Police in the Paris Commune?

[Red Star Rising]

I've been thinking about the role of the police both during and post-revolution. The Paris commune popped into my head as a potential model. Out of curiosity:

1) How was peace kept in the commune?
2) Did it work well?
3) Is it applicable to modern day revolutions?

[Creative Destruction]

iirc, the police were disbanded in the commune and security was taken up by the worker's militia. did it "work well" is dependent on what your definition of "working well" is, especially in a chaotic revolutionary situation.

[bricolage]

There was a police department, the Blanquists were heavily involved in it and I think Raoul Rigault was head. I imagine there was crossover between them and the National Guard though. I don't actually know what kind of policing they did; either in terms of everyday crimes such as theft or more time specific ones such as hoarding or spying. Whatever happened though it's probably not applicable to modern day revolutions (which revolutions?) because, to be blunt, that was 1871 and this is 2015.

[BITW434]

For what it's worth, Marx seemed fairly approving of the nature of the police in the Paris Commune


The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at any time. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class.... The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves.... Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests.... The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence... they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable.

Whether this form of policing could be applicable to modern day revolutions is entirely dependent on the nature and context of the revolutionary situation