How does police station dispatching work?

[Archinist]

So, how are all the police units connected to each other? If one unit is dispatched (say one car with two cops) to a dangerous crime zone, is that unit supposed to constantly report back to the HQ every few minutes to let them know they have not gone out of action in some form? What happens in a small town if a police unit goes to investigate a crime zone and does not return, or does not report back? Do they request for additional reinforcements from a larger city or do they just assume it's a technical glitch and either ignore it or send another unit out?

What happens if a police station itself is put out of action by various hazards and it completely loses it's function? What will the remaining police do? Will they retreat to the nearest "online" station, or will they attempt to re-secure their own station?

So in horror/action movies where the police station only holds a couple police (5-10 cops), is it realistic when they send out one unit which doesn't return and then they just send another and another and another until the station is literally empty except for maybe the chief which then holds up in a room with a gun on the door but gets killed by a zombie behind him? Or would they attempt something else other than sending unit after unit hoping to eventually clear out the technical problem or overwhelm the hazards?

What happens if a entire station is disabled with no one able to restore it? Let's say the station was in a small town which was captured by rebels and the police force was wiped out. Would the other stations around it send reinforcing units or would they just ignore and blame it on the weather? Are the stations required to keep in radio contact with each other? If not, what if a rebel army wiped a police station and barricaded the town?

How would anyone on the outside find out? Etc, etc. Thanks.

[RogueIce]

When a unit is dispatched and arrives at a scene, they'll be checked on at least once by dispatch and depending on the nature of the call/department policies, it'll be a routine thing until they report in that they've cleared the call and are back in service. Even if dispatch only checks on them once, assuming there are any volume of calls somebody's bound to notice they've never cleared and supervisors will start asking what's up and try to reach them - a "possible disturbance" shouldn't show an officer On Scene for 2 hours or whatever. Eventually someone will wonder what's going on and try to call that missing unit - even if it's the next shift sending someone out as a relief.

If the unit fails a check-in, an additional unit will be sent to their location to see what's up (radio malfunction, noise disturbance and they didn't hear it, officer in trouble, etc.). If that unit fails to report in when prompted, they'll send a much bigger response. It won't just be units one at a time to get picked off.

In the event of a staion, with any mid to large agencies that have multiple divisions/precincts/whatever they'll notice when a station goes quiet. Even in a One Station Department, officers on patrol will have occasion to go back to HQ and realize something is wrong. The next shift reporting on will realize something is up, etc. Additionally, when citizens no longer get calls for service answered questions will be raised and someone is bound to phone in the County or State about it. If 911 goes to a central location (not the missing police station) they'll realize quick when nobody is taking calls from that town and send an outside agency to check on them. If 911 is in the besieged station and disabled, the citizens will start to wonder why 911 won't pick up and, as mentioned, someone will sooner or later call the Sheriff or State Police about it.

That's assuming in this era of smart phones and social media that any such attacks that take out a police station won't quickly go viral and be noticed by the entire world, much less surrounding agencies, which would be very unlikely. TBH a lot of those old horror movie clichés don't work so well in the modern world. Somebody is going to notice, sooner or later, and be able to get the word out.

[Simon_Jester]

So, how are all the police units connected to each other? If one unit is dispatched (say one car with two cops) to a dangerous crime zone, is that unit supposed to constantly report back to the HQ every few minutes to let them know they have not gone out of action in some form? What happens in a small town if a police unit goes to investigate a crime zone and does not return, or does not report back? Do they request for additional reinforcements from a larger city or do they just assume it's a technical glitch and either ignore it or send another unit out?

What would you have them do, if you were in charge of setting the procedure? That's the question you need to ask yourself.

I assume you're interested in this for purposes of imagining what to do in a fictional setting. One of the first good rules for how to make plausible, interesting action with characters that aren't just cardboard cutouts is to make those characters intelligent. Make them react sanely and sensibly to situations.

Often, writers and movie-makers and so on will have characters do amazingly stupid things. The usual reason for this is so that they can have the viewer going "no, you fool, don't do that!" The problem is that in order for that to happen, the character making a foolish choice has to be a fool.

Now, sometimes it's a major plot point of the story that some person (or everyone in town, a la The Simpsons) is a fool. They make reckless decisions. They ignore the consequences of their actions. They fail to consider obvious alternative explanations for a strange situation. They press on when any sensible person would give up, or give up when any sensible person would press on, or sometimes both in the same story.

But you want to minimize the number of foolish characters in your story, and you want to be aware that the only characters who should be making foolish decisions are the ones you intend to portray as foolish. If your protagonist is normally a smart, tough person, don't have them suddenly turn into a fool in order to drive the plot. If you can't think of a good reason for them to do what you want them to do, have them do something else. This is why good writers often describe their characters as 'running away with them' during story-writing, because the internal logic of the character's personality makes it inconceivable that they would behave in a certain way, and the writer knows this, so they are compelled to write the story differently than they'd planned.

...

Basically, if a small town has six policemen, and two of them go missing, and two of the remaining four go to check up on them, that's plausible.

