Police Officer Preparation & Law Enforcement Resource - Archive

There are many substations along with headquarters. What instances would an arrested suspect go to headquarters instead of their substation in their division?

In St. Louis, the outlying substations hold prisoners temporarily, and they have a conveyance van that does nothing but drive around picking up prisoners and taking them to the "main" jail.

YMMV.

-Citicop.

We have 5 precincts in Portland, but we take all prisoners to one county jail booking facility. In fact, every city in the county have to take prisoners there.

Here's a followup: does a big city's department headquarters house their own officers and divisions or is it purely administrative?

Here (400,000 pop), each division is where patrol works from. Each division also has 2 or 3 property detectives.

Headquarters is where homicide, major crimes, and sex crimes detectives are stationed. Also, the traffic unit, major accident unit, and SWAT are stationed there, as well as all the admin.

To answer your original question, at my department, an arrested suspect goes to central HQ when the crime is gonig to be handled by any detective stationed there. They have the high tech video and sound recorded interview rooms. Each division has sound recorded rooms, not video.

That makes the abstract into the concrete. Thanks.