Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza
police tactical unit in Italy
The Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza (NOCS) (lit. 'Central Security Task Group') is the police tactical unit of the Polizia di Stato, one of Italy's national police forces. It operates under the command of the Direzione Centrale della Polizia di Prevenzione (English: Central Directorate for the Anti-Terrorism Police).
History
In 1974, the Chief of the Polizia di Stato Anti-Terrorism Bureau, Emilio Santillo, announced the necessity to establish a tactical unit with the capability to arrest known terrorists and to support the local counter-terrorism field office. Personnel were selected from Police Sports Group "Fiamme Oro ("Gold Flames"), particularly trained in martial arts. The 35-man team was denominated "counter-commando unit" and commanded by Maj. Andrea Sgandurra, an officer with counter-insurgency experiences, and a skilled proponent of hand-to-hand combat skills. After one year of training (offensive driving, sniping, various shooting skills, and a tactical assault course) in 1975, the unit became operational and immediately started a mission against the left wing terrorist organization NAP ("Nuclei Armati Proletari", Proletarian Armed Service). Later they operated against the right-wing group "New Order", which resulted in the arrests of well-known terrorists Gentile Schiavone and Pierluigi Concutelli. In 1978, the Italian government decided to modify the structure of the Anti-Terrorist Bureau to improve its capabilities. This change resulted in the formation of SISMI (military intelligence), SISDE (civilian intelligence), and a police counter-terrorism agency (Ufficio Centrale per le Investigazioni Generali e le Operazioni Speciali (UCIGOS) also known as the Central Office for General Investigations and Special Operations).
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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 Jan 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1538438. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974, 1975 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza” 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.