Public Security Authorities

The Public Security Authorities, commonly shortened to PSA, is a paramilitary policing body serving the nation of Marley. Its jurisdiction appears confined to the Eldian internment zones such as Liberio, where uniformed troopers watch the gates and enforce the state's will over the ghetto populations. The organization also shares a wharf on the coast of Paradis Island with the military, using it to exile condemned Eldians while heavy transport ships dock alongside.

Its ranks are secretly penetrated by Eren Kruger, an Eldian who passes the mandatory blood screening with help from a sympathetic doctor. Operating under the codename "the Owl," Kruger spends years stealing historical Eldian documents and funneling money and weapons to the Eldian Restorationists from within the organization.

Containment defines the PSA's daily work: regulating movement in and out of the zones, crushing dissident activity, and deporting undesirable Eldians to Paradis Island, where injections leave them wandering as mindless Titans. In emergencies its armed personnel evacuate casualties and seal off combat areas. When Marley resolves to seize Paradis and its fossil fuel wealth, the PSA also runs the recruitment drive gathering Eldian children aged five to seven as Warrior candidates, dangling honorary Marleyan status for the families of those selected; Zeke Yeager, Reiner Braun, Bertolt Hoover, Annie Leonhart, and Marcel Galliard all enter the program through that campaign.

Cruelty goes unpunished inside the organization. Sergeant Major Gross lets his sons set dogs on the child Faye Yeager for amusement and suffers no damage to his career, and interrogators sever every one of Grisha Yeager's fingers while dismantling the Restorationist movement. Yet individual soldiers can show real warmth. Two gate guards in Liberio chat daily with the Warrior candidates, know all about Falco Grice's feelings for Gabi Braun, and die shielding Gabi from gunfire when Survey Corps infiltrators strike during the raid on Liberio.

The institution's record of persecution runs deep. Somewhere between the years 743 and 817, Marleyan security forces destroy a revolutionary army raised by the Eldian royal family on the mainland, burning Kruger's family alive before his eyes, and later exile a cult devoted to Ymir to Paradis. After Zeke betrays his parents, PSA officers escort the captured Restorationists to a coastal outpost for titanization, an operation that ends with Kruger revealing himself, transforming into the Attack Titan, and wiping out the entire escort along with a steamboat. By 854 the PSA still guards Liberio but fares poorly against the Survey Corps raiders, and when Eren Yeager unleashes the Rumbling its soldiers cannot keep the panicking internment zone population from breaking out and spreading fear across Marley.

Eren Kruger stands as the organization's most consequential figure, a double agent who ultimately passes the Attack Titan to Grisha Yeager. Gross, the sergeant major who murders Faye Yeager, embodies the institution's casual brutality. Both men serve in the era before the fall of Wall Maria, and both are long dead by the story's present day.