The Flickr Geloofsovertuiging Image Generatr

KYOTO.
FOX ON GUARD.

KYOTO.
VOS OP WACHT.

KYOTO.
RENARD EN GARDE.

Kyoto.
FUCHS AUF WACHT.

Thanks to the Police of France. Good people where lost.

The National Police (French: Police nationale), formerly the Sûreté nationale, is one of two national police forces and the main civil law enforcement agency of France, with primary jurisdiction in cities and large towns. The other main agency is the military Gendarmerie, with primary jurisdiction in smaller towns and rural and border areas. The National Police comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior and has about 145,699 employees (in April 2008).

The police is commanded by the director-general (directeur général de la police nationale) who is currently Claude Baland. The director-general is directly in charge of the General Directorate of the National Police (French: Direction Générale de la Police nationale) (DGPN).

The police is then sub-divided into directorates:

Direction des ressources et des compétences de la police nationale (Directorate of Ressources and Competences of the National Police; DRCPN):[3] fusion of the Direction de la formation de police nationale (Directorate of Training of the National Police; DFPN) and Direction de l'administration de la police nationale (Directorate of Administration of the National Police; DAPN)
Direction centrale de la police judiciaire (Central Directorate of Judicial Police; DCPJ): major criminal investigations (this mission, in the Paris Area is fulfilled by the Direction Régionale de Police Judiciaire de Paris known as "36 Quai des Orfèvres") (the national headquarters are actually located at 11 rue des Saussaies, in the Interior Ministry).
Sous-direction de l'anti-terrorisme (Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate; SDAT): elite counter-terrorist task-force.
The National Financial Investigation, which includes all the National Specialized Investigation Offices except the National Itinerant Criminality Struggle Office (managed by the Gendarmerie Nationale)
The National Sub-directorate of forensics.
Direction centrale de la sécurité publique (Central Directorate of Public Security; DCSP): patrol and response, minor criminal investigations, approximatively 80% of the workforce.
Groupes d'Intervention de la Police Nationale (Intervention Groups of the National Police; GIPN): Nine regional SWAT teams.
Direction centrale de la police aux frontières (Central Directorate of Border Police; DCPAF): performs identity checks with La douane française and handles illegal immigration.
Inspection générale de la police nationale (General Inspectorate of the National Police; IPGN): headed by the Inspector General and responsible for internal affairs. In the Paris Area, these tasks are assigned to a dedicated service—the Inspection Générale des Services (General Inspectorate of the Services).
Direction centrale des compagnies républicaines de sécurité (Central Directorate of the Republican Security Companies; DCCRS): riot police, motorway police, and mountain rescue; commonly referred to as the CRS.
Service de coopération technique internationale de police (Technical International Police Co-operation Service; SCTIP).
Service de protection des hautes personnalités (Important Persons Protection Service; SPHP): VIP protection such as foreign diplomats and also responsible for the protection of the President of the French Republic through the 'Groupe de Sécurité de la Présidence de la République'.
The Unité de Coordination de la Lutte Antiterroriste (UCLAT; Counterterrorism Struggle Coordination Unit) and its Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion (Research, Assistance, Intervention, Deterrence; RAID) unit.
The Préfet de Police, currently Bernard Boucault (fr), under direct orders of the Minister manages the Préfecture de Police de Paris which includes all police and security services in Paris and neighboring departments, those services are not under control of the director-general. The police forces in the other departments of the Île-de-France are under direct command of the Préfet who are under supervision of the Préfet de Police. Nevertheless, those units are under control of the director-general

Direction de la surveillance du territoire (Directorate of Territorial Surveillance; DST) - counter-intelligence, counterespionage, counterterrorism
Direction centrale des renseignements généraux (Central Directorate of General Information; DCRG or RG) - records, research, analysis, and policing gambling and horse racing
were merged into one single domestic intelligence agency titled the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur (DCRI). The DCRI was placed directly under the Ministry of the Interior. The current director is Claude Baland, who had also formerly served as Intelligence director of the DGSE and before a member of the DST.

Law enforcement in France has a long history dating back to 570 AD, when night watch systems were common place. Policing is centralized at the national level. Recently, legislation has allowed local governments to hire their own police officers which are called the Police municipale.

There are two national police forces called Police Nationale (PN) and Gendarmarie Nationale. There is also the Prefecture of Police of Paris which provides policing services directly as a subdivision of France's Ministry of the Interior. Only certain designated police officers have the power to conduct criminal investigations, and such investigations are supervised by investigative magistrates.

National Agencies
France has two national police forces:

Police Nationale, formerly called the Sûreté, is considered a civilian police force. Its origins date back to 1812 and was created by Eugène François Vidocq. In 1966 its name was officially changed to Police Nationale. It has primary responsibility for major cities and large urban areas. The Police Nationale are under the control of the Ministry of the Interior; its strength is roughly 150,000.
Gendarmerie Nationale, has the primary responsibility for policing smaller towns and rural areas, as well as the armed forces and military installations, airport security and shipping ports. They are highly centralized and under the control of the Ministry of Defence. The Gendarmerie's origin dates back to 1306 C.E. when King Phillip le Bel formed the first mounted military police force called the Marechaussee.[1] Between 1697 and 1699, King Louis XIV asserted his authority over police in France and the Marechaussee became the formal law enforcement arm of the country. In 1789 Napoleon gave them their military essence and in 1791 they formally became the Gendarmerie. Today there is about 105,000 Gendarmes in France.

