Where are the police captains?

Factual Questions
1

I’m a big fan of The Wire on HBO. If you haven’t heard, it’s a gritty and highly realistic drama set in Baltimore. Created and written by a former newspaper and a former Baltimore city cop, the show is very accurate in its depiction of most aspects of life in the city. So my question has to do with the structure of the police department in Baltimore, and possibly other cities.

(Note to mods: although this question arises from a TV show, I’m asking about the real-world police department, not the TV BPD. As such, I think this thread belongs here, not in CS.)

In The Wire, we see various people in the following ranks of the Baltimore PD:

Patrolman
Detective
Detective Sergeant
Lieutenant
Major
Colonel
Deputy Commissioner
Commissioner

What’s wrong with this picture?

Where are the captains? Why does the chain skip them? Either the position simply doesn’t exist or it is somehow completely outside the normal chain of promotion.

I say this because 1) AFAIK, in four seasons of the show, no one, and I mean absolutely no one, appears with this rank, and 2) there is a scene in which a major is advising a sergeant on his career path, saying he could be a lieutenant in two years and major two years after that. Not a word about captain.

I’ve browsed through the Baltimore Police Department Web site with no results, and a search of the official Baltimore City Government Web site turns up no results for the terms “police captain.” All references to “captain” have to do with the fire department.

General Googling turns up a definition of “police captain” that makes it seem synonymous with “police chief.” If that’s the general usage in the world of policing, then perhaps in large departments that have a complex structure, they skip the rank of captain to avoid people mistaking a middle ranked officer with the big boss.

Am I right? If not, what’s the deal? Why no police captains in Baltimore, and is this common in other cities’ PD?

2

My understanding is that all localities have their own traditions of rank and naming for every local office. The position of sheriff, for example, varies hugely in role and responsibility between eastern counties and western counties and between periods of history. Political bodies may be composed of supervisors or alder"men" or council"men" or a dozen other names.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that different police forces have different titles. Wiki gives the ranks for the New York City police force. They are hugely different from those of Baltimore.

I’m sure you’ll find similar variations in all other big city forces. They don’t mean anything other than the remnants of local history.

3

As I understand it, the ranks up through captain are usually merit-based, civil-service-protected; while anything above captain is more about the chief’s discretion.

So, for example, a sergeant, in theory, gets to that rank by a combination of performance and a sufficiently high score on a competitive examination process. And a sergeant generally stays a sergeant, barring promotion or misconduct.

As for majors, commanders and the like, they generally come into those ranks by quasi-political appointment by chiefs or the like, and with a loss of political favor or a change in chief, can find themselves out of that rank.

By phasing out captains in favor of majors, chiefs can exercise more political control of their forces. And since captains and majors usually serve as commanders of precincts, zones and the like, chiefs can more easily change that leadership when majors are used, since the majors don’t have the sort of protection that captains did.

4

Most large departments have something like this - the major variations occur above captain. Usually, there are intermediate discretionary ranks above captain, but below chief: Majors, Inspectors, Commanders. Depending on the department, there are chiefs: Assistant Chiefs, Bureau Chiefs, Deputy Chiefs, Chiefs of Department. In some departments, there are Commissioners, who exercise administrative oversight of the Chief of Department.

Bottom line, for large departments, things are pretty constant, up until at most captain. One can expect a chief, or lots of levels of chief, wearing some number of stars. The stuff that varies are the discretionary ranks above captain, but below the chief ranks.

Merit/Civil Service

Officer(Including Specialists, FTOs and Detectives)
Sergeant(Some have Corporals below Sergeant)
Lieutenant
Captain(This is usually the highest protected Civil Service Rank)

Discretionary non-Chief
Major or Deputy Inspector or Commander
LTC or Colonel or Inspector or Commander

Discretionary Chief
Assistant or Deputy or Bureau Chiefs
Chief of Department

As for the future of the Captain rank, it’s mixed. Departments like Chicago and NYC still have it. Departments like Baltimore and Atlanta use a discretionary Major instead of a Civil Service Captain. It’s all about being able to promote/bump/fire/demote majors in ways that one cannot with a protected, civil-service captain.