Origins The police can trace its origins to 1778 when the first traces of industry started to appear. Up until that time, the law had been enforced first by individuals permitted to do so by the
Althing and then by
sýslumenn (sheriffs) and other Royal proxies. The first policemen are considered to be the
morning star-armed night watchmen of
Reykjavík who were commissioned primarily to deter the prisoners of the Reykjavík prison from breaking into the . In 1803, the first proper policemen were commissioned in Reykjavík as it became a free town or ''''. The first police chief was
Rasmus Frydensberg, the town mayor, who hired two former soldiers,
Ole Biørn and
Vilhelm Nolte, as the first policemen. It was not until shortly after 1891 that policemen were hired in most of the other areas of
Iceland.
Post-1900 In 1933
Alþingi passed the Police Act which provided state participation in financing of police forces. This was done mostly in response to the threat of a
communist revolution, whose capabilities had become apparent in a violent attempt to force the decisions of the Reykjavík city council, where a large part of the police forces went out of action as a result of physical injury. The act also authorized the
Minister of Justice and Ecclesiastical affairs to call out reserves in critical situations. In 1972 the state took over command of law enforcement in Iceland, creating the National Police and in 1977 State Criminal Investigation Police started operations under a special Director. The State Investigation Police took over investigations of criminal activities that previously were under the control of the Reykjavík Criminal Court and police commissioners in the
Capital Region. The National Commissioner of the Police was formed in 1997, and the State Criminal Investigation Police was decommissioned.
2013 Árbær shooting On 2 December 2013, a person died due to an
armed police operation for the first and currently only time in Iceland's history. Police had responded to reports of shotgun fire in an apartment in
Árbær, a neighborhood of Reykjavík. Initially
tear gas was used in an attempt to subdue the gunman, a 59-year-old man, but it failed to affect him. When the
special police unit entered the apartment in question, two officers were injured by shotgun fire. One officer was holding a
ballistic shield which was hit. The other officer was hit in the head, but was wearing a ballistic helmet. Two officers with ballistic shields and pistols returned four shots, two of them striking the gunman. The gunman was taken to the hospital but pronounced dead upon arrival. National Police Commissioner Haraldur Johannessen immediately apologised to the man's family, calling the incident "unprecedented". The shooter's motives were not immediately clear, though some neighbours reported the gunman was making threats towards them. An investigation into this incident was launched, and the guns involved on all sides were seized. Counseling was offered to the officers involved. This still remains as the first and currently only shooting death involving the Icelandic Police in Iceland's history.
2021 Egilsstaðir shooting On the evening of 26 August 2021, a man armed with a shotgun and handgun started shooting at a car and house of the father of his girlfriend's children in
Egilsstaðir, a small town in east Iceland. Police officers in Egilsstaðir responded armed with pistols. Officers repeatedly told the gunman to lay down his weapons and give up when he was inside the house. After about an hour, the man came out of the house and started shooting at the police officers taking cover behind cars in the driveway. One officer returned fire, striking the gunman in the chest. The gunman was quickly helped and transported by air ambulance to
Reykjavík to be treated. The gunman survived and was sentenced to 8 years in prison. The incident marked the first time a normal police officer, not in the
special armed police unit, fired a gun on duty.
2022 terror plot On 21 September 2022, the police arrested four individuals who were suspected of alleged terrorist plot, the first of its kind in the country, to attack various institutions and citizens of the state. ==Police academy==