Introduction. The history of the militia during the Great Patriotic War, the history of educational institutions that provided professional training of militiamen in 1941-1945, the fates of their graduates are the basis of patriotic education of modern police officers. Despite the fact that issues related to the professional training of militia personnel have been discussed in separate works on the history of the police, the history of educational institutions that trained militia personnel during the Great Patriotic War in Leningrad remains unexplored to this day. Methods. The retrospective analysis of the organisation and activity of Leningrad militia schools during the Great Patriotic War was carried out on the basis of the principles of objectivity and comprehensiveness of the research. The main methodological approach was defined as systemic. The authors used general scientific (methods of deduction and induction, analysis and synthesis, generalisation and concretisation) and special (comparative-legal, problem-chronological, formal-legal, statistical) methods, as well as the specific-historical method, that allows to take into account the conditions, factors and circumstances in which the activity of militia schools was carried out, and the biographical method, focusing on the study of personal influence on the organisation and activity of educational institutions that trained militia personnel in Leningrad. Results. Taking into account that the first police schools appeared after giving the police a staffed body in 1918, the organisational prerequisites for the establishment of professional training schools for Soviet policemen in Leningrad, the formation of a multi-level system of training police personnel of various profiles; the peculiarities of professional training of police personnel in Leningrad in the pre-war years; the specifics of professional training of policemen in Leningrad in the conditions of the Great Patriotic War are considered. The forms and methods of training were adjusted in the extreme conditions of the war, but the training of militiamen did not stop. Particular attention is paid to the restructuring of the work of police schools in Leningrad in 1941 to meet the requirements of wartime, to the participation of cadets and teachers of Leningrad police schools in combat operations at the front, and to the organisation of militia education in Leningrad after the blockade was broken.