Other agencies
Direction générale des douanes et droits indirects, a civilian customs service more commonly known as the Douane, under the Minister of Budget, Public Accounting and Civil Servants; its strength is roughly 20,000.
The municipal policemen can notice all the breaches but cannot investigate. There are also local polices in the rural zones, as for the rural policemen the "police rurale" as such does not exist. Note the heterogeneousness of local polices both in means and in equipment.

Police Municipale are the local police of towns and cities in France. The French municipal police are under the direct authority of the Mayor,
Rural communes may also form a garde champêtre which is responsible for limited local patrol and protecting the environment
In Wallis and Futuna, there is a territorial guard as well as royal police.

Police vs Gendarmerie
The leadership of both agencies is centralized and they both have conventional deviance control responsibilities respectively except in different geographical locations in France.[1] The Police Nationale is responsible for Paris and other urban areas whereas the Gendarmerie is responsible for small towns and rural areas with fewer than 16,000 inhabitants.[1] The existence of two national police forces with similar goals and attributions, but somewhat different zones of activity, has at times created friction or competition between the two. Their merging has sometimes been suggested.

With the development of suburban dwellings, this had increasingly proved inadequate. Furthermore, the shifting of a town from a Police to a Gendarmerie zone was often controversial, because, typically, a gendarmerie unit serves a wide area.

A redistribution of authority was thus decided and implemented between 2003 and 2005. Large conurbations will be handled entirely by the Police. Rural and suburban areas, and some smaller cities with populations ranging from 5,000 to 16,000, will be handled by the Gendarmerie.

In addition, the Police and the Gendarmerie have specific zones of authority:

the Police handle questions about the admittance, monitoring and continuing stay of foreigners (border police);
the Gendarmerie handles all matters regarding the military, the police at sea, the security of airports, and the security of certain public buildings (Republican Guard).

French Police jurisdictions
In French, the term "police" not only refers to the forces, but also to the general concept of "maintenance of law and order" (policing). There are two types of police in this general sense:

administrative police (police administrative): uniformed preventative patrols, traffic duties, handling of the mentally ill, etc.
judicial police (police judiciaire): law enforcement and investigation of crime.
Thus, the mayor has administrative police power in a town (i.e. they can order the police to enforce the municipal by-laws), and a judge has police power in their court (i.e. they can have people who disrupt the proceedings expelled from the court room).

Until 1984, the National Police was involved in the prehospital care and casualty transport (Police secours). The prehospital care is now performed by firefighters; however, mountain rescue is performed by the Gendarmerie PGHM (Peloton de gendarmerie de haute montagne) and the National Police CRS (Compagnies républicaines de sécurité; Republican Security Companies).

Some other countries follow this model and have separate police agencies with the same role but different jurisdictions.

Local Police or Gendarmerie precincts may not be capable of conducting complex investigations. For this reason, both the Police and the Gendarmerie maintain regional services dedicated to criminal investigations (police judiciaire); these are known as "regional services of judiciary police" in the Police, "research sections" in the Gendarmerie. In addition, both the Police and the Gendarmerie maintain laboratories dedicated to forensics. Most criminal enquiries are conducted by the Police. Justice may choose either service; sometimes, if the judiciary is disappointed by the results or the methods of one service, it may give the enquiry to the other service.

The National Police also features some central offices with national jurisdiction, charged with specific missions, such as the national anti-terrorist division.

Both the Police and the Gendarmerie have SWAT teams. The Gendarmerie has the foremost and best-known, the GIGN; the Police has the RAID and the GIPN groups. The Gendarmerie also has armored and paratroops squadrons.

Both the Police and the Gendarmerie have riot control forces: the CRS for the Police, the Gendarmerie Mobile for the Gendarmerie (which are often mistaken for the former). They intervene throughout the country.

One justification for the maintenance of a military force handling matters of civilian police is that the military cannot unionize, contrary to civilian civil servants such as the Police, which may make management easier. The gendarmes found a workaround by forming associations of spouses of gendarmes.

The gendarmes each have a free housing inside their respective gendarmerie stations, which is not the case for the police.

Who's the light ? Lord Jesus....

Huge Bodhisattva (Bosatsu) statue at Todai-ji, Eastern Great Temple, Nara, Japan

Bosatsu is the Sino-Japanese translation of the Sanskrit term "bodhisattva," which refers to saintly entities in the Buddhist tradition who, even though having reached the highest stages of enlightenment in their current existences, vow to postpone entry into nirvana (the state of ultimate, existence-transcending enlightenment) in order to help all living beings and lead them toward more enlightened states. Originally, the term referred only to the Historical Buddha before his entry into nirvana (or during his previous existences), but with the development of the Mahayana tradition, a number of other spiritual entities appeared, including (in their Japanese pronunciations) Miroku, Kannon, Seishi, Monju, Fugen, and Jizo, who are also considered to have bodhisattva status.

As Buddhism spread among the common people, the term "bosatsu" was sometimes applied to very respected persons of unusual virtue such as Gyoki Bosatsu during the Nara Period and Kosho Bosatsu during the Kamakura period. And reflecting the once-popular notion of convergence between Shinto and Buddhism, there was once the custom of giving the bosatsu title to certain Shinto deities, as in the case of Hachiman Daibosatsu.

Unlike the Historical Buddha and other nyorai, images of bosatsu commonly wear jeweled crowns on their heads and have other ornamental accessories attached to their bodies, the roots of which are said to be traceable to aristocratic fashions in ancient India. Compared to nyorai images, bosatsu images show a greater variety of pose and attitude. Many are artistically superb and create a human-like feeling of intimacy.