It is NOT very plausible that the second pair of cops would just blindly waltz into the same trap as the first pair because "oh, it must just be a glitch in both their radios. And their car radio. One that prevents them from borrowing a phone and calling the station to tell them what happened." And it is even LESS plausible that the third and final pair of police would waltz into the same trap again in order to check up on the other pairs.

That's the kind of thing you would never do, if you were in charge of the local police department, right? That would be incredibly stupid, and the odds that all four people in the police department are that stupid, are that totally incapable of using basic common sense in a direct attempt to preserve their own lives... those are very low odds.

It's much more probable, (if there's reason to think the first two may have come to harm) that the four policemen would stop and think for a minute. Then they send three of the other four to check up on the first pair, because if there's trouble more backup is good. Meanwhile the last guy gets on the phone and frantically calls the state police for backup, while the other three very very cautiously try to scope out the situation and do not take risks like walking into the same dark spooky house that the first two walked into.

...

Now, at the same time, these procedures are going to be influenced by realism. If the radios are unreliable, it may be ten minutes or more between 'report in' checks, and it may well be that no one is entirely surprised if an officer misses a check... but if they miss two in a row, then someone goes to check up on them. On the other hand, the police would not willingly use very unreliable radios, since their safety and their ability to do their jobs depend on those radios.

So that wraps back around to the most important principle, which is not about police procedure. It's about not making characters do obviously dumb things.

What happens if a police station itself is put out of action by various hazards and it completely loses it's function? What will the remaining police do? Will they retreat to the nearest "online" station, or will they attempt to re-secure their own station?

It depends. If the station is washed out by floodwaters, obviously the police will find another base of operations. The one they have can't be "re-secured," because that's a job for a cleanup crew and maybe some construction contractors.

If a huge riot chases the police out of the station, the officers run away and try to regroup somewhere else.

If, on the other hand, one guy charges into the station and somehow manages to kill or subdue all the off-duty police who are present (unlikely), then the remaining police might try to storm the station and take down the one guy. Then again, that one guy sounds pretty dangerous and they don't want to die, so maybe they call for support from the SWAT teams of the surrounding area or even the National Guard or something.

So in horror/action movies where the police station only holds a couple police (5-10 cops), is it realistic when they send out one unit which doesn't return and then they just send another and another and another until the station is literally empty except for maybe the chief which then holds up in a room with a gun on the door but gets killed by a zombie behind him? Or would they attempt something else other than sending unit after unit hoping to eventually clear out the technical problem or overwhelm the hazards?

If one unit fails to report back, a second unit might be sent to check up on them because the most likely explanations are things like "radio broke down" or "moron left his radio on the table at the coffee shop." If there is an emergency and if people already know the first unit was going into significant danger, they would probably already have sent multiple units. Because it would be stupid to send only two police officers to deal with a mob of zombies trying to break into a store, if instead you could send eight.

Think about situations in real life where you see police cars active. You usually see one car if it's something like a traffic stop... but if there's a large multiple-car accident, or a significant fight that provokes a public disturbance, they send more than one car and more than two officers. Because there's danger involved, and it takes more than two guys to secure a crime scene, subdue multiple suspects, and restore order.

The more reason there is to expect danger or a crisis, the more likely it is that basically all available force will be thrown in to squash the crisis.

What happens if a entire station is disabled with no one able to restore it? Let's say the station was in a small town which was captured by rebels and the police force was wiped out. Would the other stations around it send reinforcing units or would they just ignore and blame it on the weather? Are the stations required to keep in radio contact with each other? If not, what if a rebel army wiped a police station and barricaded the town?

If this is a country where there are actual rebel armies operating, then the local government will in turn have militarized the countryside. Towns will often have army units that can put up a tough fight stationed in them. It is very unlikely that the rebels can subdue one of these garrisons without the garrison getting a message out, especially if radios or telephones exist. They won't just be dealing with the local police. Or if they are, then the immediate reaction of the local police (assuming they're not secretly pro-rebel) will be to panic and call the nearest army garrison asking for troops to chase away the rebels.

Think about what happened in Oregon when a bunch of anti-government wackos occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. This was basically a group of 'rebels.' And they moved in and announced their intentions, because rebels have political goals, they're not just a mindless wave of violence like a swarm of hornets. They communicated with the outside world themselves, and the government eventually reacted by concentrating local and state police to restrict their movements, blockade them in the affected area while protecting civilians, and eventually by trapping them.

[Archinist]

Okay, so imagine that a dozen officers responded to a murder at a creepy mansion. 6 officers arrived, reported to HQ, blathered a little, and later on the other 6 officers arrived. However, there is no trace of the previous 6 officers which arrived on the scene. The last report from the other 6 officers was them stating that they had secured the area but had an odd feeling of being watched by a strange force. Some of the police car doors are open, and weapons are laying scattered about, with no casings on the ground.

The fresh officers try to call the HQ, but a strange mist moves in quickly and blocks their radio transmissions. Their vehicles still work, and they can retreat if they want, but would they? Occasionally a werewolf will howl or hyperfast anorexic demons will crawl on the high walls and roof of the mansion.

