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United States Pentagon Police

federal police agency of the Office of the US Secretary of Defense

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ3550751 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Pentagon Police Division (PPD) is the uniformed division of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA).

PPD's role is to provide law enforcement and protective security services for the Pentagon and other Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) activities in the National Capital Region. These services include patrol, response, and investigation of criminal activity as well as protection of designated Defense officials.

History

Prior to 1971, the General Service Administration's (GSA) United States Special Police (USSP) conducted law enforcement, safety and security functions at the Pentagon. The protection programs were primarily a "guard-watchman" operation, where USSP were primarily concerned with the protection of property. However, in response to a growing number of disruptive incidents throughout the country affecting federal facilities under GSA control, attention to the security program had to be re-examined. As a result of mass demonstrations, bombings and bomb threats within the country and region, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) was established and the comprehensive protection of Pentagon personnel rather than the previous policy of concentration on property were developed.

On October 1, 1987, the GSA Administrator delegated authority for protecting the Pentagon Reservation to the Department of Defense (DoD). In order to carry out the new mission, DoD established the Defense Protective Service (DPS) as a new organization within the Washington Headquarters Service (WHS).

Formerly known as the Defense Protective Service (DPS) until 2002, the Pentagon Police has exclusive jurisdiction within the Pentagon Reservation and has concurrent jurisdiction with other law enforcement agencies (federal, state, and local) in an area of approximately 275 acres (1.11 km2) around the complex.

Editorial summary

“United States Pentagon Police” enters the record as federal police agency of the Office of the US Secretary of Defense. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, States and Pentagon can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1971, 1987, 2002—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around United, States and Pentagon.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“United States Pentagon Police” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, United, States and Pentagon provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3550751. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1987 and 2002.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “United States Pentagon 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.