As a veteran of the Freeburg Police Department, Sheriff of Sharpwood and Junior Park Ranger, I’ve accumulated considerable expertise in fictional law enforcement that I wish to share in the English language. This guide will focus on personell and management, but should contain helpful advice for any wanna-be police chief, even though most of it will be attainable through experience. Needless to say, this guide contains content known to the State of California to be spoilers.
Contents
Loyalty
All credit goes to Mavrah!
In This is the Police 2, you hire, manage, train and deploy police officers (called ‘cops’ in derogatory slang) to fight crime and protect the public of Sharpwood. Let’s start with the basics.
Every officer has a portrait. In this portrait, you’ll find their eyes (or lack thereof) burning their way into your soul as you send them to their doom. You will also be able to identify their loyalty using the portrait. Loyalty is on an invisible scale, but only has two stages. ‘Loyal’ officers all wear the same uniform and accompanying headgear. They will work more than one day in a row, obey your orders in the field and run errands for you without complaint (usually). ‘Disloyal’ officers can immediately be recognised by their appearance. They are usually disheveled, unkempt and out of uniform. They will not work more than one day in a row. If they think your orders are bad ideas, they will refuse to follow them. They will not run errands for the people of the city. MOST importantly, in a tactical situation, they will run and gun with no coordination. Any disloyal officers included in a tactical assault will compromise your mission and will most likely get themselves and other officers killed. Do not bring them along on ANY assault mission.
Loyalty, fortunately, is easy to buy. Just send them to the spa for a little while. For some reason, people just love getting whipped with brooms. In order to do this, the officer must not have a full stamina bar. It also costs $1,600 to send up to three at a time. You should recieve a notification any time an officer’s loyalty changes. Also, you should automatically gain the complete loyalty of every officer currently in your employ when you succeed in getting them indoor plumbing. Maintaining loyalty is a bit more work. If they ask for the day off and you refuse, their loyalty decreases. If they have a food request (in that one annoying mini-game that you have for like three days) and you fail to satisfy, their loyalty decreases. If you’re a bad police chief and make a stupid decision, their loyalty decreases. Your quality as a supervisor will be the most significant factor in deciding their loyalty.
Professionalism / Experience
This is a very important stat. It is denoted by the numbers you see above their portrait on their info card. In the previous game, this determined the officer’s ability to succesfully complete a task and fight crime. In this game, professionalism/experience fills a meter required to send your officers out on call. You NEED to fill this meter, or you can’t send out your officers. In late-game, the meter is HUGE, and you need to have lots of experienced officers on-duty every day. Start training early.
Every 50 points of experience unlocks an upgrade for your officer. You get to chose this upgrade (discussed later).
When the officers arrest a criminal with no civilian casualties and no police casualties, all officers involved in the event gain experience. Officers who performed actions leading to the success of the mission gain bonus experience. Officers also gain experience in large quantities after assaults. Failing the mission parameters causes officers to lose experience.
Energy
At the bottom of the officer’s character card is a bar showing their current energy. An officer burns energy when he goes out on a call and does certain story events and favors. A full meter will be green. As the officer works, bars will dissappear, changing color to orange and then red.
An officer whose energy is in the red should NOT be sent on any more calls that day. He is liable to fall asleep at the wheel and cause a wreck. Leave him be for the rest of the day, and let him recouperate tomorrow.
Officers will regain their energy during their days off, and at the spa and Ice Hole. The Ice Hole can give your officers pneumonia, and is less cost-effective. Either don’t overwork your officers or give them a day off.
Alcoholism
Law enforcement is stressful, especially when your whole police force is drunk.
Now, there are two traits here. An officer with ONE mug of beer on his portrait is drunk. A drunk officer has a high chance of wrecking his vehicle today, and should not be sent on any calls, as he is currently a danger to himself and others. You can’t use officers that are in the hospital, and a dead officer is even worse. Drunkeness is TEMPORARY. He should be fine tomorrow.
An officer with TWO mugs of beer on his portrait is an alcoholic. He will report for duty drunk EVERY day. I think this may be a broken mechanic. In Freeburg, police officers couldn’t afford to buy a bottle of whiskey for their morning commute every day, and only occasionally reported for duty while intoxicated. These guys are nearly useless for a considerable portion of the game. The only safe use for these guys is to send them on investigations. For some reason, detectives don’t drive.
