I’ve always wondered about the police rank of Inspector.
Does an Inspector outrank a police Sergeant? Is it below the rank of police Lieutenant?
Why are they called Inspector? Is this a rank only for police detectives or do uniformed police officers have this rank also?
It all depends on the individual police force.
The position of ranks vary by each police department. Though most departments have similar ranks, not all do. Over the past 22+ years I’ve been on 3 seperate pd’s, each one having it’s own hierarchy.
For instance, some departments have corporals (one rank above patrolman) many don’t have such a rank and the positions go right from patrolman to sergeant.
Another department had ranks of officer 1, officer 2, officer 3, and then Sgt., Lieutenant, Captain, then Chief.
The department I’m on now no longer has an inspector, but when we did he was second in command, like a deputy chief. He outranked everyone except the chief, including Captains. He usually was in plain clothes, but occassional wore a uniform.
As pkbites says, it depends on the force.
My step-father retired from the New South Wales Police Force (Australia) at the rank of Inspector. As you can see from the list, this is above Senior Sargeant, and below Chief Inspector. Australian police forces tend not to have a rank of Lieutenant.
The exact duties and responsibilities of an Inspector, as far as i could tell, seemed to vary depending on where you were stationed. In a big city or large suburban station, there might be several Inspectors in one command, while in smaller suburban or rural commands, the Inspector might be the one guy in charge.
Inspectors in the New South Wales force can be either regular police Inspectors, or they can be in criminal investigation (detective work). In the former case, their title is Inspector; in the latter, they are called Detective Inspector. This applies in other ranks as well (e.g., Sargent v. Detective Sargent, Constable v. Detective Constable). They are parallel ranks within different divisions of the force.
The New York Police Department has Inspectors, and they come above both Sargents and Leitenants, as well as Captains and Deputy Inspectors.
The Los Angeles Police Department, on the other hand, doesn’t have a rank of Inspector, but the rank of Commander seems to occupy about the same place in the hierarchy that Inspector occupies in the NYPD.