Settling in the Social Republic in the north of Italy, Koch joined the Special Service of Republican Police led by Tullio Tamburini.[1] In January 1944, he established the Banda Koch as a special task force charged with hunting down partisans and rounding up deportees for the Germans.[1] Koch came under the protection of Herbert Kappler, SD chief in Koch's base of Rome, and as such had a free hand to employ whatever tactics he saw fit with Banda Koch, which soon became a by-word for cruelty and violence.[1] Koch was given his own prisons and torture chambers and continued his activity in Florence and then Milan following the fall of Rome to the Allies.[1] Along with police chief Pietro Caruso, who was independently involved in the killing of partisans, Koch was behind hundreds of deaths; the Social Republic government even ordered an amnesty for political prisoners not charged with murder out of fear that Koch would have them killed.[2]