Police Forces

[CJHusVar]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the status of some of the larger urban police departments I don't really find anything in the published material that discusses them. "State Defense Forces", sure, but nothing on local or state law enforcement.

These are LARGE organizations, especially when one looks at departments like the NYPD, the Chicago Police and the LAPD. Granted a good number of officers would be mobilized reservists or draftees, but surely these agencies just didn't pack it in.

[Olefin]

The NYC module Armies of the Night mentions that whats left of the police force has retreated from Manhattan and is with what is left of the city government in the Bronx - describes it as a handful of metropolitan police. You would figure that in many areas the police may have broken up or been recruited into either militia units or impressed into military MP forces.

[Raellus]

Good Question

I've been wrestling with this question in my Arkansas-set T2030 campaign. Like you said, a lot of reservists and National / State Guard members will be recalled to active duty. Then again, a lot of volunteer and auxiliaries will likely be "called up to the big leagues" as it were. I reckon you'd see a lot of hasty deputizations as well. I still think you'd see a net loss in law enforcement manpower at pretty much every level (national, state, county, municipal), though, with departments shrinking as they lose officers to the military.

I think it will also vary state-by-state. I think a lot of states will declare martial law and activate their State Guard/State Defense Force, using said at least part of the time for law enforcement duties. This would be prevalent in states that have been invaded (i.e. the Southwest or Alaska & the Pacific Northwest), or those dealing with groups like New America.

In any case, State Guard /SDFs will probably wear two hats- traditional military and law enforcement.

[Legbreaker]

Working on what to do with police in the Anzac book too. What I've come to is that every area will be different and local conditions dictate the situation.
One area for example is essentially a police state with the government and law enforcement holding very tight control over almost all aspects of the citizens there.
Other areas the best you can hope for is a sympathetic vigilante coming by....maybe...

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I can imagine though, that governments would try to preserve their various police forces for as long as possible simply because you still need police even if there's a war on.
I would question the idea of most (or even, many) police officers being called up for military service because there has already been a precedent set from WW2 whereby certain occupations were seen as vital for the functioning of the state and were thus exempt from military service.

This exemption, depending on the national need, applied to farmers, truck & train drivers and police as well as other occupations.
However for T2k, once the war starts grinding down the world and governments start losing their influence & control, I can easily see the police force being run down either through poaching of personnel, neglect by the government or by choice of the individual police officers (who feel that other issues are of more concern for them e.g. protecting their families).

[bash]

I don't see any reason for anyone's military to actively draft police officers for military service in the TW. In terms of warm bodies the selective service pool is far larger and skews younger than the average police officer. A drafted police officer and fresh high school graduate require the same BT/AIT investment. It's not like you hand the typical police officer an M-16 and they're an instant Rambo. Even SWAT is usually just some extra training, a couple qualifications, and getting to wear TactiCool gear once in a while.

That being said, there's no way any government is going to take police off the streets in light of a nuclear exchange. Most areas will need all the help they can get maintaining order and/or responding to the active disaster that is the world. Police forces would likely increase in manpower with deputization and crash training programs.

As order breaks down later in the war police forces might form the nucleus of some local militias or bandit gangs due to the fact they had some pre-war organization and infrastructure. Police stations would also make good HQs for militias and bandits for the same reasons.

[mpipes]

In my campaign, the LAPD became more dependent on Reserve police officer, and many of the Reserve force were working full time as police officers by TDM. Most of the LAPD personnel was killed during TDM and in the immediate aftermath. The entire area was still very chaotic when the Mexican Army invaded, and most surviving officers ended up in ad hoc militia units fighting the Mexican Army. Most police armories were destroyed by firestorms in the aftermath of the nuclear attack. Surviving police armories have been thoroughly culled through by surviving officers or systematically looted. Even most of the destroyed armories were picked over by salvage parties or looters, but there are pockets of police weapons and ammo still remaining in the ruins of police stations.

[Legbreaker]

A drafted police officer and fresh high school graduate require the same BT/AIT investment. It's not like you hand the typical police officer an M-16 and they're an instant Rambo.

I can't speak for other countries of course, but here police are barely trained with their service pistol and are lucky to fire off a mag or two on the range once a year. The priority is on them finding ways to avoid the need to shoot, and most couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with another barn!
Even the supposed "elites" of the various tactical response groups (pick your appropriate acronym) aren't known for their proficiency or even general firearms knowledge.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I can't speak for other countries of course, but here police are barely trained with their service pistol and are lucky to fire off a mag or two on the range once a year. The priority is on them finding ways to avoid the need to shoot, and most couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with another barn!
Even the supposed "elites" of the various tactical response groups (pick your appropriate acronym) aren't known for their proficiency or even general firearms knowledge.