Another thing, how would the police respond to a hyperfast skinny thing crawling over a ceiling? Or something like the rake creepypasta running down a tight corridor? Would they follow it down the corridor, would they ignore it because it's probably just an oversized rat, or would they camp near the corridor's entrance? Let's say they only saw it for a split second and even then it was quite unclear as to what it was, and it could have very well been a oversized rat.

How would a national guard unit respond? Would they send a small unit such as 1 LAV-25 and 3-5 HMMWVs (50 people max) like in AvP 2, or would they send a few thousand personnel with vehicles? How would they approach? Would they drive down the main road to show the aliens their swag, or would they put a drone overhead and slowly creep through the town? How realistic were the police and national guardsmen in AvP 2? Would the government really nuke a small town because they saw a oversized lizard in the camera of a defeated LAV-25?

[Simon_Jester]

Okay, so imagine that a dozen officers responded to a murder at a creepy mansion. 6 officers arrived, reported to HQ, blathered a little, and later on the other 6 officers arrived. However, there is no trace of the previous 6 officers which arrived on the scene. The last report from the other 6 officers was them stating that they had secured the area but had an odd feeling of being watched by a strange force. Some of the police car doors are open, and weapons are laying scattered about, with no casings on the ground.

The fresh officers try to call the HQ, but a strange mist moves in quickly and blocks their radio transmissions. Their vehicles still work, and they can retreat if they want, but would they? Occasionally a werewolf will howl or hyperfast anorexic demons will crawl on the high walls and roof of the mansion.

Another thing, how would the police respond to a hyperfast skinny thing crawling over a ceiling? Or something like the rake creepypasta running down a tight corridor? Would they follow it down the corridor, would they ignore it because it's probably just an oversized rat, or would they camp near the corridor's entrance? Let's say they only saw it for a split second and even then it was quite unclear as to what it was, and it could have very well been a oversized rat.

How would a national guard unit respond? Would they send a small unit such as 1 LAV-25 and 3-5 HMMWVs (50 people max) like in AvP 2, or would they send a few thousand personnel with vehicles? How would they approach? Would they drive down the main road to show the aliens their swag, or would they put a drone overhead and slowly creep through the town? How realistic were the police and national guardsmen in AvP 2? Would the government really nuke a small town because they saw a oversized lizard in the camera of a defeated LAV-25?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Seriously, why are you even asking some of these questions? The answers are obvious to anyone with a brain. What would you do in these situations? What would you train people to do? People should stick together, form the largest possible units, call for backup, use their weapons to cover likely angles of attack, and get the hell out of the weird supernatural situation, backing up into better-lit areas where they can see what is going on, respond to threats, and plan their next move.

As to the National Guard thing, I don't even know what AvP2 is supposed to be an abbreviation for. But it's clearly some kind of action or horror movie or game or something. And I literally just got done explaining that people routinely write the expendable 'mooks' in such movies doing amazingly stupid and unrealistic things. Because instead of asking themselves "what would the major commanding a National Guard battalion do if he wants to solve the problem without getting all his men killed," they just say "what would it be cool to watch happen in a movie?"

Realistically, the first units of heavy reinforcement (in the US that'd be SWAT teams, the US Marshals, counterterrorism task forces, and maybe the National Guard) might be relatively small, but larger and larger units would already be on the way and it'd just be a matter of getting the logistics sorted out. Under no circumstances will any officer who is even slightly competent simply order tiny "penny packet" sub-units into a situation over and over as they get wiped out one by one. If the first six-man squad didn't solve the problem, and the second one didn't either, there's no point in sending a third, fourth, and fifth- send all the men at once.

Concentration of force is one of the most basic of all tactical principles, and people who lead police and military units know this.

[Archinist]

Okay, so imagine that a dozen officers responded to a murder at a creepy mansion. 6 officers arrived, reported to HQ, blathered a little, and later on the other 6 officers arrived. However, there is no trace of the previous 6 officers which arrived on the scene. The last report from the other 6 officers was them stating that they had secured the area but had an odd feeling of being watched by a strange force. Some of the police car doors are open, and weapons are laying scattered about, with no casings on the ground.

The fresh officers try to call the HQ, but a strange mist moves in quickly and blocks their radio transmissions. Their vehicles still work, and they can retreat if they want, but would they? Occasionally a werewolf will howl or hyperfast anorexic demons will crawl on the high walls and roof of the mansion.

Another thing, how would the police respond to a hyperfast skinny thing crawling over a ceiling? Or something like the rake creepypasta running down a tight corridor? Would they follow it down the corridor, would they ignore it because it's probably just an oversized rat, or would they camp near the corridor's entrance? Let's say they only saw it for a split second and even then it was quite unclear as to what it was, and it could have very well been a oversized rat.

How would a national guard unit respond? Would they send a small unit such as 1 LAV-25 and 3-5 HMMWVs (50 people max) like in AvP 2, or would they send a few thousand personnel with vehicles? How would they approach? Would they drive down the main road to show the aliens their swag, or would they put a drone overhead and slowly creep through the town? How realistic were the police and national guardsmen in AvP 2? Would the government really nuke a small town because they saw a oversized lizard in the camera of a defeated LAV-25?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Seriously, why are you even asking some of these questions? The answers are obvious to anyone with a brain. What would you do in these situations? What would you train people to do? People should stick together, form the largest possible units, call for backup, use their weapons to cover likely angles of attack, and get the hell out of the weird supernatural situation, backing up into better-lit areas where they can see what is going on, respond to threats, and plan their next move.

