Lead cop notification

[[TC]»Elmo«]

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about this mostly due to there being 2 potential definitions of "lead cop".

First is the "Lead Cop" aka "Cop 1 Cop 2" guideline which covers a sensible etiquette for cop interaction. Personally, I've always thought "Cop 1 Cop 2" to be a bit of a dodgy name, but I guess that's a different discussion

Second is the cop that's been in the chase for the longest.


Now to clear things up and hopefully set a precedent that might stick:

For all practical purposes the "Lead Cop" is the one who is closest behind the suspect. This is how it is in real life (in the UK at least, providing that driver is pursuit trained) and makes sense to me. This is also exactly how the "Lead Cop/Cop 1 Cop 2" guideline works.


It's not really vital to know which cop has been in the chase the longest except for the InSim when it's dealing with the fines.

The cop who has been in the chase the longest does not have some divine right to be the only one allowed to call for backup.

The only thing this cop (arguably) has over the others is the best knowledge of how the chase overall is progressing... in theory at least. However, if this cop has dropped back from the suspect for whatever reason, then the Cop who knows best how the chase is going now is the Lead Cop.
There's also the fact that the longest running cop may never have actually been sufficiently close to the suspect to know what's really going on. In this situation, the only piece of information this cop has is how long the chase has been going, which is not enough information on its own to decide whether backup is needed or not.

So, the people who may be in a position to call for backup at any one time are:

• The Lead Cop
• Any cop who has been in contact with the suspect for a decent length of time (this may or may not include the cop who's been in the chase the longest).
• In some circumstances, any other cop who is in a good position to know that more backup is needed (eg if the suspect is clearly faster than any of the cops, etc. There are several other cases that I will not list here).

Note: there may well be several people who are in a reasonable position to call for backup at any one time.

So, on the whole, there's little need to actually know who the cop is that's been in the chase the longest. If you happen know that's you, then great, but you don't need to know and neither does anyone else.

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To summarise:

• For all practical purposes the "Lead Cop" is the one who is closest behind the suspect.
• There may well be several people in a good position to call backup at any time.
• The cop who's been in the chase the longest might not be one of them.

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Why I think "Cop1 Cop2" is a bad name (Click to View)

1. "Cop1 Cop2" doesn't give any idea as to what the guideline is about unless you already fully know the guideline.

2. It's rarely only "Cop1" and "Cop2". However, it is always "Lead Cop" and "Everyone Else" aka Backup. For the purposes of the guideline when there are extra backup cars, you can easily mentally substitute "Lead Cop" with "the cop in front of you".

3. When explaining the guideline, changing around the players who are Cop1/Cop2/Cop3/whatever can get confusing, for example:
- "CopB (who is Cop2) overtakes Cop1 (CopA) and becomes Cop1 so CopA is now Cop2" or worse:
- "Cop1 is overtaken by Cop2 so Cop2 becomes Cop1 and Cop1 becomes Cop2".... er, what?