Metamor City Police Department (MCPD):
The MCPD is the largest local law enforcement agency in the world, responsible for the protection of more than 15 million citizens. With 80,000 regular officers and over 30,000 special purpose officers -- larger than the armies of many nations -- the MCPD wages a constant battle against chaos, violence, and the venality of human nature.
The MCPD is divided into bureaus, each of which is responsible for different duties within the organization.
Patrol Services Bureau: Focuses on the prevention of crime, the containment and suppression of direct criminal activity, and response to emergencies. These are the primary "uniformed cops" that arrive when you call for help.
Detective Bureau: Responsible for crime investigation, tracking down suspects and accomplices, and recovering missing persons and stolen property. These are the folks in suits who come around asking questions after a crime occurs. Kate Kitaen and David Silverleaf are members of the Detective Bureau, as is Morgan Drauling (who is a member of the Forensic Investigation Division).
Transportation Bureau: These uniformed cops are responsible for maintaining order in the city's transportation systems, including the skyways, subways, train stations, and skyship ports. The cop who writes you a ticket for running a traffic light belongs to this bureau.
Criminal Justice Bureau: These cops mostly work desk jobs. They're responsible for coordinating operations between police officers, especially detectives, and the district attorneys responsible for prosecuting cases. The CJB's mission is to minimize the time between arrest and arraignment of suspects by promoting orderly collection of evidence and good communication between cops and DAs.
Internal Affairs Bureau: These are the cops charged with investigating police corruption, brutality, and other forms of misconduct. Widely disliked by other cops, the IA nevertheless have one of the most important jobs on the force.
Training Bureau: Responsible for the initial and ongoing training of police officers for all of the other bureaus.
Support Services Bureau: Another group of "desk cops", Support Services is responsible for handling the technical and operational logistics for the rest of the force. These are the folks who keep the squad skimmers running, make sure there's coffee in the cupboards every morning, and organize (and digitize!) the reams of paperwork generated by the other bureaus in the course of doing their jobs.
Personnel Bureau: These people handle all the HR concerns for the department, including recruitment, applicant processing, health insurance, and employee management. The recruiter making the rounds at Empire University is with these guys.
Housing Bureau: These officers maintain peace, order and organization at the various public housing projects and homeless shelters around the City, most of which are at Street level.
Each bureau is further divided into divisions. Some divisions are geographical in nature, focused on a specific group of precincts; others are topical, specializing in a particular type of police work. The Detective Bureau has five Regional Divisions, which handle general investigation in different parts of the city -- Central, Valley North, Valley South, Broadfield, and Soulshore. The first three should be self-explanatory; Broadfield Division covers the southern suburbs of the City, beyond the Metamor Valley, while Soulshore covers the corresponding region north of the Valley and along the shore of the Sea of Souls.
The Detective Bureau also has five Specialist Divisions:
Central Investigation and Resource Divison: This division specializes in criminal profiling, hostage negotiation, and special victims. They also maintain the mug shot database.
Forensic Investigation Division: These are the coroners, medical examiners, and other forensics specialists who gather evidence at crime scenes or dissect it in the morgues and laboratories. Morgan Drauling is a member of Forensics.
Fugitive Enforcement Division: This division handles cold cases and tracking down individuals with outstanding warrants. They also are responsible for juvenile crime, for historical reasons most folks have forgotten by now.
Organized Crime Division: Responsible for investigating narcotics, racketeering, skimmer crime, vice crimes (e.g., unlicensed prostitution and gambling), and other activities that are likely to be associated with organized crime syndicates.
Special Investigation Division: A catch-all division that handles major thefts, high-profile kidnappings, arson, terrorism, missing persons, WorldNet crime, and other duties. Many of the best detectives from other divisions end up being transferred here, and SID agents are generally considered the elites of the force.
Each division is further divided into squads. A detective squad within a Regional Division typically handles investigations of crimes occuring within a specific precinct (an organizational unit of the city, typically housing 50,000 to 100,000 citizens). In the Specialist Divisions, a squad may handle a specific type of police work for many different precincts.
Within a precinct squad, detectives assigned to different duties are organized into separate sections. Each section typically consists of only a few people, ranging from two up to a dozen or so. Kate and David, for example, are the only members of the Magic Affairs Section in Precinct 9, while the Homicide Section has seven members (including rookie Michael Perelli).
Each precinct squad is administered by a captain, who assigns detectives to cases as appropriate. (Each precinct also has a Patrol Services captain, who works with the captain of the detective squad to coordinate their activities.) Senior detectives answering directly to the captain are lieutenants; this is the rank held by Kate and David. Below the lieutenants are sergeants, followed by corporals, more commonly known as "rookies". There are no "privates" in the MCPD, which has been the source of numerous off-color jokes between the police and the military.
Above the precinct level, each division is administered by a deputy chief, who in turn answers to the bureau chief, who answers to the police commissioner. The police commissioner answers to the mayor of Metamor City, currently the avatar Thomas X.
The base of operations for several of our key protagonists, the Precinct 9 station house is located in the Central Regional Division on the first skyway level, about two blocks south and a block east of the Square. The precinct's territory covers the Street and the first and second skyway levels in about a half a square mile of actual city, as well as the southeast quarter of the Square. (The Citadel has its own security force, which is answerable directly to the Ministry of Defense; thus, Precinct 9 does not handle cases within the Citadel itself.) The precinct's Transportation cops are also responsible for policing the two subway stations in their territory.
Precinct 9 houses the following people, among others. Entries marked N/A denote necessary characters who have not yet been created; authors are welcome to create these characters and submit their biographies for inclusion on this site.
9th Pct. Detective Squad Leader: Captain Joseph Montgomery
9th Pct. Patrol Squad Leader: N/A
9th Pct. Detectives:
Homicide Section:
2 lieutenants (N/A)
3 sergeants (N/A)
Corporal Michael Perelli (N/A)
3 other corporals (N/A)Magic Affairs Section:
Larceny Section:
1 lieutenant (N/A)
3 sergeants (N/A)
4 corporals (N/A)
9th Pct. Support Services:
Lt. Marcie Kryzlowski, office administrator
Desk sergeant (N/A)
Dispatch coordinator (N/A)
2 corporals (N/A)
9th Pct. CJB:
1 lieutenant (N/A), Justice liason
1 sergeant (N/A), deputy liason
2 corporals (N/A), paralegals
9th Pct. Patrol Service Officers:
12 uniformed cops of varying rank (N/A)
9th Pct. Transportation Officers:
20 uniformed cops of varying rank (N/A)
Forensic Investigation Division, Squad 2:
1 captain (N/A), Forensics squad leader
Lt. Dr. Morgan Drauling, head medical examiner
2 sergeants (N/A), junior medical examiners
2 sergeants (N/A), lead coroners
8 corporals (N/A), assistant coroners
Other forensic specialists, as necessary
(FID Squad 2 is located in a network of labs and offices that intermingles with both the Precinct 9 station house and the hospital next door. The morgue, in the "basement" of the station house, connects the two buildings, though both are really part of the same super-skyscraper.)