While significant progress has been made in understanding democratic consolidation and backsliding, the dynamics of autocratic consolidation remain less explored. Central to this process is the autocrat’s control over bureaucratic institutions, most importantly the policing apparatus. As theory suggests, autocrats face a trade-off between appointing competent officials and ensuring ideological loyalty, while bureaucrats must signal sufficient alignment to retain their positions. This paper examines this trade-off empirically in the context of Italy’s Fascist regime by leveraging individual-level data on people under police surveillance and a newly compiled dataset of historical chiefs of police (prefects). We find that prefects affiliated with the Fascist party engaged in less political repression than career-appointed prefects, suggesting that party membership reduced their need to signal loyalty through repressive actions. Further, we document the relationship between repression practices and prefects’ career trajectories, we characterise the individuals targeted for repression based on political leanings and profession, and we gauge how discriminate policing was by proxying the number of convictions. Our findings provide new empirical insights into a renewed debate on state capture by perspective rulers in nascent autocracies, suggesting that regime supporters might be less ruthless than their career-track counterparts.