As to the National Guard thing, I don't even know what AvP2 is supposed to be an abbreviation for. But it's clearly some kind of action or horror movie or game or something. And I literally just got done explaining that people routinely write the expendable 'mooks' in such movies doing amazingly stupid and unrealistic things. Because instead of asking themselves "what would the major commanding a National Guard battalion do if he wants to solve the problem without getting all his men killed," they just say "what would it be cool to watch happen in a movie?"

Realistically, the first units of heavy reinforcement (in the US that'd be SWAT teams, the US Marshals, counterterrorism task forces, and maybe the National Guard) might be relatively small, but larger and larger units would already be on the way and it'd just be a matter of getting the logistics sorted out. Under no circumstances will any officer who is even slightly competent simply order tiny "penny packet" sub-units into a situation over and over as they get wiped out one by one. If the first six-man squad didn't solve the problem, and the second one didn't either, there's no point in sending a third, fourth, and fifth- send all the men at once.

Concentration of force is one of the most basic of all tactical principles, and people who lead police and military units know this.

No, not necessarily. What if there was a great bomb ready to detonate? Sending the the entire group would mean you would lose everyone, not just a few people. Plus if everyone is sticking together into one big circle, it makes it easier to trap them and close them in and then just chuck a few barrels of explosive fuel at them or something.

Also, if all the units were bunched up into one shape, then they couldn't fire effectively at the enemy without causing friendly fire accidents. So this means instead of shooting confidently at the enemy, they would be shooting very sparingly with very inaccurate shots as they are terrified of accidentally hitting a friendly.

Plus if it's a scifi/horror movie then a zombie could easily kill them all very quickly as one could just walk up to them, bite one and wrestle him to the ground and then all the other soldiers would panic and rush the zombie with their fists and probably shoot their bitten comrade everywhere but the head a few times.

Then the zombie would probably lurch around and bite several other people and at this point the first bitten person would now be a zombie, and the soldiers will be randomly committing suicide and randomly spraying bullets in full auto at their mates and the ceiling. Now the other soldiers who were bitten or killed by a non-headshot will also get up and spread the infection further, as the soldiers throw grenades into masses of friendlies and shoot zombies in their torso which will drop them and ignore them when they get up or simply allow the zombies to walk up and bite.

But if the unit is separated, then they could be better organized as there isn't over 100 people shouting and yelling and shooting the air every few seconds. They could set up chokepoints of 10 or so people with rifles and calmly tell the soldiers to aim for the head of the zombies and not panic and also tell them how to retreat properly, instead of letting the zombie bite them.

So then the zombies would rush the choke points but get annihilated as the disciplined riflemen shoot them down easily from a decent range, the military loses few people and everyone is happy.

If it's a horror-supernatural movie than a ghost could just infect them all and turn them into demons in one go, instead of infecting one unit and allowing another observing unit to watch how the ghost works, potentially finding out how to defeat the ghost as they work in split groups, making it much more difficult for one ghost to find them. rather than a big circle of loud, rowdy soldiers all shouting and yelling and stumbling everywhere into walls and falling down holes and whatnot.

Also, AvP 2 = Aliens VS Predators Requiem. SPOILERS, THE SPOILER CODE WOULD NOT WORK CORRECTLY HERE. A great movie where the aliens crash land in a Predator ship onto earth, because in the previous movie (AvP 1) the predators on the predator ship took a dead predator with a alien chestburster inside their ship as an honor thing they do, but it escaped and killed all the predators and crashed the ship. Some humans arrive and are killed by chestbursters and a predator arrives and pours a strange liquid on the humans to get rid of their bodies. The predator starts randomly killing people and cops and the aliens take over a nearby town and the predator battles a alien on a power plant but misses a shot and destroys the power plant causing a blackout in the town.

The town's hospital is taken over by aliens but no one notices and the hospital staff are literally walking around in the hospital with the aliens, so much so that in one scene you can have doctors and nurses walking past a patient's bed, but when the doctor leaves he groans and is killed by an alien behind him and then the alien goes into the patient's ward and kills or impregnates the patients. It is a little odd that no one noticed the aliens walking about the hospital, but it was quite dark in the movie so I guess that can be excused.

Around this point the national guard arrive with around 5 HMMWVs and 1 LAV-25 so they roll up and dismount their infantry, but the aliens pop out and they all die in seconds. But the director of the assault has a live camera mounted on the LAV and when he sees the aliens he goes mother of god or something similar and prepares to nuke the town with a tiny nuke.

I think around here the predator murders some more people and also kills some aliens. A man shouts a lot so the predator shoots his head off with a plasma gun. Then the predator goes to the site of the national guard and pours the magical goop onto their bodies which then vanish. Then he walks off to do some things and some college kids show up and complain that the national guard have vanished and steal the LAV.

