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This article takes a fresh look at the role of the SipoSiPo-SD police force in occupied Belgium, often presented as all-powerful. However, this German police force was essentially a small bureaucratic institution that functioned reactively rather than proactively. Our analysis is structured around three hypotheses. Firstly, the SiPo-SD was merely one repressive apparatus among others. Secondly, its position within the German police force as a whole was not dictated by competition with other institutions, including the military administration. Thirdly, the political police did not form a homogeneous ensemble, but rather had several dividing lines.