Shanghai Municipal Police
New policing methods, including combat pistol shooting, hand to hand combat skills, and knife fight training, were pioneered by British Assistant Commissioner William E. Fairbairn and officer Eric Anthony Sykes of the Shanghai Municipal Police as a response to a staggering rise in armed crime in the 1920s - Shanghai had become one of the world's most dangerous cities due to a breakdown in law and order in the country and the growth of organised crime and the opium trade.