Member Information & Guidelines

Summary

This purpose of this knowledge base article is to provide important information to members of the police department in order to re-iterate useful and easily-forgotten information, and to provide them with with useful information and tips that they can use throughout their time while on-duty.

Public Domain Accessibility and Procedure or Policy Violations

This article, as with all of our knowledge base articles, is visible to everyone and also exists to educate the public about our procedures and general policies. Anyone who feels that a member of the police department did not follow proper procedure as outlined here (or in any of our other publicly available articles) or who otherwise believes that they were abused by a member of the police department is encouraged to report it to us. To get started on reporting an incident, please go here: https://www.ntwt.us/go/lcpd/report.

Note that reports can be made anonymously and are visible only by department personnel.

Ranks

There are a total of ten (10) ranks in the Liberty City Police Department. All members of the police department begin at rank #01 and are able to gradually climb up the ranks as they continue their work and general progression within the department. The ranks of the Liberty City Police Department are shown below, from highest to lowest.

Uniforms

In Grand Theft Auto IV's multiplayer freemode, unfortunately there is no such clothing option available for a uniform, other than changing player models via the use of cheats or modifications, which is of prohibited by organization policy. As there is no proper way to get obtain a uniform without the use of cheats, there remains no official uniform for members of the police department-- they are able to wear any clothing available to them. While not absolutely required, we generally recommend and encourage a business-casual look for members of the police department.

Side note: although it is possible to play as a police officer in the Cops 'n Crooks game mode, this is not a game mode the police department officially or actively supports.

Vehicles

Unlike the newer installments of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, players are not able to own their own set of vehicles. In Grand Theft Auto IV's multiplayer freemode, players are able to obtain any vehicle that is already spawned into the game either in traffic or when parked at a specific location.

Marked police cruisers are usually readily-available at any of the precinct stationhouses throughout the city, in addition to being very accessible throughout the normal traffic around the city. The Liberty City Police Department recommends all personnel adhere to utilizing authorized department vehicles for patrol and pursuit use. The table below outlines vehicles authorized for use by the various ranks.

^[1] - Vehicle only available found in The Ballad of Gay Tony expansion.

Weapons

In GTA IV, it is important to for members of the police department to remember that although players may not spawn with access to an entire arsenal of weapons like in GTA Online, players can pickup weapons on the map at specific locations, and even by getting into certain vehicles. Because of this, department personnel should always exercise caution when approaching every situation, always assume that everyone involved is armed, and be sure to keep checking-in with dispatch when responding to calls. Although we expect members of the department to practice caution, it is still your sole responsibility to remain professional and display a level of respect and courtesy when out in the field.

Members of the police department are recommended to navigate the city as appropriate to gather weapons for themselves prior to the start of their patrol shift. Remember to be discrete as other players are able to get these weapons just as easily as you are. When spawning into a new session that you start yourself, we recommend taking a vehicle and immediately getting armed with body armor and appropriate weapons.

Just like vehicles, members of the police department are restricted with what weapons they are permitted to use based on their rank within the department. Please refer to the table below for permitted weapons for each rank.

Jurisdictions

The Liberty City Police Department has full jurisdiction over the entire city of Liberty City.

Issuing Arrests, Citations, and Warnings

Arrests, citations, and warnings should be issued in accordance with standard department regulations. These should only be issued against crimes that we observe— which can be found on the Laws page. It is important to keep up-to-date with the contents of that page, as laws are updated regularly based on the normal evolution of the environment. In general, arrests, citations, and warnings for misdemeanors are issued at the discretion of the responding member of the police department.

Arrest

When you are able to capture and neutralize a subject with department-regulated weapon or vehicle, this is considered an arrest. It is mostly similar to the AI-police in GTA Online, since killing you is considered a bust, and they do not actually transport you to a jail or prison facility.

Citation

If you are attempting to capture a subject wanted for one or more criminal activities, and they escape by leaving the session, you are now effectively unable to arrest them— therefore you would issue them a citation. Issuing a citation is considered a hands-off equivalent to an arrest, and is recommended to be issued when an arrest is not possible for circumstances potentially out of your control. Other incidents that would warrant a citation rather than arrest for example, would be the appropriate procedure when handling a cheater. Cheaters will often have cheat tools to allow them to initiate cyber-attacks that can cause much grief upon other players, such as locking-down player movements, kicking or banning them from sessions, and even crashing games of other players. Because of this, standard procedure when coming across a cheater is to silently issue them a citation and move on. In most cases, we recommend leaving a session once discovering a cheater, as cheaters often have the power to be malicious and cause unwanted effects such as draining the in-game bank accounts of other players or doing other similar egregious acts to other players.

Incidents and Warnings

If you do not wish to arrest or issue a citation to someone who may have committed a misdemeanor (a minor crime), you may issue them a warning. This may be a verbal warning, where you do not file any information on the incident, or better yet, you can document the incident by filing an incident report. Filing an incident report does not count as an arrest or citation, and simply establishes the fact that such an incident actually occurred.

Cheaters (aka "Modders" and other Violators)

For the sake of discussion, anyone utilizing cheats in an online setting is labeled as a cheater regardless of any specific actions they do or do not partake in while using cheat tools. Due to the nature of the technical structure of this installment of Grand Theft Auto, cheaters are capable of having an enormous amount of power over others in the session. In addition to the usual problems of them being able to utilize invincibility cheats and give themselves unfair advantages in other ways, they often also have the ability to perform far more malice, by changing the statistics of another player in the session, crashing the games of other players, and/or revealing the physical locations of other players in the real world which can be used to commit not only cyber-crimes, but also actual physical crimes to invoke harm upon others in the real world.

Standard Operating Procedure for Department Members Reporting Cheaters

For the security of our members, department policy dictates that members of the police department are generally not to engage with cheaters and avoid them as much as possible. Instead, department members can do their due diligence by filing a citation for any cheaters they discover, but only after doing what they can to verify that the player's information to the best of their ability.

For each discovered cheater:

1. Verify (to the best of your ability) that their in-game name is not spoofed.
   • On PC, make sure their in-game name matches with their Windows Live ID profile.
   • On PlayStation Network and XBox Live, try to see if their in-game name that is linked to their platform profile matches the one found on Social Club. Their Social Club profile can be viewed by accessing the Pause Menu > Online > Players > (Choose the Player) > Show Profile.
2. Make note of each violation they are committing or cheat they are using.
3. If possible and it is safe to do so, gather any possible evidence by taking screenshots or photos (1-3 photos preferred).
4. Gather their Account ID (aka Rockstar ID or RID) information if possible via the Rockstar Games Social Club website.
5. Submit a citation using the information gathered.

As a reminder, it is strongly recommended against utilizing the in-game report system to report cheaters. Although there is little to nothing we can do at this time to prevent cheaters, we can at the very least properly document cases that we can see for a proper digital paper trail.