Hehehe oh yeah, spot on.
I remember watching the news at various times in the 1990s, where they showed footage of some of Australia's special police units when they were tracking dangerous fugitives in the Aussie bush. You could immediately spot the ones who had some bush knowledge or even just bush walking experience - they were the only ones who were not looking at their feet as they "cleared" the scrub. And sad to say, there weren't many of them with any sort of rural tactical knowledge until the started getting training from the SAS.

A mate of mine is a former Western Australian Police (WAPol) officer, his experiences with some of the officers from the Tactical Response Group (TRG, the West Aussie police special unit) was... well, let's just say less than favourable. In his own words, half of them were decent officers, the other half were cowboys who wanted the prestige of being in the "elite" unit.

The TRG have a few nicknames and none of the ones I've heard are positive...
The Terribly Rough Guys is probably the least negative (but it's also the one that many WAPol officers used when talking about the TRG).
Another, based on their fairly common ability to raid the wrong house when attempting to capture dangerous criminals was Totally (w)Rong Grid. You don't get nicknames like that unless you're consistently fucking up.

[Olefin]

I actually go into some detail on the police in Kenya who are one of the few countries that still have intact police forces - and I address issues like how they were not known for being the best shots or being very well armed. Of course there the police are broken up into various branches including the General Service Unit which is a paramilitary branch.

[Gunner]

So, I can only speak to my experience. I currently live in Urban Maryland, but for eight years I lived in Central Arkansas. My family has a long history in law enforcement that I won't bore you with.

The primary reason that I believe you would see very poor retention among most law enforcement agencies is that a good part of the force, sometimes a majority, just doesn't live in the community where they work. For example, if I recall correctly, the last time I checked, something like 60% of the Little Rock (AR) Police Department lives outside the city. I know in my small town, nearly all of the patrol officers lived elsewhere. Only Sergeants and above generally lived in town, and not all of them. I recall that our Chief of Police actually lived in another town, where he had worked his way up the ranks. When he was passed over for the Chief's job in his town, he took the job in our town. Not sure how long he stayed. Law enforcement is one career where at least limited geographic mobility was the norm. It's my experience, that a police officer might work for three or four different departments over a 20-year career and might leave a department for a span of years and then return when a new opportunity becomes available.

Of course, post-Twilight War, this kind of mobility will be unheard of and I could see a 'reshuffling' of officers, as some officers stay and protect the communities they DO live in, but there is also the additional issue that, outside of densely urban areas, alot of officers live in the rural area outside the city/town area where they work and would, I feel, be motivated to "protect the homestead" rather than a community of semi-strangers.

The issue of law enforcement officers also being subject to military reserve/National Guard recall has been covered well by others.

[Legbreaker]

Hehehe oh yeah, spot on.

This rather nicely sums up most of them.

[Raellus]

I wish that were the case here. Police in the U.S. are much more heavily armed, mostly because the populace is too.

I'm no legal expert, but I reckon that reservists and National Guardsmen in law enforcement wouldn't be given the choice to stay with their departments if/whn called up. I think this would have a significant impact on police strength. I can't give you a percentage right now, but quite a few police officers/sheriff's deputies are ex-military. And, even with the draft, I think the government would dip into the civilian law enforcement pool. IIRC, I've read articles about police departments struggling to put officers on the streets during the Iraq surge, when the DoD was desperate for boots on the ground overseas.

I agree that after the TDM, all bets would be off and it would be every state and municipality for itself.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

<snip> And, even with the draft, I think the government would dip into the civilian law enforcement pool. IIRC, I've read articles about police departments struggling to put officers on the streets during the Iraq surge, when the DoD was desperate for boots on the ground overseas.
<snip>

Do you think that thought process would still be applied in a world war situation I'm inclined to think that with the massive reduction of male population due to the need for warm bodies on the front lines of a world war, that it would be given a lot of serious thought by the government before pillaging police manpower.
The reason I think that is because I think it would be more important than ever to maintain (somewhat effective) police forces while the national effort is focused on the global conflict.

[CDAT]

I think that it would depend on the point of the conflict. Just looking at my old department, when I was with them we had about twenty five officers, I do not know how we compared to other departments but at least 75% of our officer were prior service or in the guard/reserves. With about 1/3 to 1/2 of them in the Guard/Reserves we would lose them likely at the start of the war. How many of the others would we lose when they started needing more people, as most of them were recently out so not much needed to bring them back up to speed, or fill out leaderships spots in the expanding military