Corruption / Miscoduct / Internal Affairs
Inexperienced and/or Officer with low salary should prone to corruption / miscoduct. Let me go in details.
Inexperienced but well paid officer may commit a miscoduct such as excessive force on a person (civilian, gang member, doesnt matter), harassing a civilian, disrespectful and general unprofessionalism.
In this case, a civilian may dial 991 (Non emergency) requesting for Police Supervisor (Sergeant+ only) to attend on scene. If one is available, you should be able to send one or refuse. If sending, then the police supervisor will handle everything – you dont have to do anything. The officer is then reprimanded and you are notified why they got reprimanded. You can do whatever you want. Fire him or let him go for now?
As for corruption, this should happen only if the officer is recruited directly from a gang (ie. Paperwork error showing the gang member being an ordinary good civilian) and/or officers with low/poor salaries.
In this case, they will resort to getting bribes, overlook crimes and on some cases, kill unjustified. In this case you get an alert and given the option to fire him and arrest him (if the act has been witnessed and PROVED) or launch IA investigation.
Internal Affairs. All Chiefs are automatically investigators. You dont have to do much, it should be just a progression. once it goes 100% you are given the outcome and two choices: Fire and arrest or ignore. Ignoring can seriously damage the reputation and you will definitely get sacked from the city hall if civilians protest with valid proof.
Please don’t over do this. While it should absolutely be a feature, it’s not very common that there is corruption in law enforcement. What is slightly more common is that officers are human beings and they make mistakes, such as violate policies which do require some sort of IA depending on the situation or at least corrective action. Real life law enforcement is not hollywood so please don’t get stupid with it. Also, NO officer should ever be recruited from a gang. That’s what a background investigation is for.
Definitely agree with keeping it balanced.
Mistakes should happen more with inexperienced officers – and there should be some kind of suspension period whilst they’re investigated, maybe demoted, or sent for additional training (time off patrol etc.) These can range from small mistakes to serious ones which may end in firing/prosecution of the officer. Obviously the more serious mistakes should be much rarer. Basic admin mistakes needing the officer to return to the station for a period of time to correct it could be fairly common, but accidentally shooting someone or losing evidence should be pretty rare.
Corruption yes should be a feature, but needs to be carefully thought out – I would hate to have a department where it felt like half my officers were corrupt due to poor gameplay mechanics/RNG.