An officer can start with the alcoholism trait, or aquire it on rare occasion (only one I know of). Officers rarely get drunk, and usually wind up drinking on duty because of plot events you decide.
Eventually, you can buy an alcoholism treatment, if you’ve made the right friends. I think it costs $780 to lock one officer in a cask of wine vinegar for a few hours. Wether or not the ‘treatment’ works seems to be random. Keep sending them until they realize sobriety is better than vinegar-based torture. Good officers are worth several attempts. (Persy isn’t.) Make sure the officer you send as driver is sober, or you could have two officers die on duty.
The following is a list of known alcoholics. Redundant, since their portraits immediately identify them, but included anyway.
- Muradyan
- Belmont (like Belmont Beverage, the liquor store)
- Stockmann (high starting stats, worth the investment)
- Goodwin
- Plainview
- Halless (thinks he’s a cowboy)
- Persey (Persey…)
- Adkins (high starting stats, worth the investment)
- Springer (guy looks like a bloodhound)
- Chapman
Officer Skills
Officers are upgradeable with skills. Some come with lots of skill points, most have to gain them through experience and training. These skills improve their ability to perform on the job and complete favors. It also defines what special skills or perks they can be equiped with on an assault mission. Early-game, build specialists for favor missions and everyday calls. In the late-game you will need many officers with max stats in most or all categories. All of these skills can be trained (for a price) after completing the necessary friend mission.
Strength: This determines who will win in a fight or wrestling match. An officer with high strength will succeed in making an arrest while restraining criminals, tackling criminals or stunning them with batons. Strength also enables officers to climb things. An officer with maxed strength can carry other officers, arrested criminals and loot more easily during assaults.
Intelllligence: Smartness keeps officers from hurting themselves with their own equipment. An entelligent officer will complete investigations faster, identify traps during assaults and defuse bombs(important skill to have). Use them as detectives, and have an officer with high intellijence on every call and assault.
Speed: An officer’s speed determines success while chasing criminals. They can also shoot faster during assaults. It’s not as important as other skills, since your bullets and tasers run faster. A fast officer can move additional spaces on his move during assaults.
Stealth: This is an EXTREMELY valuable skill. Many missions can be resolved instantly by a stealthy officer sneaking up on criminals and taking them by suprise. It is also your most important skill to have during assaults. Stealth level three unlocks the ‘Ninja’ skill, allowing your officers to have three moves during the assault as long as the criminals haven’t raised the alarm. To aid this, stealth also unlocks the silencer, so an officer can fire one shot without raising the alarm. The silencer is only good for ONE shot. Use wisely.
Shooting: A fundamental skill of all military and paramilitary forces. An officer with proficiency in firearms useage will shoot on target. Train this skill to kill criminals when lives are on the line and use tasers effectively. This skill unlocks the ambush ability for assaults, allowing you to shoot down criminals during the enemy’s turn. They also can use cover better and fire more accurately. Perhaps the best perk of this skill is ‘Lucky Shot,’ allowing your officer to take a second shot at a criminal if his first misses without burning an action point. Do not combine this ability with the silencer!
Negotiation: An officer’s ability to talk people down, persuade and order surrenders is a valuable skill to have on calls. On an assault, it is useful for interrogating arrested criminals, buying time before the bomb goes off and arresting wounded criminals from a distance. Keep officers with high negotiation handy during the day, but they aren’t necessary for most assaults.
Special Officers
These unique officers are the bane of any supervisor they are assigned to. That happens to be you. Congratulations. You have no choice in this matter; they are leftovers from Sheriff Wootsisname and Lilly’s poor leadership. You start with a few, others come on board as the game progresses.
Bradhi – Bradhi is a seamstress. He asks if he can try his ‘prototype’ uniforms on-duty. May as well do it. It’ll be fun. He’s a decent officer, but he refuses to roll with disloyal officers who aren’t in proper uniform(hypocrite).
Horsemoon – Moonnaturefairyriver or whatever his name is. Actually, I think he’s a she. She(?) randomly appears in your department after a sabbatical to mourn the loss of her candles or something. She’s superstitious, and refuses to go on any calls at night because of what the old gypsy woman said.
Kurosawa – Kurosawa is a screwball. On the rare occasion he shows up to the police department, he usually refuses to respond to emergencies because he feels tired. He isn’t tired, he’s lazy. Give him the month of December off work.
