Its my basic understanding that police rankings are thus:
Patrolman, seargent, lieutenant, captain & chief. The patrolman responds to calls, the seargent is leader of about 6-8 patrolmen. A city is divided into districts, a captain heads each district, and a lieutenant is responsible for initiating investigations & busts within each district.
In the police, what are the rankings, and what responsibilities does each ranking recieve? how many years experience does it take to make each rank? (from what i’ve seen, it is about 10 years for seargent, 20 for lieutenant, but thats all i know)
Army rankings i am much more confused about. i think (for enlisted men) it goes
2nd lieutenant, 1st lieutenant, captain, major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, brigadier general, major general, general. lieutenant general & general of the army.
a 2nd lieutenant leads a platoon, but i don’t really know what a platoon consists of.
What are the responsibilities of enlisted men in the army, and what are the groups they lead (i.e., platoon, squad, division, etc) composed of?
Here is an example (USMC terminology, ranks are basically the same):
A Platoon is normally led by a 2ndLt, like you say. A Platoon (infantry) would have a Platoon Sergeant of Staff Sergeant or maybe Gunnery Sergeant rank, and contain three Squads, led by Sergeants. Each Squad has three Fire Teams, led by Corporals. Each Fire Team has four members, LCpls and PFCs.
PFC/LCpl - in charge of their own butts Corporal - in charge of one four-man team Sergeant - in charge of three four-man teams (13 total in Squad) 2ndLt - in charge of three, 13 man Squad plus Plt Sgt and Guide/Clerk (total maybe 42)
The ranks are not set in stone for each postion, you can have a Staff Sergeant Platoon Commander or Squad Leader, and LCpls as Fire Team Leaders, depending on the current manning levels and what ranks are in the platoon.
I suspect that the rank structure varies a great deal police force to police force. In my town (or at least the town closest to me that’s big enough to have a real police department), the ranks are patrolman, patrolman first class, and then corporal. I know a guy that’s been a corporal for years and years and years. I don’t know why he doesn’t get promoted since he’s a good cop with a good reputation . . . perhaps he doesn’t want the responsibilites of sergeanthood (whatever those may be), or maybe he just won’t take time out to get the necessary schooling. There may be more than one kind of sergeant rank here after corporal, but I’m not sure.
I know at least some police forces out there have majors and colonels in them–I want to say that these are state police forces.
The duties of the various ranks of people in the Army vary a great deal depending on what field they are in. Generally, the higher a person’s rank, the more responsibility they have and the more people they have under their command. It’s very difficult to give examples of the responsibilities that come with each rank. An Army captain in the Special Forces might lead a twelve-man team while an infantry or engineer captain might lead a company with around ten times as many people. The duties of a major in the chaplain corps would be way different than those of a major in aviation or intelligence or public affairs.
In the Army, the basic unit is a squad–just a few guys. It’s size will vary depending on how many people are required to do its job. Several squads will make a platoon, led by a lieutenant and some kind of NCO. Three, four, or five platoons will make a company (or a battery in arty or a troop in the land of horses and helicopters), typically led by a captain. The next level of military organization up is a battalion, normally led by a lieutenant colonel. Next up is the brigade, which has two or more battalions in it. Throw a few brigades together and you have a division. Then comes the corps (don’t think about the Marines–this is just a sequence of Army organizational units), which is just a giant shitload of people. After a certain level, the different levels of command/organization have headquarter elements and support elements which themselves come in different shapes and sizes. And to confuse things even more, you have sections, groups, regiments, task forces, detachments, and sundry other units. Other armies order their forces in different ways . . . I have in books come across Russian fronts, for example–I’m not sure what they do, but they’re really big (like a corps, perhaps?). A couple years ago I read the memoirs of a guy who served in the French Foreign Legion–he was in a “section” that was much bigger that the “sections” you’ll find in the United States Army–bigger than a squad but smaller than a platoon.
Anyway, it’s complicated and confusing.
I tried to Google up a good site for you and found this. Armed with the knowledge you can find there I imagine you’ll be able to make some pretty informed search engine recons of your own. Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.
One important thing to remember about Police in the Anglo-American tradition is that their career track is that of civil servants, not military. . It doesn’t work like in the military where it is required that you “make rank” within X time or get out, and each step up in pay grade has to go along with one in rank. In a Police department, you can be a plain old Patrolman/Trooper/Deputy/Constable for your entire career.
