The Animalia City Police

This article is an entry in the citizen-edited encyclopedia Animalopedia. The neutrality of this article is disputed (Talk: Animalia City Police, § "Should the word 'corruption' appear in the lead?" remains an active edit war).

The Animalia City Police (formally the Animalia Metropolitan Police; commonly AMP) is the police apparatus of the city of Animalia. Its headquarters occupies the lower floors (3rd–19th) of Oracle Tower. Among citizens it goes by the nickname the "Tower's Dogs." Officers of the force dislike the epithet, though it recurs, self-mockingly, in retirees' memoirs (former Assistant Inspector M. Badgerlin, The Cage Within the Cage, AE 117).

Overview

Founded upon the completion of Oracle Tower in AE 20, when the self-defense bands that had until then stood separate, district by district, were consolidated. Its manning levels and budget fall under the jurisdiction of the Public Safety Commission (→ TMA-Politics), but the Commission's proceedings are closed, and the exact size of the force has never been made public (an estimated 8,000–12,000 personnel 〔citation needed〕).

Assessments of the force have run to both extremes across the past century. Citizen trust in the rank-and-file neighborhood officers (known as streetkeepers) has traditionally been high, while its upper echelons are dogged by unceasing rumors of corruption — over nepotism, vested interests, and "orders that no one knows the source of."

Organizational Structure

Divisions

Ranks

Constable (streetkeeper) → Senior Constable → Sergeant → Assistant Inspector → Inspector → Area Commissioner → Deputy Commissioner → Commissioner. The Commissioner is appointed by the Administration Bureau. By custom, each Commissioner holds a single press conference upon taking office and thereafter is scarcely seen in public. It is said that no reporter has heard the voice of the 14th Commissioner, Grim Mastiff (AE 111–present), since his inaugural press conference (TMA Times, August AE 119, "The Silent Commissioner").

Coexistence with the Five Families — the "Rituals"

The relationship between the force and the five great Families is, officially, one of "resolute enforcement," and, in practice, a highly stylized coexistence. Since the conclusion of the Five-Family Accord in AE 51, clashes between the two sides have grown steadily more ritualized.

• The Turf Understanding — An OCD raid announces itself in advance through "a certain air." The Family in question "hands over" its ledgers and a handful of members; the police collect their result and withdraw. In the underworld this practice is called the "Duty Show." The young soldiers to be arrested are chosen by lot or by merit, and on release are promised a promotion 〔citation needed〕.
• The Unwritten Boundaries — In cases involving cubs, civilians, or sanctuaries (the Memorial Wall and the like), the police and the Five Families make an exception and genuinely cooperate. In the AE 98 cub-abduction case, the OCD's dragnet and the Families' own manhunt came into competition, and the perpetrator testified that he had been "relieved to be taken into police custody" (trial record, Municipal Court, AE 98 Criminal Case No. 2201).
• Boundary Cases — Only against independent outfits outside the Accord (the Iron Claw Gang and the like) does the force show merciless use of force. As one saying has it, "The caged dog bares its fangs only at the dog with no master" (Family Radio, AE 106 broadcast; speaker unknown).

Historic Incidents

The Silent Purge (AE 42) and the Reappraisal Controversy

A sweeping crackdown on the underworld carried out at the height of the Decade of Blood (→ TMA-Timeline). Trumpeted at the time as "the greatest achievement in the history of the force," it has since been shown, on later examination, to display a curious bias in its targets. By the tally of the historian Werner Hermit (a porcupine), the crackdown was conducted "so as to pick off, with precision, the supply lines of whichever side was losing," and as a result the conflict was, far from ended, prolonged by seven years (The Purge Reconsidered, AE 113).

The force has never answered this charge in its official histories. The files documenting how the crackdown's targets were selected no longer exist, having "passed their retention period." Who drew up the target list — the fact that, however far one traces the chain of command, no individual's name appears at the list's point of origin — is the great mystery of the reappraisal controversy. Hermit's book has now been marked "under repair" at the municipal library for four years running 〔citation needed〕.

The White Dog Affair (circa AE 105)

The common name for a series of events between AE 103 and 107 in which the force's finest officers resigned, one after another, inexplicably. The name derives from an in-house piece of slang: "they vanish in order, starting with the whitest dog in the pack."

• The known resignations number nineteen. All were without any disciplinary record, ranked among the top in arrest performance, and had been assigned to ongoing investigations connected to organized crime or the Statistics Coordination Section.
• Every one of them gave "personal reasons" for resigning, and none has spoken to the press since. Several left the city, several went to the Shadow Layer, and at least one — Volkov, then an Inspector in the OCD — joined the Tundra Syndicate. An officer entering the Five Families was all but unprecedented in the force's history and made headlines at the time (TMA Times, November AE 105, "The Wolf Left the Cage for the Ice").
• The Internal Affairs Office issued a single statement, saying that these were "individual personnel matters with no connection between them." That the Office issued any statement at all was the first such instance since its founding.

