Wow that’s really cool! I feel really happy that someone with experience has taken an interest in someone who has done nothing whatsoever and has no experience.
When it does come out, i’ll check it out! What does CCH mean?
Thank you! I will do my best and i appreciate the help. If i ever need it i’ll ask here and you can help out. I love the COG community, it’s soooo cooperative and generous 
Question!
Federal agents work where?
Like what is the place called, the building?
CCH stands for Community College Hero.
I don’t think FBI have a specific name for their buildings, but I could be wrong…
Oh, unless you mean this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover_Building
Given how you’re working on a CCH2, it means the first one is already out there. Definitely going to try it!
Thanks! I’ll just name the building itself FBI, you know like “entering the FBI”?
Isn’t… “agency”?
It’s how they call in movies/series… I think…
Might be…
You know what, I’ll use both! FBI and agency, then i can have more than one term to address a single thing.
I agree, dating the criminal would be amazing
@SmolPirate - To understand how recruiting into the FBI is done, a basic research tool you should use is the t.v. series called Quantico. It will also show you the training and such done once accepted.
This is an American drama series centered on a recruit into the FBI. Netflix has the first season available to downstream (so I imagine HULU and the others do to.)
This is fictionalized for tv consumption so there is not 100% accuracy but it should give you ideas and structure you are looking for.
Already implanted 
Maybe I’ll check it for ideas and when I’m blocked off. Thanks for the tip!
As a former police officer of six years, I can get behind such an idea. Just, please do research and don’t base it all on stuff you’ve seen on tv and read in romance novels. Getting my training ruined my ability to watch shows that have police in them because I get upset when the police officers do stuff that they would never do because of said training.
As to some of the above, how things work vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. My jurisdiction was an Indian reservation, patrol officers did basic investigations, emergency calls, funeral escorts, child protection services, and pretty much everything except high level investigations. Those our criminal investigators were in charge of. For higher level forensics work we outsourced to the BCA and if warranted, the FBI. Most smaller agencies worked similar to what we did. We call them agencies by the way. The civilian world calls them police departments, those in the law enforcement community call them law enforcement agencies, or just agencies.
I’m tired of typing on my phone so I’ll quit here and when I’m at my computer I’ll catch any replies and follow this up with additional information.
Thank you so much for your help!
Well if i’m honest i don’t know anything about law stuff and… stuff. So i really do appreaciate the help.
For starters, could you please explain to me what jurisdiction? In a way that i five-year-old could understand XD
Jurisdiction is the area each agency is responsible for. It is the area in which each officer of that agency has the power to arrest and detain people, and the area that the agency patrols. If you think about a particular country, each can be divided into subsections. In Canada those are provinces, in the US those are states, and excuse my ignorance, but I don’t know what the other countries call theirs, though it’s most likely a state or province. Inside those states and provinces are further subdivisions, typically called counties. And inside those counties are towns. Each town ‘technically’ can have their own law enforcement agency, which would be responsible for the entire town including the town limits. If a town is too small or lacks the funding for their own agency, they typically sign an agreement with the county agency who then take over the work of law enforcement for that town. Each county typically has an agency that is responsible for the entire county, sometimes having multiple agency buildings serving as substations for their officers to use when within that certain area of the county. And each state typically has a form of highway patrol, and their jurisdiction is the entire state, but ONLY the highways of each state.
If you’re still with me here, what this means is that a small town can have an agency, and that agency is only able to police that particular town. Anything outside of that town is off-limits, and should they step outside of this area anything they do can not be used in court with only a few small exceptions. The county agencies can police anything within their county, including a town with their own agency, though typically they let the town agency handle the policing in that town and only offer assistance should that agency need more manpower for something such as a search party (to find missing people) or to assist in the case of a natural disaster. Those are the basic levels of jurisdiction, though there are some exceptions when you encounter reservations (reserves in Canada) that may be considered a Closed Reservation(Reserve). In those cases, that Reservation(Reserve)'s Agency is responsible for the entire reservation. In the US there are not very many closed reservations, so it doesn’t come into play as often.
I hope I didn’t confuse you, I’m not sure exactly what a five-year-old could understand when it comes to jurisdiction explanations. If you need further clarification, feel free to request it and I will assist as needed.
