It is a primary law enforcement agency in the country, tasked with providing public safety and order, investigating and preventing crime. The Police is supported by municipal forces of city guards , having less legal authority and with jurisdiction only over prosecuting contraventions. The force's name, Policja , translates into the English language as Police. An individual officer is typically called a policjant plural policjanci ; these are not, however, official titles and are not included in the official rank structure, they are simply terms used to refer to any police officer regardless of the rank they may hold.
A police station is known as Komenda Policji or Komisariat Policji both of which translate more or less into English as Police Commissariat.
Female officers may be referred to as policjantki , the singular of which is policjantka. On occasion, this may or may not be followed by the terms Oficer or Funkcjonariusz. In , with the re-independence of the Polish nation , the state reorganised itself along non-federalist lines and established a centralised form of government.
During the inter-war period , a number of key law enforcement duties were delegated to other formations, such as the Border Guard [ 5 ] and Military Gendarmerie. With the end of World War II and the onset of the communist period , the new Soviet backed government decided to radically change the structure of policing in Poland; the state 'Policja' was renamed as the ' Milicja Obywatelska ' Citizen's Militia , a name which was meant to reflect a change in the role of the police, from an instrument of oppression ensuring the position of the bourgeoisie, to a force composed of, and at the service of 'normal citizens'.
Ironically the reality turned out to be largely the opposite and the Milicja instead represented a rather state-controlled force which was used to exert political repression on the citizens.
