Tsarist era The Saint Petersburg Police was established by Tsar
Peter the Great on June 7, 1718, as the main
municipal police force in
Saint Petersburg, the capital of the
Russian Empire which had been founded by Peter only fifteen years earlier.
Anton de Vieira, a
batman of Peter and
mayor of Saint Petersburg at the time, was appointed as the first "Oberpolitzmeister" (a German, not Russian word: Senior Police Master), the title for the commander of the city police service. The department survived intact until 1917 during the
February Revolution, when most of the Saint Petersburg Police remained loyal to the Imperial government. Several policemen were killed after the defection of the bulk of the city's army garrison to the revolution, especially when a rumor spread that the police were firing with machine guns from the roofs of buildings.
Soviet and post-Soviet periods Shortly after the overthrow of the Imperial government, the department was formally disbanded. Following the
October Revolution, a new
Soviet police force was established under the title of
Militsiya, which replaced the functions of the Saint Petersburg Police. In 1924, following the renaming of Saint Petersburg to Leningrad in honor of
Vladimir Lenin, the city police were known as the Leningrad Militsiya (. This name continued until 1991, shortly after the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, when it was changed to Saint Petersburg Militsiya (милицию Санкт-Петербурга) after the name of the city was reverted. The service adopted its current name on March 1, 2011, as part of wider law enforcement legislative reform backed by Russian president
Dmitry Medvedev, which abandoned the usage of the term "
Militsiya" in favor of the re-adoption of "Politsiya" (police) in law enforcement agencies across Russia. == Organization and structure ==