Now, one idea you can use that is similar to your idea of an assistant would be a ride-along. These are typically civilians who may be interested in becoming a law enforcement officer, and thus schedule a ride-along with the agency they are most interested in, or if the agency they wish to belong to is too far away, a local agency. They typically ride along with one of the more senior officers, and get a day to day feel for what a typical patrolman encounters and does on a day to day basis. My case was special, and doesn’t necessarily reflect on how other agencies outside of the reservation I live (and worked on) do things, but in my reservation I did a ride-along in full uniform. Prior to riding along I had to pass qualifications with my duty weapon, even going so far as to get taser certified during my time as a ride-along. I assisted my FTO (Field Training Officer) - who is typically one of the more senior officers on his (and sometimes her) patrols. I chased suspects, wrote reports, directed traffic during accidents, performed CPR, assisted EMS (Emergency Medical Services) in placing people on stretchers and placing them inside of ambulances, assisted in photographing of crime scenes, did field interviews, assisted with a few SFST’s (Standardized Field Sobriety Tests), and even went on barricaded suspect calls - suspect has a weapon and locks themselves into a building and barricades the door - which is typically one of the more life-threatening encounters for a law enforcement officer. Only Domestic Violence/Assault and Traffic Stops are more life-threatening. And yes, I know I just capitalized those, that’s how much I emphasize their potential for deadliness to a patrol officer. After my time as a ride-along, where I gained all of this valuable experience, I was sent to FLETC (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center) and spent 4 months there learning how to be a Federally Certified Law Enforcement Officer. When I came back, I was given my own squad car and sent out on patrol, doing all the things I did as a ride-along and then some. As a patrol officer I was sometimes requested to assist our CI’s (Criminal Investigators) in their investigations, typically as a transport unit, though sometimes in the collection of evidence. Mostly my work for CI’s ended up being with the CI assigned to sex crimes, since I was the only officer who did not seem to mind doing the work. I guess everybody else wanted to be more into the drug cases or other such investigations.
And…I’m rambling again. But if you need any sort of information, feel free to ask. I find that even just utilizing two law enforcement officers experiences you can get a baseline for what your law enforcement officer may typically do on a given day (hint: paperwork, paperwork, paperwork) though more would be best to give you a good idea as to what your particular officer may experience.
A quick note before I go though, you can really get into the head of a law enforcement officer by reading their reports. You can see if they write with a bias, how observant they are (in comparison to assisting officers on each case), how well they are with the written word, and even how honest they are. If you want to see what a typical report may look like, give me a situation/incident to write about and I can pump one out for you (or anybody else that may be interested in seeing it). In fact, give me multiple situations/incidents/scenarios and I’ll write a report for each one - at least until school starts on Monday. After that I’m sure with 19 credits I won’t have much time to write police reports, but I may be able to write a few since I am pretty sure I won’t have to write any papers this semester and I don’t have math homework to do. On the plus side, I finished my first semester of college with a 4.0, and my college algebra was completed with a 100.1% thanks to extra credit questions.
Okay, take care little Pirate.
First of all, thank you so much for responding so sincerely. I really enjoyed reading your answer and learning a bit more about this. I apologize in advance, since English is not my first language and I’ve never lived in the US.
I got a few questions:
Is a town the same as a city? Or are they completely different things? If not, can a city have an agency? (Sorry about this stupid question)
Are the things you listed in the things you did as a ride-along all there is, or is there more? (It’s okay if there is more, you don’t really need to tell me all of them. Just curious to know the limits)
Of the things I list here, tell me which is a job for a police officer or a detective (or any other):
Tracking criminals
Interrogating suspects
Correlating rules
Again thank you so much for the kind help and the patience to explain it to a newbie like me. And since you asked about writing a report about a case or so, would you write about a criminal who has not yet encountered the police, and has been stealing money (From people, houses, organizations, etc) so he can gamble.
Of course though, I don’t want to trouble you so don’t feel obliged to do it, I just think that reading a report from a person with experience would be extremely helpful and enlightening (also pretty cool)
Thank you so much once again! 
A town is the same as a city, the only difference being size. A city is bigger. A city is more likely to have an agency than a small town is.
in my ride-along there were more. In a typical ride-along I think the civilian has less interaction in the events and situations that occur. Typically they would observe and listen to the FTO’s wisdom. You can possibly have your story take place in a fictional small town where a ride-along does what I did as a ride-along to make it more interesting for the player. I can’t imagine having the player just sit in the car as the officer does all the work would be very fun for them.
Typically a police officer does the basic tracking of most criminals, most often by following leads given in an initial investigation. At some point the police officer hands off all relevant information and case files to a detective, who then continues the investigation, thus continuing to track a suspect down.
