Between 1814 and 1816, the Paris police experienced one of the largest clean-ups of its history. Authorities received multiple petitions from policemen who had been released and were demanding reinstitution or individuals eager to take over their positions. A study of the arguments and physical form of these often neglected documents reveals how people thought about their relationship to the job of policeman, the State and recent political history. Depending on whether they were sent by dismissed policemen, individuals looking for a new position or ex-policemen fired by previous regimes, the petitions raise varied and often opposite insights. The arbitrations made by the political and administrative authorities reveal a latent antagonism between the professional identity defended by Napoleon's policemen, based on location, the support of local communities, moral integrity and respect for the law, and the demands for payment and political affiliation of those wanting to enter the police force at the end of the Empire. The bureaucratic treatment of the demands shows how in the troubled context of post-revolutionary France, the administrations invented new modes of classification and management of individuals based on the registration and scrutiny of biographical patterns.