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Sûreté (French:[syʁ.te],lit. 'surety' but often translated to 'safety' or 'security') is, in someFrench-speaking countries or regions, the organizational title of a civil police force.
TheDirectorate General for National Security is known in French as the Sûreté Nationale.
The VSSE is known by its French name, Sûreté de l'État.[1][2]
Theprovincial police force ofQuébec is called theSûreté du Québec.[3]
TheFrench National Police was formerly called Sûreté générale and then Sûreté nationale.[4]
The Sûreté nationale, or Sûreté, began as the criminal investigative bureau of thePréfecture de police de Paris (Paris Police Prefecture) and did not function as the national command and control organization until much later, by which time it no longer had anydetectives on its staff.
Both the Paris Police Prefecture'sBrigade Criminelle and theDirection centrale de la Police judiciaire trace their history directly to the Sûreté.
The French Sûreté is considered a pioneer of all crime-fighting organizations in the world, although London'sBow Street Runners, founded 1749, served a similar purpose at times. Founded in 1812 byEugène François Vidocq, who headed it until 1827, it was the inspiration forScotland Yard, theFBI, and other departments of criminal investigation throughout the world. Vidocq was convinced that crime could not be controlled by then-current police methods, so he organized a special branch of the criminal division modelled onNapoleon'spolitical police. The force was to work undercover and its early members consisted largely of reformed criminals. By 1820 – eight years after its formation – it had blossomed into a 30-man team of experts that had reduced the crime rate in Paris by 40%.
On 23 April 1941, the French police was nationalized under theVichy regime, and each branch was placed under the prefect. The termPolice nationale ("National Police") was then first used – with the sole exception of theParis Police Prefecture. This organisational name was used during the Fourth and Fifth French Republic.
On 9 July 1964, the previously independent police in Paris were placed under the Sûreté nationale and 10 July 1966 saw the final reorganization into theNational Police in its present form.
The national police force of Morocco is theSûreté Nationale.[5]
Sûreté is the name of thedetective branch of thecantonal police of theFrench-speakingcantons of Switzerland.[6]
The dictionary definition ofsûreté at Wiktionary