[3] The Blue Police, initially employed purely to deal with ordinary criminality, was later also used to counter smuggling, which was an essential element of German-occupied Poland's underground economy.

[4] After a review process, a number of its former members joined the new national policing structure, the Milicja Obywatelska (Citizens' Militia).

[6] In May 1940, the Special Service (German: Sonderdienst), a 2,500-member paramilitary organization made up of Volksdeutsche, many of whom spoke Polish, was established.

[19] This was due to the fact that in the remaining areas of occupied Poland the Polish police was liquidated, and policemen were encouraged or forced to move to the General Government.

[20] According to historian Andrzej Paczkowski (Spring Will Be Ours), the police force consisted of approximately 11,000–12,000 officers,[21] but the actual number of its cadre was much lower initially.

[21][22] Emmanuel Ringelblum put the number as high as 14,300 by the end of 1942 including Warsaw, Lublin, Kielce and Eastern Galicia.

[1] The initial expansion of the force was the result of expulsion to Generalgouvernement of all Polish professional policemen, from the territories annexed by the Third Reich (Reichsgau Wartheland, Westpreußen, etc.).

Also, the Germans had intentionally eroded moral standards of the force by giving policemen the right to keep for themselves 10% of all confiscated goods.

[1] The Blue Police consisted primarily of Poles and Polish speaking Ukrainians from the eastern parts of the General Government.

"[36] According to Raul Hilberg, "Of all the native police forces in occupied Eastern Europe, those of Poland were least involved in anti-Jewish actions....

"[37] Jan Grabowski, a Polish-born Jewish writer, has claimed that Blue Police played an important role in the Holocaust in Poland, often operating independently of German orders and killing Jews for financial gain.

[38][39] Citing the book: [40] He states, "For a Jew, falling into the hands of the Polish police meant, in practically all known cases, certain death...

The historical evidence—hard, irrefutable evidence coming from the Polish, German, and Israeli archives—points to a pattern of murderous involvement throughout occupied Poland.

The Germans' tactics were usually as follows: in the first "resettlement action" they utilized the Jewish Order Service, which behaved no better from the ethical point of view than their Polish opposite numbers.

"[42] A substantial part of the police belonged to the Polish underground resistance Home Army,[43] mostly its counterintelligence and National Security Corps.

Its first chief, Marian Kozielewski [pl] (Jan Karski's brother), was imprisoned by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.