Then they drive to the hospital and walk around and are picked off one by one until the main character has his girlfriend killed by the predator accidentally throwing a blade and missing an alien in front of her, so the main character goes berserk and does something and the predator falls down an elevator shaft and somewhere along the line the main character picks up a predator cannon. It is a good thing that he is also an expert in alien weapons systems, as he quickly modifies the predator cannon to transform into a pump action shotgun and shoots at aliens but misses most of the time.

It is around this time where the national guardsman major person has lured all the town's survivors into a small square in an attempt to also lure the aliens into the small square because the town square is all closed off and therefore easier to evac the civilians he says and everyone believes him but one character is slightly suspicious and frowns while in a ute.

But the main character is now on the top of the hospital and an exciting battle is starting. His friends run into a helicopter and it is good that at least one of his college friends is a very quick learner and begins to learn the helicopter while the main character shoots at aliens.

After a while, the predator shows up but is slow because it is aching because it fell down an elevator shaft. It goes and fights the predalien and loses and loses and loses. But it does not give up and keeps fighting the predalien. Meanwhile the college kid has figured out how to fly and the main character hops in the helicopter with the aliens everywhere. But that is no problem because the college kid is actually a highly experienced military pilot and knows how to stay calm even in the worst situations so he flawlessly takes off and flies away while the predator is looking quite sad and still losing.

The main character in the helicopter is probably quite happy that everything is quite fine and all his friends survived and everyone was happy ever after.

The town survivors are getting nervous because they have been shooting and missing at aliens for many hours but all the aliens do is crawl up and down the walls, so I would assume the townspeople might be worried that the aliens are actually cardboard cutouts and the whole thing is a prank or even better a test by the government. The radio is talking and the major says that the helicopters are there now but the policeman is suspicious and then a jet flies over, apparently only 20 meters away from the ground and the policeman goes mother of god and then a nuclear bomb explodes.

The predator is about to be killed by the far superior predalien but then everything goes white and we can assume that both are dead. The main character in the helicopter and his friends stare at the nuclear explosion and rub their eyes a little probably because they were a little sore but nothing major so they keep staring at it until the shockwave hits them and the helicopter crashes to the ground in a crash that no one could survive.

But the main character and his friends survive anyway and are actually completely uninjured except for maybe one of the women and they are still pumped and full of energy so much so that when a twig snaps in the forest the main college kid snaps and with his predator cannon turned pump action shotgun in his hands ready to blow the squirrel into smithereens but then a line of marines walk out and ask politely for the predator shotgun an d I think he hands it over and then he complains that everyone in the town is dead and something else happens.

Then there is a government man on a TV saying that modern humanity is not yet ready for the sheer eldritch wonders of a plasma pump action shotgun that is at least twice as powerful as a regular shotgun so he puts it away in a suit case and another person says it's not for this planet and the movie ends.

So yes it is a brilliant movie, perhaps even rivalling the original Alien films so I highly suggest for you to go and purchase it from a store and watch it.

[Esquire]

No, not necessarily. What if there was a great bomb ready to detonate? Sending the the entire group would mean you would lose everyone, not just a few people. Plus if everyone is sticking together into one big circle, it makes it easier to trap them and close them in and then just chuck a few barrels of explosive fuel at them or something.

This is taken into account by contemporary tactics. "Concentration of force" does not mean "everybody bunch up;" it means "everybody be able to act against a known target/point of interest/area." So instead of sending in pair after pair of beat cops, you send in a SWAT team with snipers on nearby rooftops and blocking forces along probable escape routes when investigating missing police offices; if you're dealing with a genuine rebel force operating in strength, concentration of force looks more like combined-arms battalions with a frontage of tens of kilometers supported by immediately-available attack helicopters and more distant fighter and bomber units. Don't be an idiot.

Also, if all the units were bunched up into one shape, then they couldn't fire effectively at the enemy without causing friendly fire accidents. So this means instead of shooting confidently at the enemy, they would be shooting very sparingly with very inaccurate shots as they are terrified of accidentally hitting a friendly.

See above, this is taken into account by contemporary tactics. Any force which goes into combat (or any remotely dangerous situation) unable to engage the enemy properly is run and staffed by idiots or was improbably unprepared, which rather implies the same thing, don't you think? This is one of many reasons why horror movies tend not to stand up to scrutiny.

Plus if it's a scifi/horror movie then a zombie could easily kill them all very quickly as one could just walk up to them, bite one and wrestle him to the ground and then all the other soldiers would panic and rush the zombie with their fists and probably shoot their bitten comrade everywhere but the head a few times.

Then the zombie would probably lurch around and bite several other people and at this point the first bitten person would now be a zombie, and the soldiers will be randomly committing suicide and randomly spraying bullets in full auto at their mates and the ceiling. Now the other soldiers who were bitten or killed by a non-headshot will also get up and spread the infection further, as the soldiers throw grenades into masses of friendlies and shoot zombies in their torso which will drop them and ignore them when they get up or simply allow the zombies to walk up and bite.

