Until now, the Ottoman police have benefited little from the current studies on European police forces. Using the memoirs of a police chief in Izmir at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this paper provides insight into the social and political characteristics of the Ottoman police during the transition between the authoritarian regime of the sultan Abdàlhamid II and the constitutional period which followed the Young Turk revolution in 1908. The personal carrier of the police chief Rafael Chikurel highlights the incomplete professionalization of the developing police institution. It also allows us to question police priorities, the relationship between the police and political power, and the continuity and changes in a post-revolutionary context.