This varies from agency to agency. Some agencies have only Investigators (CI’s or in your case Detective) do interrogations, while some agencies allow a suspect to be interrogated by the officers working that particular case, though typically the more senior of the officers does the majority of the interrogating. There are also agencies that rely on a combination of the two, with police officers typically doing interrogation of suspects in the field, and CI’s/Detectives doing the interrogation in an interrogation room in Detention.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by that. I think you may possibly mean identifying or interpreting the rules, or possibly even creating the rules. I’ll do these ones just in case, but if it isn’t what you wanted to know I’ll wait for you to clarify what you meant by correlating rules.
Identifying rules is done by police officers and detectives. You need to know what the rules in your area are in order to enforce those rules. This is why police officers and detectives are considered Law Enforcement Officers. They enforce laws.
To a lesser degree, both detectives and police officers interpret the law, though most laws are fairly well formed to an extent that there is no need for further interpretation. If the suspect did something, and the action that was done matches something in the law for your given area, that is what the charge is. There is not really any gray/grey areas in law. Now, what can be interpreted is whether or not a specific crime or charge bears an arrest or not. Some crimes you can write a ticket for, some you can leave the suspect alone but charge through the court system, and some require you to take the suspect into custody to await trial. Most are clear what should be done, but there are a few gray/grey areas in which it is up to officer discretion to arrest or not arrest.
In some cases, the judge is allowed to interpret the law, especially if the law seems outdated and has not been changed to reflect modern times. An example of such laws are sodomy laws, or even laws that are quite silly such as riding on a horse and crossing a state line being illegal. The judge can interpret these laws as archaic, and dismiss the case and all other cases of a similar nature until the law is changed to reflect modern day ideas.
The creation of law is typically done by a governing body, in conjunction with the court system, in order to reflect the moral compass of society or of a given area. It is rare that a new law is actually created, though they typically do with the changing of technology, though that is usually to include said technology into an already existing law, unless there is no existing law that the use of a certain technology falls under. In which case, a new law is created governing the use of that technology. In the creation of law, one must also be sure to include the federal law in your jurisdiction’s code of laws. Laws governing the country (Federal) > State Laws > Laws governing county > Town/City Laws and ordinances. So the laws of your town or city need to include Federal, State, and County laws. It may seem confusing, but the way it is best explained is Federal Laws are the basic guidelines. You can’t remove laws from the Federal code, or make them less strict, but you can make the law more strict and add additional laws not covered in the Federal Law. State Laws typically are more strict than Federal, and most counties adopt the state laws while adding additional laws not covered in either Federal or State. Town/Cities adopt the County level laws, and add their own particular local laws, while potentially making existing Federal/State/County laws more strict.
Before I do this particular report, a few additional details are needed. 1) is the suspect known or unknown? It says he has not yet encountered the police, but that could just mean s/he has yet to be caught, it doesn’t reference whether the police know his/her identity. A report will go completely different ways if the suspect is known or unknown. 2) Is gambling legal in this jurisdiction? 3) Has there been any witnesses, either people who have seen (or caught a glimpse of) the suspect who can give a basic description? Is there security footage that can provide the same? 3a) If there are witnesses, is the suspect able to be identified by the witness/es? If security footage is available, can the suspect be identified by said footage? 4) Is the suspect a first time offender (meaning is the current string of crimes their first time committing crimes, and should they be caught this would be their first time being arrested)? If the suspect is not a first time offender, and they have been arrested prior, for what sort of crimes were they arrested and were the crimes in this jurisdiction or outside of it? (this allows me to know if anybody in our agency may know or have encountered this suspect previously can identify him, thus allowing more detailed information to be known, such as likely hang-outs, associates, etc.)
Once I get these additional details (yes I know, a bit of hard work to put in just to get a police report) I can get to work on it. Well, after I wake up. I should probably get a bit of sleep, especially if I’m to give you a professional police report.
You just gave me the idea to stop trying to make something that already exists and sticking with reality and to create my own, making it new and more exciting. I totally agree with your point!
I’m so sorry, I’m on my phone so it must have auto corrected or something. I meant correlating clues. XD
I loved the explanation of the rules though and I’ll totally add it.
The suspect has never been seen, captured on camera or caught doing a crime. But there are some people who tracked the stolen money to some casinos, which means that whoever stole the money gambles on casinos.
Gambling is not legal, though it’s also not prioritized to stop.
No one knows who he is, what he looks like, etc.
