassin's Creed: Visionaries (non-canon)