Firstly, in any remotely realistic setting, body shots will smash bones, cut tendons and ligaments, and render the zombie physically unable to move even if it's not technically destroyed. Secondly, something which repeatedly does not go down from body shots will be shot in the head by either dedicated snipers or regular troops once it gets close enough for easy aiming. There is no plausible way for a horde of shambling zombies, let alone a single one, to overwhelm a prepared military unit.

But if the unit is separated, then they could be better organized as there isn't over 100 people shouting and yelling and shooting the air every few seconds. They could set up chokepoints of 10 or so people with rifles and calmly tell the soldiers to aim for the head of the zombies and not panic and also tell them how to retreat properly, instead of letting the zombie bite them.

So then the zombies would rush the choke points but get annihilated as the disciplined riflemen shoot them down easily from a decent range, the military loses few people and everyone is happy.

See above; this is already standard practice. Communications discipline and mutually-supporting positions have been a thing since at least the First World War. Hollywood hasn't gotten the memo because, by definition (with some few exceptions), Hollywood is not well-versed in military history or tactics.

If it's a horror-supernatural movie than a ghost could just infect them all and turn them into demons in one go, instead of infecting one unit and allowing another observing unit to watch how the ghost works, potentially finding out how to defeat the ghost as they work in split groups, making it much more difficult for one ghost to find them. rather than a big circle of loud, rowdy soldiers all shouting and yelling and stumbling everywhere into walls and falling down holes and whatnot.

...What? Just... what?

[Simon_Jester]

No, not necessarily. What if there was a great bomb ready to detonate? Sending the the entire group would mean you would lose everyone, not just a few people. Plus if everyone is sticking together into one big circle, it makes it easier to trap them and close them in and then just chuck a few barrels of explosive fuel at them or something.

Again, you're not doing any independent thinking here. Of course people won't use "bunch up tightly into one big group that is easily trapped" in literally every situation. However, it IS the correct response to most situations police actually have to deal with, UNLESS they have some specific reason to expect a trap that would cause massive casualties no matter how many men you have.

Most of the time, in most cases, against most opposition, having more men is safer than having fewer men, and increases the odds that EVERYONE gets to go home alive. One of the big differences between police and soldiers, by the way, is that police are not expected to take casualties as part of doing their job. An army captain may sometimes send a small number of men into a dangerous situation, expecting some of them to be killed, if the situation requires it. A police captain is unlikely to do this, because in the world police train for and live in, the SMART response is to call for overwhelming reinforcements.

Also, if all the units were bunched up into one shape, then they couldn't fire effectively at the enemy without causing friendly fire accidents. So this means instead of shooting confidently at the enemy, they would be shooting very sparingly with very inaccurate shots as they are terrified of accidentally hitting a friendly.

On the contrary- they can fire effectively at the enemy because they can draw a box or circle and say "all our friends are in HERE, only our enemies are out THERE."

You get problems with friendly fire when your forces are spread apart so that there are little groups of friends all over the place in many directions. Not when everyone is standing in a line or a circle, or holding positions on the perimeter of a box.

I don't understand how you're picturing a tightly concentrated group whose enemies are all outside of their perimeter as more likely to shoot each other.

Plus if it's a scifi/horror movie then a zombie could easily kill them all very quickly as one could just walk up to them, bite one and wrestle him to the ground and then all the other soldiers would panic and rush the zombie with their fists and probably shoot their bitten comrade everywhere but the head a few times.

Soldiers and police don't train for science fiction situations, they train for real situations. If zombies aren't a thing they have to deal with, they do not train to deal with zombies.

Also, I don't see how sending fewer people would help with something like this in any case. With a large group of men, it is more likely for the zombie to be shot repeatedly by several people (doing enough damage to neutralize them as a threat) before anyone gets bitten. It's also more likely that if by some improbable magic a zombie does get past a whole bunch of guards and gunmen and gets close enough to bite someone, the guys standing nearby will simply pull the zombie off and be strong and numerous enough to totally restrain it. Police are, by the way, trained to restrain people, and real live people can bite too, so they're trained to grab and hold onto people in ways that make them safe from being bitten. Quite a few soldiers have some of that kind of training too, as I understand it.

Then the zombie would probably lurch around and bite several other people and at this point the first bitten person would now be a zombie, and the soldiers will be randomly committing suicide and randomly spraying bullets in full auto at their mates and the ceiling. Now the other soldiers who were bitten or killed by a non-headshot will also get up and spread the infection further, as the soldiers throw grenades into masses of friendlies and shoot zombies in their torso which will drop them and ignore them when they get up or simply allow the zombies to walk up and bite.

Why are you imagining all the soldiers turning into crazy suicidal morons for no reason, exactly? Soldiers are not robots, they themselves know how to avoid friendly fire. They won't just automatically do dumb things that will get their friends killed. They know what to do when a single person approaches them and starts trying to bite them.

This is exactly what I've been talking about. You're not thinking of the soldiers as real people who try to do the smart thing in a difficult situation. You're thinking of them as robots who will mindlessly do dumb things in order to create drama.

But if the unit is separated, then they could be better organized as there isn't over 100 people shouting and yelling and shooting the air every few seconds. They could set up chokepoints of 10 or so people with rifles and calmly tell the soldiers to aim for the head of the zombies and not panic and also tell them how to retreat properly, instead of letting the zombie bite them.