Yes, it is his first crime.
Please do get some sleep, I do not want to hold you up. Take a good rest and don’t pressure yourself into writing it in a professional level. Take all the time you want, you’re very kind to be doing this for me. Thank you so much for the millionth time, I cannot thank you enough!
That is quite a conundrum. Especially since:
Typically if gambling is not legal, there are not going to be any public areas dedicated to gambling. Now, if this gaming establishment is out of the jurisdiction in a jurisdiction where gambling is legal, it would make sense, but would greatly increase the need for interagency cooperation. As a further aside, how exactly is the stolen money tracked to said casinos? Did one of the businesses painstakingly write down the serial numbers on every piece of paper currency? Paper currency is hard to track unless you make note of the serial numbers on them and even then it would be up to other businesses to report having received paper currency with the serial numbers matching those that were reported stolen, and quite often most businesses do not write down the serial numbers of the paper currency they receive.
Now, I’ll give you an example of a law that is local to my area, that you might consider not prioritized to stop, and I will also give you my general attitude towards both the lack of prioritization and how I typically would handle such a thing.
Alcohol is prohibited. My local area is under prohibition still. It’s legal outside of my jurisdiction, but not legal in it. It is illegal to own, and to consume.
If they stay out of my jurisdiction, they can own and consume however they wish. I’m okay with that. Once they’re inside my jurisdiction, they are breaking the law, even if they aren’t consuming or in possession of alcohol. So when I encounter an intoxicated individual, I bring them in to jail. Now, is it necessarily an offense that requires arrest? No…but it is one that requires officer discretion. In this case, I could either give them a fine and ticket and then take them home, or I could take them to jail, and then they’ll still get the fine. Those that do not prioritize such an incident will take them home and not write a ticket or fine them. They think they’re doing a good job, being nice and courteous. I did that once. The person I took home then stole a car, ran over somebody, took our agency on a high speed chase, and then wrapped their vehicle around a tree. They didn’t live. The person they ran over didn’t live. Had I taken the person to jail like I had the option to, no further crimes would have been committed, and there would be two people still alive.
Now, gambling may not be something you would think would translate into something that could turn violent, except it can, especially if it is illegal. Money is a big motivator for violent crimes. A casino brings in a lot of money. An illegal casino would bring in a lot of money also, and would probably be run by not so peaceful people. People may be killed for ‘cheating’ the casino. People may be killed for money to go to said casino. People may be killed because they owe the casino. Not being prioritized? Just the knowledge that there is an illegal gambling site in your jurisdiction will greatly increase the crime in the area. Not prioritizing it would lead to an increase in crime as people attempt to gain money at whatever costs in order to gamble or to pay off their gambling debts before something bad happens to them. Based upon my experiences, letting the gambling go would not be an option for me, and after what happened to me from prior experience, neither would quite a few of my officers.
That being said, the only thing needing clarification is the location of said casino and the method of currency tracking whatever business used to track their money to…the casino. Though, if the casino is illegal (and not prioritized) how exactly was the money tracked to it? It would mean that somebody took down at least one illegal gambling den and being police, we write down EVERY serial number on every piece of paper currency we find before submitting it into evidence holding. You may laugh at that, but it is not a laughing matter when you’re counting up 10,000 dollars of mostly single dollar bills AND writing down every single serial number on each bill. And even if we had assistants to help us, we couldn’t allow them to do the writing down for us because we have to maintain chain of evidence. So, you do it solo.
Well, I hope this has been kind of informative for you as well. Still looking forward to writing a report for you once everything is set to do so. You may have now noticed but a lot of things need to be known in order to create a report, even if most things in the report are unknown. I can write a report of an unknown suspect, whereabouts unknown, known associates unknown, unknown description… I just need to know enough things to get the ball rolling, which is where things took place, if in jurisdiction or not, and how that is known.
If you base police work on what I’ve been describing here, you’d think that we are sent out on a call with all kinds of information. We don’t. Here would be a typical dispatch call to be sent to one of those businesses where money was stolen:
8399 would be dispatch. 45 would be Officer Smol Pirate’s number, in a small town it may be his badge number, or it may be his car number. Most of the bigger cities go by car number.
10-4 is typically an acknowledgement. it can mean yes, affirmative, ok, or just acknowledgement that you copied the transmission. 10-74 is en route. Though, this particular code varies, as do most others, in jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It’s bad when you go to another jurisdiction and when you get there you’re listening to the radio and the 10 code used refers to a dead person in your jurisdiction, but in their jurisdiction it means they have a suspect in custody. This actually happened to me once, and I had thought that there was some sort of epidemic or natural disaster. I thought people were dropping like flies, but instead it was a heavy arrest day.
