On 27 September 2009, Vaud voters rejected by 54 per cent (on a 45 per cent turnout) the popular initiative "For a unified and more efficient police force", known as "Operation D'Artagnan". A most unusual case: the text came from the gendarmes themselves, through their professional association (APGV), proposing to merge municipal police forces and the cantonal police into a single corps.
Against the gendarmerie's musketeers, the cantonal government and the municipalities wielded an indirect counter-proposal: the "coordinated police", the product of an agreement between canton and cities that kept the municipal forces while establishing unified command under the cantonal police commander. The larger cities, attached to their local forces, campaigned against the initiative — Lausanne rejected it by 58.7 per cent, Nyon by 60.4, Morges by 55.8. Only the SVP backed the text.
More than sixteen years later, this vote is anything but a closed file: the coordinated police born of the ballot is now judged "at the end of the road" by the gendarmes' unions, and the canton is once again studying... a single police force. The 2009 debate has returned, almost word for word.
▲ Overall result The initiative is rejected by 54 per cent of voters, on a 45 per cent turnout. The No clears the way for the government's indirect counter-proposal: the coordinated police. | ▼ Voting map The cities with their own municipal police sank the project: Lausanne (58.7 per cent No), Nyon (60.4), Morges (55.8). The electorate sided with its municipalities rather than its gendarmes. |
Key players
▲ Yes camp • Professional association of Vaud gendarmes (APGV) (initiator, "Operation D'Artagnan") • Vaud SVP (the only party backing the text) • Officers favouring a single corps (equal powers for all officers) | ▼ No camp • Vaud government (champion of the coordinated-police counter-proposal) • Cities and municipalities with their own police (Lausanne, Yverdon, Nyon, Morges, etc.) • Nearly all parties (FDP, SP, Greens, Christian Democrats — all but the SVP) • Union of Vaud municipalities (committed to municipal autonomy) |
Arguments and verdicts — more than 16 years on
▲ Arguments FOR (Yes camp) A mosaic of police forces is inefficient and costly: a single corps with equal powers for all is needed. The gendarmes denounced duplication and internal borders between municipal and cantonal police. — APGV campaign material, "Operation D'Artagnan" (RTS, 2009) ✓~ Partially confirmed Fifteen years after the coordinated police came into force, the initiators' diagnosis is back at centre stage: the gendarmes' unions call the system "at the end of the road", point to the complexity of a ten-corps organisation, and the government is again studying a single police force. Minister Vassilis Venizelos has called reform inevitable. Source: 24 heures, "Le canton envisage à nouveau une police unique" "Coordination" will solve neither duplication nor turf wars: it is a reform in name only. The initiators predicted the counter-proposal would merely postpone the problem. — APGV campaign, 2009 ✓~ Partially confirmed As early as 2015, a parliamentary postulate questioned the coordinated police's effectiveness. In 2025, the cantonal parliament adopted a postulate demanding avenues for improvement. The initiators' prophecy partly came true — even though the coordinated police operated for over a decade without a major security crisis. Source: vd.ch, cantonal parliament (postulate 25_POS_7); Radio Lac | ▼ Arguments AGAINST (No camp) Local proximity is essential: abolishing municipal police would cut the police off from the ground. The cities defended their forces as an irreplaceable neighbourhood service. — Campaign of the municipalities and their union, 2009 ✓ Confirmed The municipal and intermunicipal forces were kept, and the cities remain attached to them: none has voluntarily given up its corps since 2012. Even in the debate reignited in 2024-2025, preserving local anchoring remains a red line for the municipalities. Source: polcom-vd.ch; UCV police dossier The coordinated police offers unified command without upheaval: a pragmatic, lasting solution. The government presented the canton-municipalities agreement as the ripe fruit of twenty years of discussion. — Government position, 2009 campaign ✗~ Partially refuted The LOPV did come into force (2012) and held for over a decade — but "lasting" it was not: unions, parliament and now the government itself acknowledge its dysfunctions and are working to reform it, possibly replacing it with what the initiative proposed in 2009. Source: 24 heures (2024); vd.ch, cantonal parliament (2025) |
Factual record · 2026
1 Confirmed | 3 Partially | 0 Refuted | 0 Not applicable |
The coordinated police, from birth to reappraisal | polcom-vd.ch · 24 heures · vd.ch |
| ✓ | 1 January 2012 — the Vaud police organisation act (LOPV) comes into force: the cantonal police and nine municipal or intermunicipal forces under unified operational command. The promised counter-proposal becomes reality. |
| ~ | 2015 — first documented criticism: a postulate questions the coordinated police's actual effectiveness, its costs and the division of tasks between forces. |
| ~ | 2024 — the gendarmes' unions declare the coordinated police "at the end of the road"; the government, through minister Vassilis Venizelos, studies several reorganisation options, including a single police force — the very one the people rejected in 2009. |
| ~ | 2025 — the cantonal parliament adopts a postulate demanding avenues to improve the Vaud police system. The file opened in 2009 is still not closed. |
Sixteen years on, the vote of 27 September 2009 delivers a rare verdict: almost nobody was entirely wrong, and the debate is still not settled. The municipalities won at the ballot box and kept their police forces; the government got its coordinated police; and the gendarmes, defeated that Sunday, now see their diagnosis taken up by the very people who fought them.
For that is the great lesson of this file: the question raised by "Operation D'Artagnan" — how many police forces does a canton of fewer than a million inhabitants need? — has never received a definitive answer. The coordinated police worked, without major crisis, but without silencing criticism of duplication, costs and internal borders. When the government puts a single police force back on the drawing board, it is replaying 2009 with the roles reversed.
The institutional lesson remains: in Vaud, municipal autonomy is one of the strongest locks on cantonal politics. The cities sank the single police force in 2009; any future reform will have to reckon with them. D'Artagnan is back — but the municipal musketeers are guarding the door.