Have you ever heard of "moving the goalposts?" Because that's what you just did.

You described a situation where at most there would be ten or so people available, sent in a few at a time, into a dangerous and random situation. I replied that a smart person would send ALL his forces, and form a perimeter so they could guard each other's back.

Now you're talking about an entirely different situation, unrelated in every way, and assuming I meant "crowd hundreds of soldiers into a room as tightly as possible" or something like that.

I will not bother to reply to any more of your questions or comments until you agree to stop moving the goalposts.

Clearly define the situations you're dealing with, and the resources that are available to deal with them. Don't invent imaginary scenarios NOT part of the situation you're dealing with to justify doing things that would be stupid or bizarre in other situations. I mean, you could equally well say "well what if they're attacked by a giant unicorn who can only be defeated by jumping up and down on one leg while rubbing your tummy? In that case, they shouldn't do all this 'good tactics' stuff, they should jump up and down on one leg and rub their tummies!"

It's technically true, but it's pointless, and it's dishonest to use that as a reply as if it proves me wrong to advocate for good tactics in general.

[RogueIce]

What are you even asking for here? We've tried to give what happens under "normal" situations but then you keep bringing up fucking magic and shit, for which there is (obviously) no existing protocol. And then when you're invoking these off-the-wall scenarios, you keep changing them (rebels seizing a town/station, werewolves, zombies, ghosts possessing people, etc.) so we can't even make an attempt at speculation of what they might try to do when faced with such an unprecedented situation because the situation changes with every damn post you make.

So fucking settle on something that we can actually try to discuss, or go the fuck away and quit wasting our time.

[Kamakazie Sith]

So, how are all the police units connected to each other? If one unit is dispatched (say one car with two cops) to a dangerous crime zone, is that unit supposed to constantly report back to the HQ every few minutes to let them know they have not gone out of action in some form? What happens in a small town if a police unit goes to investigate a crime zone and does not return, or does not report back? Do they request for additional reinforcements from a larger city or do they just assume it's a technical glitch and either ignore it or send another unit out?

If one car with two cops is sent to a dangerous crime zone more will automatically be sent as they become available up until the situation is made safe. If it were serious enough that could mean a tactical alert being issued by the department and all its off duty officers being called in for duty.

What happens if a police station itself is put out of action by various hazards and it completely loses it's function? What will the remaining police do? Will they retreat to the nearest "online" station, or will they attempt to re-secure their own station?

They will initiate incident command procedures which all police, regardless of rank, in major areas receive training in. This means that your typical front line officer isn't a supervisor in any capacity is trained to fill the role of tactical commander. Anyway, what this means is a command unit will be sent up and then that unit will provide dispatching instructions. Calls for service will only be dispatched for high priority, life threatening situations and they will be dispatched in force. Not one two man car. That's a standard response to your typical family fight and not a dangerous active crime scene.

So in horror/action movies where the police station only holds a couple police (5-10 cops), is it realistic when they send out one unit which doesn't return and then they just send another and another and another until the station is literally empty except for maybe the chief which then holds up in a room with a gun on the door but gets killed by a zombie behind him? Or would they attempt something else other than sending unit after unit hoping to eventually clear out the technical problem or overwhelm the hazards?

In a small department like that they'd probably retreat and call for reinforcements if they were confronted with a dangerous scene where they took casualties.

What happens if a entire station is disabled with no one able to restore it? Let's say the station was in a small town which was captured by rebels and the police force was wiped out. Would the other stations around it send reinforcing units or would they just ignore and blame it on the weather? Are the stations required to keep in radio contact with each other? If not, what if a rebel army wiped a police station and barricaded the town?

What you're talking about would be a small town and that could potentially go unnoticed for a bit. However, once it was noticed you could expect a significant response especially if local civilians aren't answering (like the mayor).

[Kamakazie Sith]

What are you even asking for here? We've tried to give what happens under "normal" situations but then you keep bringing up fucking magic and shit, for which there is (obviously) no existing protocol. And then when you're invoking these off-the-wall scenarios, you keep changing them (rebels seizing a town/station, werewolves, zombies, ghosts possessing people, etc.) so we can't even make an attempt at speculation of what they might try to do when faced with such an unprecedented situation because the situation changes with every damn post you make.

So fucking settle on something that we can actually try to discuss, or go the fuck away and quit wasting our time.

Yeah, Simon is obviously correct. Police don't train to handle supernatural events. However, a properly trained department if confronted with such a situation would probably issue a general recall to all its officers and then a reverse phone number call out would go out to all homes in the city telling them to shelter in place and providing them with information about what is going on. Then incident command protocol would take effect. Officers would likely only respond to calls for service in which this threat had presented itself against a member of the city and they would respond in force.

[Me2005]

*Raises Hand*

I worked for a smallish town police station (+/- 20,000 people). I was not an officer, but I did do patrols. RogueIce is largely right, but I think I can provide some inside clarity.

So, how are all the police units connected to each other?

