Latvian Auxiliary Police was a paramilitary force created from Latvian volunteers and conscripts by the Nazi German authorities who occupied the country in June/July 1941. It was part of the Schutzmannschaft (Shuma), native police forces organized by the Germans in occupied territories and subordinated to the Order Police (Ordnungspolizei; Orpo). Some units of the Latvian auxiliary police were involved in the Holocaust.

In addition to regular stationary police (patrolmen in cities and towns), 30 police battalions were formed. These mobile groups carried out guard duties of strategic objects or building fortifications, participated in anti-partisan operations and fought on the Eastern Front.

The auxiliary police force consisted primarily of those who had served in Latvian police, army, and militia organization which had been disbanded upon the prior Soviet occupation in 1940. Within the first week of the German occupation, Franz Walter Stahlecker, the leader of Einsatzgruppe A, tasked Lt. Colonel Voldemārs Veiss with organizing a police force to operate under the command of the SS. One of the earliest units formed was in Daugavpils, which German forces reached on June 28, 1941, six days after launching the Operation Barbarossa. Roberts Blūzmanis was appointed chief of the Latvian Auxiliary Police in Nazi-occupied Daugavpils. An auxiliary police force was in Riga under Nazi auspices on July 3, 1941, headed by Latvian captain, Pētersons. According to a German report of July 16, 1941, the auxiliary police force consisted of 240 men in six police districts with some members assigned to Kriminalpolizei (KriPo) and Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) work.

The Latvian auxiliary police were usually tasked with the arrest of Jews as well as the digging of pits for their graves. One of the most infamous of these executions was the Liepāja massacres of December 12, 1941. Here, as in the case of small towns, the Latvian auxiliary police was directly involved, participating in the arrest of Jews and contributing one firing squad at Šķēde.

The first police battalion (1st Schutzmannschaft Battalion Riga, later 16th Police Battalion Zemgale) was formed in September 1941 and sent to the Eastern Front on October 21.^{[citation needed]} The second of the Latvian police battalions to be sent outside Latvia left for Belarus on December 28, 1941 (numbered 17th by the Germans). The third (the 21st) was sent to the front at Leningrad on March 30, 1942, but at first underwent training and built fortifications there. It was actually placed in the front line in July. The front around Leningrad was held not only by Germans and Finns, but also by Norwegians, Dutch, Danes, Belgians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and the Spanish Blue Division.^{[citation needed]}

According to Betsy Reed,

"By 1943 there were one Latvian SS divisions and around 100,000 Latvians were in German uniform, either in auxiliary police units or in the SS legion. Unusually, the Nazis dispatched their Latvian collaborators way beyond their native territory, to Byelorussia, Ukraine and Warsaw."

In July 1942, the 22nd Daugava and 272nd Daugavgrīva Battalions were sent to Warsaw where they carried out guard duties on the outside perimeter of the Warsaw Ghetto. The 22nd battalion also participated in convoys of inmates from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. In February–March 1943, eight Latvian battalions took part in the punitive anti-partisan Operation Winterzauber near the Belarus–Latvia border which resulted in 439 burnt down villages, 10,000 to 12,000 deaths, over 7,000 taken for forced labor or imprisoned at the Salaspils concentration camp.