Leiva – Old man Leiva appears after seeking treatment for tuberculosis. Hope it’s not contagious. He’s a pathetic excuse for an officer and regularly loses his equipment. He has decent starting experience, and will be useful for filling the meter when he appears, but be sure he doesn’t get any equipment.
Mustard – Remember that guy who said women belong in the kitchen? Mustard took that saying to heart. He claims to have enough women at home (suprising) and refuses to go on any call or assault with a female officer. He seems to skip work more frequently than others and asks to have other officers (on-duty officers!) run his errands for him on his day off! He has decent starting stats, but he outlives his usefulness on his first day.
Penkin – Does he work here? He has poor starting stats, and has a hard time advancing because he rarely shows up. For some reason, his band takes priority over his duties to the police department.
Persey – Persey… This pathetic, ugly, worthless idiot is a premonition of Jack’s eventual psychotic break. Apparently he’s related to that officer back in Freeburg who had wealthy relatives. He can bring you some newspapers from Freeburg, then serves no purpose.
Shini – Shiny has a nasty tendency to refuse to respond to calls because she’d rather sit around and play cards. This seems to just be an issue of discipline that can be resolved by gaining her loyalty and raising her experience. She is a good starting officer and you can rely heavily on her in the late-game.
Spurlock – The polar opposite of Mustard. Except that she can be annoying, too. Spurlock refuses to roll with male officers with lower experience than her. To mitigate this problem, either don’t send her on calls as often or send her to schools to raise her stats. She is invested in her career and will ask to skip work for law enforcement education. She triggers a notification whenever she is involved in a successful call with an all-female crew. Not sure if this culminates into something or not. You can buy her loyalty, but it doesn’t change her attitude. Buying her loyalty is also more difficult. She refuses to go to the spa with any male officers claiming “I have a boyfriend at home to spank my bare ♥♥♥ with a broom- but only when I feel like it.” I’m not kidding.
Woolbag – Burch the Third was cleaning out the locker room one day and decided to play a practical joke. He filled an old wool laundry bag with dirty clothes he found on the floor of the shower and put a magic trooper hat on it. Well that old wool laundry bag full of wet, dirty clothes began to dance around and reported for duty. He’s not a bad officer, but he starts very far behind the curve. He also stinks. Officers will frequently refuse to roll with him because of how bad he smells. If he asks for a day off so he can bathe (WTF, seriously?) you may as well accept, otherwise no one will work with him.
Equipment
Don’t give any to Leiva.
Nightstick / baton / billyclub – A simple tool used to beat criminals upside the head and athletes on the knees. Make sure your strong officers have these to bludgeon criminals resisting arrest into submission. They are your best tool for quietly taking down criminals alive during assaults. Because of the low cost, high effectiveness and reusability (think of the environment- and all the nature-worshiping pagans you can club) the nightstick is probably the best piece of equipment you can get your officers.
Taser pistol – Not as overpowered as it was in the previous game. After buying them and some single-use cartriges, it’s almost too expensive to be worth it. It does remain a highly potent tool. They can silently disable criminals for extended periods during raids, and are more accurate than pistols at medium range. On regular calls you instantly resolve the mission, and it will be a win for you as long as the criminal doesn’t have his finger on a trigger.
Pepperspray – Very effective one-shot way to disable criminals on calls. Using it during a raid requires close range, but rewards you with a decent window to arrest the criminal.
Shocker / taser / stun gun – Violently electrocutes criminals at close range. This thing is probably the worst piece of equipment available. Like the taser pistol, it disables criminals for extended peiods of time. However, it requires you to be in arm’s reach of the criminal, and is worthless on assaults because it’s single-use only. If the criminal is old, he dies immediately, and you get fewer can tabs to buy stupid shockers with.
Stun grenade / flashbang – The flashbang is an expensive explosive device designed to shock and disorient criminals. Be sure to have a lot of these on hand. On everyday calls they will save a lot of lives and bring in a lot of arrests. During assaults they can disable entire rooms of criminals for lengthy periods of time. The drawback is the price and the fact that explosives tend to be single use only.
Food
This stupid thing only lasts for a few days, so I’m confused why it’s in the game at all. The only purpose of it is to lose officer loyalty with your lousy cooking. Accept the fact that you’ll have to spend some money and some ungrateful officers will be unhappy with the results anyway. An officer will always complain about ice cream and the herbal infusion, even if he didn’t say so when you asked for any food preferences. Other than that, decide whose loyalty is worth more to you and arrange the menu accordingly.
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