The municipal police is a recent addition to the security forces. A municipal police had first been created in 1977, but was abolished 1 January 1984 in the early days of the Thomas Sankara revolution. The existence of the new municipal police stems from the administrative decentralization laws of 3 and 6 August 1998. Each of the 345 communes in Burkina Faso may choose to organize a municipal police. As of 2009, 22 communes employing a total of complement of 760 "agents" had done so.