It was said in the time of Sinnoh's dictatorship that a Staravia's sharp eyes and ears, loyalty to their flock, and ferocity in battle made them the perfect symbol of the secret police. But those qualities were not merely symbolic; the uniformed men who were claimed to go after dissidents were merely a decoy to absorb rebel attacks. The real secret police were not humans – who after all, no matter how outwardly loyal, always had their own agenda – but the personal Staravia flock of the tyrant who lorded over Sinnoh.
These Staravia, and the regime itself, were marked by the so-called "M" symbol familiar today in art depicting Staravia. It is commonly found both in human cultures and nature – even the name recalls an Unown form it somewhat resembles – and it probably covered most Staravia even before the dictatorship, but the dictator was noted for rearranging his Staravia's feathers to conform them to that pattern. Many descendants of those the dictator tyrannized still recoil at its sight and go so far as to shape their own Staravia's feathers to blot out that symbol of evil which many wild Staravia still carry.
The flock of secret police Staravia dispersed into the wild when their master was overthrown, and even the oldest have probably not survived to this day. But humans and powerful pokemon alike still often recoil in fear from a Staravia's glare in a distant memory of that time. For back then, whenever a Staravia came it came to take entire families who had one member suspected of dissent into Sinnoh's dark and secret prisons, from which there was no hope of escape. And for years after the revolution, scattered reports still told of Staravia carrying people away in the middle of the night.