The 1940sWorld War II and wartime circumstances

During the Continuation War, policemen were allowed to serve in the army without resigning from the police force. On the home front, many citizens resorted to illegal acts to obtain what they could not get legally. Criminal gangs broke into homes and businesses, counterfeit rationing cards were in circulation, the black market flourished, and currency crimes grew increasingly common. The police were also busy looking for deserters and “desants”, i.e. Soviet spies and saboteurs who had commonly been dropped from planes with parachutes.

The end of the war did not make policing any easier as many pre-war policemen had resigned or been killed in the war without having been replaced by new recruits. Rationing was still in place, and respect for the law was declining among the public. Public intoxication was the most common crime, and alcoholism was associated with many social problems. As Finland had lost the war, a Soviet-led Allied Control Commission was sent to Finland to make sure that the terms of the armistice were adhered to.

In the autumn of 1944, the Mobile Police Detachment was enlarged to include 3000 men, and the name of the unit was changed to the National Traffic Police. Its tasks included securing Soviet traffic to Porkkala, which had been leased to the Soviet Union as a military base. It was important for the Finnish authorities to be able to deal with all unrest in the country since it was feared that the Soviets might otherwise intervene. The amount of surveillance and searches increased. The parliamentary elections of 1945 resulted in communists gaining one-fourth of the seats. When the new government was formed, they gained three portfolios, including that of the Ministry of the Interior, which oversaw matters pertaining to the police. Officers considered to be rightists were fired and replaced with leftists. Fearing an imminent Soviet invasion, some army officers had secretly stored weapons that could be used for guerrilla warfare. When these plans were revealed in 1945, the State Police, Valpo, was reorganised, which meant that almost all of its officers were replaced with communists.

”Red Valpo” (Valpo II) began searching for suspected fascists. Valpo was granted more independence than previously, and the unit was quickly enlarged, soon consisting of more than 200 officers. The work of Valpo II was staggering, and its officers committed many errors. As Valpo II had little political support outside of leftist circles, it was in an isolated position within the Finnish administrative machinery, left without the full support of the judicial system. The Allied Control Commission left in the autumn of 1947, and in the parliamentary elections the following summer, the communists suffered great losses. In 1949, Valpo II was replaced with a new unit, the Security Intelligence Service (Supo).

The Security Intelligence Service did not have authority to arrest or take suspects into custody, and it would conduct no preliminary investigations of its own. Wiretapping and opening mail was not allowed for Supo officers. During the Cold War (c. 1947–1989), weapons included propaganda, economic and political pressure, and espionage. Finland was a western country both economically and culturally, but politically situated in the Soviet sphere of influence, giving the country a geopolitical position between the East and the West. Spies from both blocs came to Helsinki to gain information on the affairs of Finland as well as those of each other. Supo mainly focused on the activities of domestic communists and Soviet spies, but Western spies were also to be intercepted. The work of Supo was strictly confined to Finnish territory as intelligence-gathering abroad was not part of its mission.

In the late 1940s, workers began pursuing their interests through strikes. Communists and social democrats competed for power over the labour movement. Some strikes led to violent clashes involving workers on strike without permission from their labour unions (“wildcats”), strikebreakers (“scabs”), and the police. When dealing with rioters, the police frequently used great force, pulling out their batons, submachine guns and tear gas.