They were often "located in captured police centers, in the houses of former government officials, and in some public places such as the parliament".

[2] As an arm of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's network of clerics, they also served as "the backbone of a second power within the state, along with the militia, the army, the revolutionary tribunals", and the wealthy Islamic foundations.

[6] They made certain that unmarried men and women do not hold hands or walk together on the sidewalk, that storekeepers display in their shops large, glossy photographs of the nation's senior Islamic clerics, that liquor is not served at private parties and that women keep their hair, arms and feet covered, preferably in the black robes called chadors.

[5]Made up of "mostly uneducated, undisciplined revolutionaries",[2] at least as of 1990 they were allegedly more "feared or detested" than any of the other post-revolutionary Iranian government agency.

[5] After the death of Khomeini and "during the first period of Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani's presidency", the police Shahrbani, Gendarmerie, and kominteh were merged, and a new organization, called the "Disciplinary Force" (Niru-ye entezami) or Law Enforcement Command of Islamic Republic of Iran (FARAJA), under the direct control of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was established in 1991.