Hey fellow Law Enforcers With this topic I'd like to inform and assist you in understanding and creating a police department. It's important that departments are organised and have a structure to ensure officers are appointed to tasks and supervisors ensure tasks are completed. While rank structure is an important part of your department, it's also important to have a good divisional structure. Hopefully at the end of the text you're a bit wiser on how a police department works. We'll start of with Police Ranks.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
  Hierarchy Staff Officers Chief Of Police - In charge of the department and handles public relations with other departments aswell as controls internal procedures and protocolsDeputy
Assistant Chief Of Police - In charge of the department when the Chief of Police is on absence
Deputy Chief of Police - In charge of a large part of the department, known as an Office. Example: Office of Operations or Office of Counter Terrorism Command Officers Commander - In charge of a training within the department. Example: Sergeant In Training or Detective In Training
Captain - In charge of a precinct or leads all patrols within a certain area and acts as a supervisor to supervisors.
Lieutenant - In charge of a larger division and serves as city wide/ patrol wide supervisor. Supervisor Sergeant - In charge of smaller divisions or head of certain aspects within divisions. Alse the first contact point for basic officers
Senior Lead Officer - A non commissioned officer who is in training to become either a supervisor or detective.. Investigator Detective In Charge - In charge of a investigation division and will handle day to day requests from lower ranked Detectives. Also in charge of casefiles.
Detective - Basic detective who investigates crimes after they happened and observes organised crimes
Senior Lead Officer - A non commissioned officer who is in training to become either a supervisor or detective. Non Commissioned Officers Police Officer III - Patrol officer who teaches the new officers the way around the department.
Police Officer II - Basic Patrol officer who makes up most of the department.
Police Officer I - Newly inducted Police Officers who are in their probationary stage and learn the way of the department. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Hierarcy With the previous mentioned hierarcy the base of your department should be filled. However it is always possible to adjust the ranks towards the need of your department. For example you can create a Senior Sergeant who would be a basic sergeant, but in training to become a Lieutenant. Another example is a Lieutenant I and Lieutenant II. Where the I would ensure larger divisions are kept under control the Lieutenant II would handle a precinct or multiple patrols. Ranks also work hand in had with your organisation. For example if you have 7 divisions it might be wise to have 7 lieutenants or a few lieutenants of the bigger divisions and sergeants of the smaller divisions. It's important to know your department, because some divisions will require more intense handeling than others. Warrants and searches require more knowledge of the penal code and law than a traffic division. For that reason it's better to have a Lieutenant handle the Investigation divisions and a Sergeant the Traffic Division. The higher the rank the more legal and situational knowledge a person must have.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Organization Chart _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Organization Know your department and its needs! It's very important to ensure your department has a wide arrangement of divisions people can join so their day to day tasks are never the same and never boring. A good structure is most needed in the department and every part of it has a person controlling it. Divisions by Sergeants, Large divisions by Lieutenants, Precincts by Captains, Offices by Deputy Chiefs and at the top the Chief of Police. The way a good structure works if that a basic officer will not have to complain to the Chief of Police. If he has a problem he should go to his appointed sergeant. If he can not solve it, the sergeant goes to his superior and so on. Because there are limited amounts of divisions in an Office there will be a good overview of them all. It's important that the division leader reports to the Office leader and the Office leader to the Chief of Police. Ensure to give your Deputy Chief of Police enough power to change his Office by only having to inform the Chief of Police with the changes. This way there is more control and better support for every division and they will know who too contact when there is a problem. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ GENERAL NOTICE: If you have comments or have questions about a certain aspect within the police department, you can always ask it here. I'll try to give a good answer to every question asked. Obviously if your question is important, it will also be added in the topic along with the explanation. If you have certain subjects to add aswell you can always PM me and it will be added into the topic along with credits too your name. This topic is aimed to give a detailed guide on how to make or understand a police department and hopefully the community works with eachother to give tips to other servers. Sorry for possible writing errors