Military Police Brigade

The Military Police Brigade (Kenpeidan) outranks every other arm of the military inside the Walls. Its personnel live in the protected interior with plentiful resources, which makes the branch the most coveted assignment among cadets. Formal admission is limited to trainees who graduate within the ten best of their class, though favoritism and personal connections quietly open other doors, as a conversation between Hitch Dreyse and Boris Feulner reveals.

Prestige does not translate into quality. Freed from meaningful oversight, the brigade has decayed into the most corrupt branch of the armed forces, and its habit of abusing authority puts it at odds with the Garrison and, above all, the Survey Corps. Senior officers gamble and drink while recruits shoulder the workload, taxes vanish into private pockets, and land is misappropriated, a state of affairs so widely known that even citizens of Wall Sheena speak of the police with contempt. Because its soldiers almost never face Titans, the branch is also the least battle-tested of the three despite drawing the highest-ranked graduates.

Policing human territory is the brigade's core assignment, alongside serving as the personal guard of the monarch. Since Titan encounters are rare in its jurisdiction, its soldiers typically carry firearms rather than vertical maneuvering equipment. Tax collection, land distribution, supervision of the Training Corps, oversight of the Garrison, firefighting command, and the arrest of political criminals all fall within its remit, and it takes precedence in any investigation touching the nobility or the royal line. On paper the organization fields 2,000 soldiers and directs 3,000 more drawn from the Garrison, with roughly 200 police posted in each walled city. When Eren Yeager and Annie Leonhart tear through the Stohess District, Commander Nile Dok abandons the task of watching the Survey Corps and turns his men to evacuation and aiding the wounded, a crisis their lax preparation leaves them barely able to manage.

A secretive body called the First Interior Squad operates within the brigade under its own chain of command. Even Nile Dok admits he has no insight into its actions and no authority over it. Far more disciplined than the regular police, the squad specializes in fighting humans rather than Titans and carries out conspiracies to preserve order, including the torture and killing of Minister Nick and the attempted elimination of the young Historia Reiss and her mother. Its sub-branch, the Anti-Personnel Control Squad under Captain Kenny Ackerman, was officially formed to counter the Survey Corps, though Kenny confesses its real purpose was chasing a god-like power. Armed with firearm-fitted maneuvering gear, the squad kills Nifa, Keiji, and Abel during the hunt for Eren and Historia before Levi Ackerman cuts down much of its roster; the survivors are crushed when the cavern beneath the Reiss chapel collapses, and a mortally wounded Kenny dies soon after, leaving the unit effectively extinct.

Nile Dok commands the brigade through most of the story, while Kenny Ackerman captains the Anti-Personnel Control Squad alongside his devoted subordinate Traute Caven. Annie Leonhart joins after graduation and uses the posting as cover for her true mission, and Marlowe Freudenberg and Hitch Dreyse serve in Stohess before Marlowe transfers to the Survey Corps. Djel Sannes and Ralph handle the interior police's dirty work, while Boris Feulner and Waltz number among the rank and file.