Metropolitan Police
territorial police force in Greater London
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), commonly known as the Metropolitan Police, Met Police, or the "Met", is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and crime prevention within Greater London. In addition, it is responsible for specialised tasks throughout the United Kingdom, such as dealing with counter-terrorism throughout the UK, and the protection of certain individuals, including the monarch, royal family, governmental officials, and other designated figures. It is also referred to as an eponym as "Scotland Yard" or "the Yard", after the location of its original headquarters in Great Scotland Yard, Whitehall, in the 19th century. The Met is presently headquartered at New Scotland Yard, in a building situated on the Victoria Embankment.
The main geographical area covered by the Met, the Metropolitan Police District, consists of the 32 London boroughs, and excludes the square mile of the City of London – a largely non-residential and financial district, overseen by the City of London Police. As the force responsible for the majority of the UK's capital, the Met has significant responsibilities and unique challenges, such as protecting 164 foreign embassies and High Commissions, policing London City and Heathrow airports, protecting the Palace of Westminster, and managing a higher volume of protests and events than any other British police force, with 3,500 such events in 2016.
The force, by officer numbers, ranks as the largest police force within the United Kingdom. Excluding its national roles, the Met oversees the eighth-smallest primary geographic area (police area) compared to other territorial police forces in the UK.
The force operates under the leadership of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, directly accountable to the mayor of London, through the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime and the Home Office. The post of commissioner was first held jointly by Sir Charles Rowan and Sir Richard Mayne, with Sir Mark Rowley currently holding the position since July 2022.
History
The Metropolitan Police Service was founded in 1829 by Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel under the Metropolitan Police Act 1829 and on 29 September of that year, the first constables of the service appeared on the streets of London.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Metropolitan Police” as territorial police force in Greater London. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as territorial police force in Greater London. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1139213. VIAF identifies the subject as 153917795. The Library of Congress control number is no98000001. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2022 and 1829.
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This entry incorporates text from “Metropolitan Police” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.