Specially in the US, the paramilitary “ranks” of police sergeant, lieutenant, and captain are really titles given to the people who have been qualified for the first 3 supervisory/managerial levels. In US major urban police departments, you will have above “captain” a number of levels of positions that are referred to by job title, such as Assistant District Chief, District Chief, Deputy Chief, SubCommissioner, etc., who when in uniform may wear the insignia of various upper military ranks. Mephisto, it is indeed mostly in state police departments that I’ve seen actual titling of the positions by paramilitary ranks up through the field grades (major, LTC, Colonel). It has over time become the practice of the top uniformed policeman in a jurisdiction, be it the NY Police Commissioner or the Yeehaw County Sheriff, to wear the four stars of a “full” General whatever the size of his force or his actual title. I wonder about how secure they are in their authority…
Police departments in places other than the US may have a system that does not use the paramilitary ranks at all (say: Constable, Chief Constable, Inspector, Chief Inspector, Commissioner, Superintendent) .
(* There are by contrast Police agencies in the tradition fo the French Gendarmérie, Spanish Guardia Civil and Italian Carabinieri that ARE paramilitary.)
Brigadier General
Major General
Lieutenant General
General
“General of the army” - a five star general - is an appointment, not a rank. It’s only been used in situations where a general was actually in command of a force large enough to merit it.
Various ranks command different levels of organizations - there are exceptions, but I’ll get to that. Generally speaking if you took infantry as your baseline, you could organize the army along units of the following size:
Sections or squads (6-10 men)
Platoons (25-35 men)
Companies (100 men)
Battalions (300 men)
Regiments (800-1000 men)
Brigades (3000-4000 men)
Divisions (10000-20000 men)
Corps (Sometimes made up of divisions, sometimes of brigades)
Armies (Many corps or divisions)
This is rough, obviously. In practice, a division isn’t really just 3 brigades, it’s a huge assortment of units that roughly approximates the manpower and strength of three brigades but with a little extra. A full-scale mechanized infantry division would actually have its frontline units broken up into regiments or battalions, including some armor and armored recon forces, and would also have a divisional artillery regiment, helicopter squadrons, antiaircraft assets, a signals regiment, an electronic warfare battalion or squadron, NBCW assets, a field hospital, intelligence assets, a transport and logistics regiment, etc, etc, etc. And the exact order of battle will vary from country to country, division to division.
A LIEUTENANT generally commands a platoon.
A Captain commands a company…
A Major commands a battalion…
A Colonel commands a regiment…
A Brigadier General commands a brigade (duh)…
A Major General commands a division…
You get the idea.
“But,” you ask, “where are lieutenant colonels, and do ALL officers command something?” Well, no. Many officers - most, actually - do not command a formation. When I was in the army I had officers in my unit who filled roles like “Training officer” and “Advisor” and “DCO” and stuff like that. A colonel could be a chief of staff for a general. But the rank-formation matrix gives you a rough idea of what an officer’s relative level of responsibility is.
The NYPD’s rank structure is fairly large. The various badges of the different ranks can be found here
The basic rank is Police Officer, with a white (silver) shield and no rank insignia.
Above P.O. is Detective, which has a gold shield, but no rank insignia. Detectives are a bit off the usual chain of ranks, and and don’t usually supervise Police Officers. Many Police Officers will be promoted to Sargeant without being a detective. Also there are three grades of Detective, with Detective Third Grade being the lowest and First Grade being the highest. The badge and insignia of each Detective grade are the same, though a Second Grade gets paid at about the rate of a Sargeant and a First Grade gets paid at about the rate of a Lieutenant. Lieutenants and Sargeants in the detective bureau can also sometimes get a pay bump above their colleauges at the same rank.
The first level of supervisor in the NYPD is a Sargeant. They wear a gold shield and three chevrons. Above that, the rank structure is:
Lieutenant (single gold bar)
Captain (two gold bars)
Deputy Inspector (gold oak leaf)
Inspector (gold eagle)
Deptuy Chief (one gold star)
Assistant Chief (two gold stars)
“Superchief” or Chief of Bureau (three gold stars)
Chief of Department (the highest ranking uniformed officer, four gold stars)
There are also civilian police commissioners. They don’t wear uniforms, but their badges have stars on them.
The highest is the Police Commissioner, who gets a solid gold shield with five stars. The First Deputy Commissioner has a shield with four stars. Deputy Commissioners have shields with three stars, and Assistant Deputy Commissioners and Assistant Commissioners get a shield with two stars.
In the NYPD, a precinct will be commanded by a Captain, Deputy Inspector or Inspector, depending on its size.
It’s possible that the confusion about General of the Army (which is a rank, albeit not currently filled by any general officer), is with General of the Armies, an honorary title equivalent to “Generalissimo” which has been given only twice: to Washington and to Pershing.
Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.