This is the Police 2 – A Comprehensive Guide to Sharpwood’s Finest

A complete guide to the ins and outs of the less obvious details regarding your officers, and on how to manage them and to maximize their effectiveness.

Other This Is the Police 2 Guides:

• This Is the Police 2 Basic Starting Guide
• This Is the Police 2 False Alarms Guide
• This Is the Police 2 Scanner Codes
• This Is the Police 2 Guide to Investigations

Overview

Much like the prequel, one of TITP2’s biggest issues is the lack of information and feedback it gives. There’s a lore explanation behind every call and every excuse, but the game fails to make much of the actual gameplay reasons for things happening obvious.

This can become especially harmful in regards to your roster, as the state of your officers results in a positive feedback loop: A healthy roster will lead to strong performance and in turn rewards you with more cops, whereas a troubled roster will result in you bleeding staff and becoming unable to replenish them or prevent harm.

This guide covers just about everything you need to know about your officers in detail, without spoiling the story too much.

Reading this, I’m assuming you have a basic understanding of how the game works. If you’re looking for really basic information, check a less specific guide. This one is dedicated to deeper, more detailed information covering officers.

Officer Stats

Each cop has a set of six skills: Strength, intelligence, speed, stealth, shooting, and negotiation. These are each useful in their own way. These stats aren’t directly related to the cop’s starting professionalism (i.e. x professionalism isn’t guaranteed to have y amount of skill points), but higher starting professionalism is correlated with higher skills.

Cops will gain another skill point every 50 professionalism (from 0, not from when they’re first recruited) so it’s in your best interest to send out as many cops as it’s safe to, in order to raise their professionalism.

General tips about stat builds

• Focus on maximizing each cop’s starting stats first, before making evenly skilled cops. A cop with three shooting will be more reliable and more useful more often than a cop with one of each stat, and specialized cops can cover for each other.
• Calls are best done with at least two of the required stat, but that still leaves a small chance of failure. Rely on your equipment to succeed until you have enough cops with level three stats.
• For calls, you will use negotiation, stealth, strength, speed, intelligence, then shooting from most to least often.
• Try and build a roster of cops that complement each other. Once you have enough cops, you’ll be able to create shifts similar to the first game. Make sure you’ve got enough cops to cover each other’s stats every day.

In-depth information on stats

• Intelligence is a good pick for disloyal cops, cops with special requirements or alcoholics who you can’t afford to treat, as it allows you to stick them behind a desk.
• For tactical missions, stealth is by far the most important stat to build. It allows you to take out criminals at range without any cost with the silencer, and the Ninja perk gives a third action, which is extremely powerful. Chameleon may be the most important perk next to that, as it allows you to position cops more aggressively inside or outside of stealth.
• Shooting is not used terribly often, but where it comes into play it almost always results in the perpetrator dying, even if you’re just shooting a criminal’s tires out. Avoid using those options when necessary, but understand that it IS sometimes required for the optimal outcome, especially when a criminal is using a gun and is at the ready with it.

Officer Loyalty

Unlike the first game, cops are no longer always loyal to you and will sometimes come to you disloyal, or may become disloyal. With loyal cops as the baseline, disloyal cops…

• Will not work two days in a row.
• Will randomly refuse to perform options on calls.
• Will refuse to do off-the-book errands. (not including the pink services you buy, i.e. driving an alcoholic to be cured)
• Will refuse to go on calls alone or not paired up with at least one loyal cop.
• Are AI controlled during tactical missions. They have zero intention of stealth and will fire at the first criminal they can, so avoid this at all costs.

You can very easily tell which cops are disloyal by whether they’re wearing the standard police hat and uniform or not, with only one exception.

Each cop has a happiness/loyalty which can be seen if you earn a snitch from playing blackjack. (I don’t know how to play blackjack, refused each time it was offered and never got a snitch.) You can influence this number in various ways.

Influencing Loyalty
The excuses cops provide in the morning are the easiest way to gain or lose their loyalty. Say yes if it’s a fair excuse, say no if it’s a dumb excuse. Unfortunately, you cannot just be easy on your cops, as they will lose loyalty when let off for bad excuses. Excuses that are of their own fault typically count as bad ones.
Each cop has a laziness level, which you’ll come to learn over time. Lazy cops will frequently come in with bad excuses. More dutiful cops will generally only come in with good excuses that you should allow to slide, instead of risking losing their loyalty.

In normal gameplay, there are common opportunities to gain or lose loyalty.

• You can earn favor (and energy) by sending cops to the bathhouse, unlocked by completing a favor for Albert Sigvaldason. At $1500 per session and with each run taking a while, you should only do this if you don’t anticipate being able to gain it via any other means for a while.
• When a cop dies and you hold a funeral, you’ll have a few cops ask to be excused for a few hours to attend. They’ll only be gone for a little bit, so it’s worth your while.
• You can lose loyalty from sending cops out on errands, i.e. earning the church torture option from Rizzo.

Here are a few other opportunties for gaining loyalty. Note this doesn’t cover absolutely everything, these are just the ones that stood out the most to me.