The affair endures as an unsolved industry mystery and has become a staple subject of police novels and radio dramas. There is a theory that the retirees "all saw the same something," a theory of a purge from above, and a theory of a bidding war among the Five Families to poach them; but the only certain fact is that all nineteen have kept their silence in unison.

The Echo Station Blockade (AE 71)

When Central Station was closed (→ TMA-Timeline), it was the force that drew the cordon — but multiple eyewitness accounts hold that the removal work inside the station was carried out by a company in gray uniforms belonging neither to the police nor to the Administration Bureau. The force's press office has responded only that "the work in question lay outside our jurisdiction" 〔citation needed〕.

The Reality on the Ground — the Streetkeepers

In contrast to the shadowy rumors surrounding the upper ranks, the streetkeepers of the Community Division are, on the whole, diligent, and enjoy good relations with the public. Mediating brawls in the food-stall district, recovering lost cubs, running reinforced patrols on full-moon nights — the police that citizens meet in daily life are these streetkeepers.

At the same time, one shared testimony recurs throughout the memoirs of field officers: the sense that the more promising an investigation, the more surely it is stopped beyond a certain line.

"When an investigation got close to the heart of things, the transfer notice would come. Like clockwork. We used to joke that somewhere in this building there was a room that already knew the 'right answer' to the case, before any of us did." — the aforementioned The Cage Within the Cage, Chapter 9

This urban legend of "the room on the 17th floor" (matching the floor of the Statistics Coordination Section) has taken firm root as the building's own ghost story, and newly posted streetkeepers are said to be told by their seniors, half in jest, "Don't press the button for the 17th floor" (Family Radio, AE 120, retired-officers' roundtable).

Working Culture and Species Traits

As the police force of an all-species city, the AMP's duty system is designed around species physiology.

• The Mixed-Pair Principle — Streetkeeper patrols are, as a rule, two-officer teams of "one predator species plus one prey species." Held to be a piece of wisdom dating from the Founding, meant to intimidate neither side of the citizenry, a celebrated pairing becomes a neighborhood institution (Savanna Square's "Fang and Tail" duo received a letter of thanks from the ward assembly on their retirement; TMA Times, March AE 114).
• The Lunar Shift — On the night of the full moon, a "full-moon deployment" reinforces the ranks with nocturnal-species staff. Combining Night Safari security with vigilance against gang conflict, it is the most sought-after duty in the force. Conversely, on the night of the new moon the number of reported incidents drops off sharply and statistically, so a minimum deployment is set. "On the new moon the city holds its breath," veteran streetkeepers say — though none has ever been able to explain why it goes quiet 〔citation needed〕.
• Winter Rostering — For officers of hibernating species, winter leave is institutionalized, and a "winter relief corps," drawn chiefly from natives of the Polar Ward, fills the gaps. It is the police version of the seasonal power rotation (→ TMA-Politics).

Equipment and Communications

A streetkeeper's standard kit is a baton, a restraining cord, species-specific protective gear (horn guards, wing straps, and so on), and a department-issued communications terminal. The terminal is lent to every officer, and the duty regulations require it to transmit location data at all times. "When you hand the terminal back on the day you retire, your body feels lighter" is a stock phrase among retirees (afterword to the aforementioned The Cage Within the Cage).

The carrying of firearms is subject to the permission of an Area Commissioner, and actual discharges averaged fewer than three a year in the AE 110s. The force's strength is said to lie not in firepower but in a surveillance-camera network reaching every corner of the city and its rapid-response deployment. As to where the camera network's footage is aggregated, and who watches it, the force's press office has never once broken from its stock reply that it is "appropriately managed" 〔citation needed〕.

The Police in Popular Culture

The force is one of the greatest suppliers of subject matter in Animalia's popular culture. Family Radio's long-running program The Streetkeeper Tonight has now been on the air for forty-five years, and the model for its protagonist, the seasoned streetkeeper "Sergeant Bronco," is said to be a real-life Senior Constable 〔by whom?〕. Meanwhile, in the storytelling and stage plays that take the Five Families' side as their heroes, the police have traditionally played "the bumbling pursuers"; but since the White Dog Affair, a gloomy genre of police drama centered on "the detective who noticed something he shouldn't have" has been taking shape as a category of its own. The Masquerade Theater production "The Nineteenth Dog" set records for both protests from AMP veterans and sold-out houses at once (premiered AE 118).

関連項目

• TMA-Politics — 公安委員会と行政局
• TMA-Justice — 検挙後の司法過程
• TMA-Timeline — サイレント・パージ、白い犬事件の年代
• Volkov — 白い犬事件期の退職者
• TMA-Underworld — シャドウ・レイヤーと市警の不介入
• TMA-Media — 「今夜も街番」ほか警察報道
• TMA-Daily-Life — 街番と市民の日常
• Oracle-AI