How It Works

Overview

Members of the Liberty City Police Department patrol in public sessions of Grand Theft Auto IV and regularly respond to calls around the city as they roll in. Calls can come in a variety of forms including— but not limited to— a call relayed from dispatch, a phone call from a victim or witness, a text message, a notification that a player killed another player, or a notification of any particular crime or incident. Officers respond to such calls as they roll in, and as they are available. Higher priority calls (such as shots fired or an assault) will be responded to first and lower priority calls (such as domestics, incident reports, etc.) are responded to next.

Since the suspension of the Liberty City Medical Services and the Fire Department of Liberty City, the Liberty City Police Department now dispatches officers for those in need of medical assistance. If you or another player are in need of medical assistance, simply call an officer with your in-game mobile phone, send a message via the in-game text chat, or use the in-game voice chat to request medical assistance from an officer.

Arrests

In some cases, subjects will be placed under arrest by one or more members of the police department. Due to the fast-paced nature of Grand Theft Auto Online, the "method" we use to arrest a player is verbatim with the "method" used by the in-game AI-police in GTA IV: the player is killed. Once an offending player is killed, they are considered to have been "arrested" and released. Given the mechanics of GTA IV, it is not possible to jail a player, so they are (in essence) immediately released after their arrest.

Reports and Records

Every member of the police department fills out and files reports for every call they respond to throughout their daily patrol. Note that these are internal department reports, and have nothing to do with the in-game reporting system. Reports are reviewed by police supervisor and either returned to an officer for further review or approved and signed-off by the supervisor. Once submitted, reports are kept permanently on-file with the police department's database and records management system. Due to the fast-paced nature of GTA IV, officers often take preliminary notes on a memo-pad while on-scene or immediately after leaving the scene of a call, and use their notes to submit a full report later on during their shift, or in some circumstances, another day.

All reports filed by police include the name(s) of any players involved, as well as their User ID which is recorded as their Driver's License # for easy identification, even if players change their names in the future.

Laws

Please see our dedicated article for a full list of the laws that we enforce.