• The first investigation you’re given will result in the victim installing toilets for all of your cops once it’s solved. This results in all your cops earning GUARANTEED loyalty, which is extremely helpful! Finish it at your leisure, either quickly if you need all of your cops to be loyal quickly, or after you’ve fleshed out your roster with more disloyal cops.
• A good while into the game, your cops will find a stash of beer and decide to party in memory of the former sheriff Wells. Refusing results in a large loss of loyalty, accepting gains a lot of loyalty but also results in a random spread of cops coming to work drunk (not alcoholic) the day after. Be sure to bring more cops to work in order to offset that.
• At a certain point in the game, your station chef goes on a honeymoon, leaving you to choose and pay for their meals. You can curry favor with cops by choosing dishes they desire but avoid angering any. Also avoid purchasing ice cream or Sharpwood infusion as they will always anger one cop, even if they’re requested.

• A wife of a cop will come in and ask you to get her abusive husband killed. This probably helps, although all of my cops were loyal at this point so I couldn’t tell.

On Alcoholism

Much like the first game, your cops can come in inebriated, but here it’s a much more persistent and severe issue.

Drunkness, the left icon, is a one-time thing that occurs from special events, such as after an errand or task or from other prompts.
Alcoholism, the right icon, is most often found when recruiting cops, but can also randomly appear on cops or can occur from rare events. Unlike the first game, it won’t go away naturally as a cop becomes more proficient.

Drunk and alcoholic cops are at risk of crashing their cars and becoming injured or straight up dying on the way to calls. They also only have ONE action during tactical missions. They will NOT crash if sent out alone on investigations or calls, funnily enough. (correct me if I’m wrong there, but I’ve never had it happen.)

To deal with this, you can cure alcoholism a $750 treatment unlocked for completing a favor for Tarek Palm. It has a random chance of success, so be prepared to shell out quite a bit of money for each cop you want to cure.

Notable Officers

Certain cops come with quirks and requirements that may interfere with them going out on calls or in other places. All of these cops are either ones you start out with or are scripted recruits, with the single exception of germaphobic cops. While they can be a pain to deal with, most of them will either become very capable due to being given to you early or come with strong stats, so they’re generally worth putting up with.

Starting cops

Bradhi, if permitted, will come to work in various uniforms. Besides being fun to look at, he will also refuse to go on calls with disloyal cops (as they’re not in full uniform) and he won’t go on tactical missions on the grounds of getting his uniform dirty.

Mustard refuses to go on calls with women. Not much else to say, he’s a decent officer otherwise, if a bit lazy.

Spurlock refuses to go on calls with men below her professionalism, but unlike Mustard she’s got an upside: Successful calls with only women will grant additional experience gain (2x or 10+, unsure), which adds up to quite a bit over time. Gain her loyalty and make sure all of your female cops end up on her shift, as they’re a minority in Sharpwood PD.
Spurlock also apparently refuses to go to the bathhouse with any men, and comes in with a related excuse. Her loyalty is worth your while for the aforementioned reasons so I’d suggest putting up with it.

Kurosawa refuses to work after three or so calls. He’s also lazy and will come in with lots of excuses, a good way of earning his loyalty by accepting them or denying them where appropriate. Stack his intelligence and assign him to investigations to get the most use out of him.

Belmont hates batons and will not equip them. Attempting to give him one while assigning equipment too many times will result in loss of his loyalty. Auto-assign avoids this, although I wouldn’t recommend using it.

Penkin is truant for the first week or so preparing for his band, and from then on he’ll come in with excuses. Thankfully, if you had the cleaning lady come in you should gain his loyalty once he finally shows up for work.

Scripted recruits
(in order of appearance)

Persy is virtually the same as his cousin you had in Freeburg, with the exception that the same stipulations don’t apply and he comes with his own backstory. Show your defiance of Weappy by making him your best cop, just like you did in the big city.

Fletcher comes to your roster a few days in. Nothing special about him besides being a scripted recruit, though he comes with good professionalism, three negotiation, and he doesn’t make excuses.

Woolbag is relatively capable, but apparently he’s incredibly smelly. He’ll come in with smell-related excuses and cops will randomly refuse to work with him due to his stench. If he asks to shower or wash his clothes and you’re not desperately in need of manpower, let him.

Horsemoon is superstitious. She will have occasional excuses vis a vis her beliefs but most notably she’ll refuse to go out on calls after the sun sets.

Leiva loses equipment you give him, either being a kleptomaniac or the unluckiest cop in the world. You’ll find this out early as he comes with a baton, if you’re low on equipment keep that in mind.

Certain cops are germaphobes and will not go out to places like hospitals or garbage dumps. I had Yarbrott and Sullivan fall into this category, but I’m not sure if it’s randomized or not.

Miscellaneous Details

Here’s a few more miscellaneous tips, for management and about various events.

• Avoid sending exhausted (red stamina bar) cops to calls, as they’re at risk of falling asleep at the wheel and crashing. You wouldn’t want to get a cop killed on purpose, would you?
• The random prompts you receive that offer something for your department or a cash reward will typically either result in a cop leaving your roster/getting killed or will put all of your cops at risk of staying home or getting killed while going out on calls., respectively Prioritize the health and loyalty of your roster above your budget, unless you REALLY need to pay off Fry.
• A while after you’ve had to serve food for your cops, you’re offered the opportunity for someone to deal with that for you for $12,000. You’ll only have to put up with it for a few more days, so you should probably deny it and just keep soldiering on, unless you’re really sick of it.
• After Jack’s Freeburg dream, you’ll start hallucinating seeing your old cops in place of some of your normal roster for a few days. This doesn’t affect gameplay, but it does have a 100% chance of making you long for Kochi and Stovall again.