As you can see, you don’t typically get a lot of information. Most information you collect on scene, and throughout the course of the initial investigation. By the end of this particular call, Officer Pirate could have an initial report as long as this post. And a few days later have an addendum about the same size if he practiced due diligence before handing off the case to the detective branch.
Well, i’m imagining underground casinos that only people who’ve been there know that it is a casino. Bars who at night turn into gambling houses, stuff like that.
You make a good point, so i’ll change from not really prioritized to high on the list of concerns. This will possibly increase the action and suspense in the story.
What happened was, one of the casinos (that no one knew it was a casino at first) started blowing up with new costumers due to an increase in rewards. The police noted this place at night, being crowded by people and started to investigate. Turns out, it was a casino at night and bar at day and so the police closed down the place and arrested the many people who gambled and the owner of it.
The money was then taken away as evidence (as you said).
Later on, the police had too many active casinos in the city but didn’t know where. (The city has a high crime rating) Not to mention the amount of theft going on because of it. Most thieves were arrested but there was one that the police has no idea who it is. The suspect. So they decided to load a place full of money and made a mark on it (like writing a small number in it, or a dot, something different) they did this in all of the money they put into the location.
Later one, when the police least expected, the money got stolen, by the same person. The suspect. As so, a few days later. When a police officer was closing down another casino and taking the money as evidence, they noticed the money was the money the suspect had stolen. Not only that but it was reported (as police closed even more casinos, but they always seem to never end) that the same marked money was found in other casinos.
So it was stated that the suspect was using the money stolen mostly to gamble.
I apologize if you’ve been through that, even if you think i have nothing to be sorry for. I did not mean to trigger bad memories and I feel awful that such a thing happened.
I loved this explanation, specially because i was the officer in it (i’m a she btw) and i find it impressing the ability to remember so many police codes (I’ve heard there’s quite a lot) . I totally understand your point and i hope i clarified things a bit better.
I just have a few questions about the last topic of ride-along:
Is there any other names you could call it or is it just “ride-along”?
How do you get chosen to be a ride-along? Do you apply? Is it like getting hired for a job? Or chosen?
And thank you so much again (i have no idea how many thank yous i have said) for the amount of information you’re willing to give and the support you are showing. All of this is making a huge positive impact on the game, the story and myself too.
Awww I’m sorry little pirate 
I’m usually pretty gender friendly until told to use specific pronouns, that his came out of nowhere! I figured you’d like being the officer in it.
Don’t worry about triggering me, it didn’t traumatize me when it happened (other than making me take my job more serious) so it wasn’t too bad for me. But I am a bit passionate about it.
Thank you for the info, I should be able to write something (after sleep of course) and show you something fun.
It’s typically called a ride along for civilians, and is sometimes used by the civilian to gauge interest in pursuing a career in law enforcement. If you’re a certain age or older (trying not to be ageist here) you can sign up for one, and they let you know if they can take you along. So it sort of is like applying for a job. To get chosen it usually is just a matter of waiting for a spot to clear up. There is also waiver forms to fill out prior to being taken for your ride.
In my case, it was my on the job training. I started out as a dispatcher before I got my ride along. I was dispatch for two years.
In my agency we had 10 codes up to 101. We had 7 additional codes on top of that (code 1, code 2, etc.) So there were quite a few, but we had a cheat sheet in dispatch, and the very first thing my captain did before I was sent on my first ride along was to print me a copy to keep with me at all times along with my Miranda Rights card for me to read to a suspect before taking them to jail. We had a saying to make sure we wouldn’t forget to read Miranda to our suspects, “when in doubt, Miranda out”.
Okay little pirate, I’m going to wander of towards bed now (at 9am).
Don’t fret my friend, i normally do not care about these types of things either, just felt like a telling you my gender would refrain from you then asking or assuming and feeling bad. I would love to be an officer, but i tend to not like rules and stuff…!
I can see how seriously you take this job, it’s good to be passionate about it!
Rest well officer!
I don’t know if it’s rude to ask, but for how long were you an officer?
Miranda Rights? Is that like the thing officers say about “anything you say or do will be used in court…”, or am i believing in stereotypes?
See ya when you wake up! Don’t you dare reply to me before you go to sleep, sleep first! And dream of good things