Law enforcement has carried out undercover work in a variety of ways throughout the course of history, but
Eugène François Vidocq (1775–1857) developed the first organized (though informal) undercover program in France in the early 19th century, from the late
First Empire through most of the
Bourbon Restoration period of 1814 to 1830. At the end of 1811, Vidocq set up an informal plainclothes unit, the
Brigade de la Sûreté ("Security Brigade"), which was later converted to a security police unit under the
Prefecture of Police. The Sûreté initially had eight, then twelve, and, in 1823, twenty employees. One year later, it expanded again, to 28 secret agents. In addition, there were eight people who worked secretly for the Sûreté, but instead of a salary, they received licences for gambling halls. A major portion of Vidocq's subordinates comprised ex-criminals like himself. Vidocq personally trained his agents, for example, in selecting the correct disguise based on the kind of job. He himself went out hunting for criminals too. His memoirs are full of stories about how he outsmarted crooks by pretending to be a beggar or an old
cuckold. At one point, he even simulated his own death. In England, the first modern
police force was established in 1829 by Sir
Robert Peel as the
Metropolitan Police of London. From the start, the force occasionally employed plainclothes undercover detectives, but there was much public anxiety that its powers were being used for the purpose of political repression. In part due to these concerns, the 1845 official
Police Orders required all undercover operations to be specifically authorized by the
superintendent. It was only in 1869 that Police commissioner
Edmund Henderson established a formal plainclothes detective division. detectives on an undercover operation at the
London Docks, 1911 The first
Special Branch of police was the
Special Irish Branch, formed as a section of the
Criminal Investigation Department of the
MPS in London in 1883, initially to combat the bombing campaign that the
Irish Republican Brotherhood had begun a few years earlier. This pioneering branch became the first to receive training in
counter-terrorism techniques. Its name was changed to
Special Branch as it had its remit gradually expanded to incorporate a general role in counter terrorism, combating foreign subversion and infiltrating
organized crime.
Law enforcement agencies elsewhere established similar Branches. In the United States, a similar route was taken when the
New York City Police Department under
police commissioner William McAdoo established the Italian Squad in 1906 to combat rampant crime and intimidation in the poor Italian neighborhoods. Various federal agencies began their own undercover programs shortly afterwards –
Charles Joseph Bonaparte founded the Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 1908.
Secret police forces in the Eastern Bloc also used undercover operatives. ==Participation in criminal activities==