Lights & Sirens

You must activate your emergency lights to signal to the suspect vehicle that you intend to pull them over, you may choose to blare your siren briefly if you believe the suspect is yet to notice your emergency lights. You must have probable cause ("PC") to make a traffic stop, this may be any visible vehicle code or other violations.

Vehicle Positioning

You must pull behind the suspect vehicle maintaining a safe distance and activate your emergency lights. Allow time for the suspect to find an appropriate place to pull over before calling out that the suspect is evading (unless it is clear their intention is to evade). If the suspect is not actively taking off but taking a while to pull over, activate your sirens as they may just need to see your lights behind them. Once stopped Position your vehicle approximately 1 half or 1 full cars distance away from them whilst being angled towards the road slightly, this provides a triangle of cover on the driver side when opening the door and it is general good practice/ tactics.

It is imperative that you effectively communicate the details of your stop prior to exiting your vehicle so that dispatch is fully aware of your whereabouts, traffic stops are often the most dangerous situation an Officer can be placed into due to their nature of uncertainty.

Radio Communication

Once the vehicle has come to a full stop, you must notify dispatch of your traffic stop giving the following information:

• Unit Identifer (Callsign)

• Traffic Stop

• Location inc. Roadname, Postal, Direction of Travel

• Vehicle Description

• Vehicle Occupancy

• Backup Required? Yes or No

Example Callout:

"1A-26 show me on a 10-11, Westbound on East Joshua nearest 3036 on a Black 4 Door Sedan occupied times one, no backup required."

When approaching the vehicle to communicate with the driver, walk around the rear of your vehicle to their passenger side window, this creates a good distance between yourself and the suspect when speaking and prevents them from injuring you by reversing into you (never walk behind the suspect vehicle). 

Once you are in a safe position to speak to the suspect you may begin the interaction with the suspect keeping in mind that the way you may communicate with a suspect varies on the following things: whether or not they are known to be dangerous/ armed; whether or not they have priors; etc.

Obligatory Officer Information

1. Officer Identity: You must suitably identify yourself on approach by giving your Name and Rank, Badge number (or Callsign) and the Department you work for.
   Example: "Hello I am Officer John Doe, Badge Number 25196, with the Los Santos Police Department..."

2. Reason for Stop: You must give the reason you have cited to stop the vehicle, so as to not allow the civilian to incriminate themselves for a crime you are not aware of.
   Example: "I am stopping you today because of a damaged tail-light."

Information Requested from Suspect

1. Driver's Licence: You may wish to ask the suspect to verbally give their name also to confirm that the Licence they have handed you is in fact their own.

2. Vehicle Registration: The registration may be under a different name to the Driver, as long as the driver is lawfully allowed to operate the vehicle and has an insurance policy that covers themselves on the vehicle in question.

3. Proof Of Insurance: The driver must be insured on the vehicle in order to operate it on the public roadway.

Should a suspect fail to provide any of the above, you may wish to request any other form of official document that can confirm that:

A. The vehicle is not stolen.

B. The driver is lawfully permitted to drive.

C. The driver is not a wanted criminal.

Once you have all the necessary information, tell the suspect to sit tight whilst you run their information through the system and you will be right back.

Now you will go back to your vehicle and run all the info given.

Name not in System Procedure: 

Notify the driver that they were not found in the system, this may be the case that they are not registered in CAD (if so do all the proceedings in /me) or that they gave you the wrong characters name (if so request the correct name and repeat the process), if you believe the suspect may have given a false ID/ Name you must request an addition unit and get them out of the vehicle for questioning to establish whether this is true or not.

Invalid Registration Procedure: 

In this case you must request the backup and request the driver get out of the vehicle. In this scenario the vehicle may be found to be stolen (run VIN Numbers via /me if not in CAD) at which point you place the suspect under arrest and tow the vehicle; or the driver forgot to register their vehicle - to confirm this to be the case request for Valid proof of purchase. If they can give this to you, you may add an additional charge of Registration Violation to the suspects citation and tow the vehicle.

Stolen or Impounded Vehicle Procedure: 

In this case you must request immediate code 3 backup to initiate a code 5 on the suspect and then place them under arrest 

Once you have verified the information and dealt with any discrepancies you may begin to write the citation/ written warning should you decide it necessary. 

You may choose the briefly go back to the subject to notify him that his information comes back okay and that he will receive a citation prior to writing or you may begin to write it immediately after the ‘Validating Information’ stage.

Once your citation is written accurately and to a high standard you must issue it to the suspect (along with their information that they handed to you previously) and get their signature on the citation and then either instruct them to wait for you to be in your vehicle with lights off before they leave, or tow the vehicle as necessary.

Once they have been instructed to wait until they leave you may go back to your vehicle, again by walking around the rear of your vehicle this time to the driver side (avoiding the rear of the suspect vehicle). Get in your vehicle, disable your lights and tell them they are free to go.
YOU SHOULD MAKE SURE TO WATCH THEM DRIVE OFF.

Radio Traffic: Notify dispatch that your 10-11 is Code 4 and that you will be back 10-8.