By radio, at all times for regular patrol units. Special operations may use another radio channel or other form of communications, but they will always all be in contact with each other and usually dispatch. There is a dispatch center also communicating with all the officers in the jurisdiction; which was (in my case) more than just the one city, and IIRC was actually in contact with a higher level jurisdiction and they would sometimes patch officers from all over the county through to us. All communications go over the radio to anyone listening - dispatch, officers, civilians with that radio frequency.

If one unit is dispatched (say one car with two cops) to a dangerous crime zone, is that unit supposed to constantly report back to the HQ every few minutes to let them know they have not gone out of action in some form?

If it's a known dangerous crime zone, yes, absolutely - though usually at the officer's discretion. I.e.: after calling in a possible domestic violence, dispatch calls for nearby officers and they meet up before proceeding to the site. They radio in when heading to the site, whether they're going lights & sirens or not, once they've met up with the other officers, and when they're approaching the building. If the situation becomes troublesome, they report that immediately - you'd have to keep every one of several officers from grabbing their radio and uttering a phrase. If shots are fired, they report that immediately. One of the officers may continue radioing in while the others are talking to the people at the site.

And all the other available officers will be racing to respond, and depending on the situation officers from other jurisdictions will be joining in too. If it's just a suspected crime zone, you radio in and wait for response/confirmation from dispatch and possibly backup before going closer.

What happens in a small town if a police unit goes to investigate a crime zone and does not return, or does not report back? Do they request for additional reinforcements from a larger city or do they just assume it's a technical glitch and either ignore it or send another unit out?

If they go to investigate a situation and do not report in, you can bet there will be reinforcements sent in fully aware of all the information known about the situation, when the officers stopped responding, and possibly what happened prior to the officers stopping communications. It'd be tough to knock out the communications between the disappeared officers and all the other officers/dispatch when they know what they're going into, and would only fail to be suspect if the officers had been heading into a known radio blackout area or had announced they were going off comms prior to the disappearance. Even then, they'd probably get more backup before going dark if that were the case.

You didn't ask, but dispatch checks up on every unit's status and position every hour or so regardless (if they're not busy). If you fail a check, they assume technical glitch but mark it down and ask if any other units have a bearing on the missing unit. If no one does, they send someone to check the area the unit was last seen in.

What happens if a police station itself is put out of action by various hazards and it completely loses it's function? What will the remaining police do? Will they retreat to the nearest "online" station, or will they attempt to re-secure their own station?

Why do they need a station anyway? We never went there except to check out radios and stamp time cards. Officers do paperwork in one, sometimes they have better armories or jails or something, but I thought we were talking small town. The station is largely unnecessary, all the real work is done from foot or the patrol cars.

If *dispatch* went down, that'd be a thing. But the officers can probably still talk to each other, as long as the radio tower still works. But TBH, I have no idea where dispatch even was. It's probably armored and discrete. In the modern age, I'm not sure what it'd take to take down a well-setup dispatch center and radio comms system. All I know is that dispatch has more than one person in it, and they'd probably get a call out if they were in trouble since they are talking to *all the emergency responders in the area all the time*.

So in horror/action movies where the police station only holds a couple police (5-10 cops)

That's probably true. I think ours was ~20 total, but only 5-10 per shift.

is it realistic when they send out one unit which doesn't return and then they just send another and another and another until the station is literally empty except for maybe the chief which then holds up in a room with a gun on the door but gets killed by a zombie behind him?

No, not at all. The chief ain't got time for that nonsense, he's probably at home asleep until the 2nd unit goes out and then someone will wake him up.

Or would they attempt something else other than sending unit after unit hoping to eventually clear out the technical problem or overwhelm the hazards?

If, for some reason, dispatch lost communications with a unit and sent another and lost it too, you can bet they're going to reassess the situation, send more than one unit in, and/or call for the cavalry.

What happens if a entire station is disabled with no one able to restore it? Let's say the station was in a small town which was captured by rebels and the police force was wiped out. Would the other stations around it send reinforcing units or would they just ignore and blame it on the weather? Are the stations required to keep in radio contact with each other? If not, what if a rebel army wiped a police station and barricaded the town?

If a whole station is wiped out... Firstly, why weren't they talking to the other stations all the time already and how didn't they get a call for reinforcements before being wiped out?

Anyway, let's roll with "Rebels wiped out a station quietly" thing, then yeah other stations are coming in once everyone from that station fails to check in. Dispatch would probably call up the national guard at that point. If Dispatch was taken out, the officers would investigate and keep in contact with each other and probably another county's dispatch.

How would anyone on the outside find out? Etc, etc. Thanks.

Among a vast number of reasons, civilians can (and frequently reporters do) listen in to police frequencies, so their calls for help could be heard by anyone in range.

In the event of a staion, with any mid to large agencies that have multiple divisions/precincts/whatever they'll notice when a station goes quiet. Even in a One Station Department, officers on patrol will have occasion to go back to HQ and realize something is wrong.

The stations are usually 'networked' through dispatch. Maybe usually on different channels, but we had a few separate stations that served different jurisdictions that could help each other out in a pinch but didn't unless it was a pinch or as backup.