Internal Affairs

Internal Affairs was a division within the law enforcement agencies that investigated officer-involved incidents and civilian reports of law-breaking/professional misconduct by/from police officers. The division consisted of a select group of officers from the: Los Santos Police Department, the Senora Desert Sheriff's Office, the Paleto Bay Sheriff's Office, and the San Andreas State Police.

General Description
The Internal Affairs Department is an autonomous investigative department that was originally officially approved on December 7th, 2021.

There was some hesitation to this department being formed from the Unified Police Department's High Command, as previously Richard Dark wanted to arrest an officer in possession of IFAKs off-duty, and wanted to charge his superiors with Obstruction of Justice for telling him not to. Despite his superiors, Dark was given full authority to fine, strike, and suspend police officers by the Los Santos Senate.

Unfortunately for the rest of the department, in practice the UPD did not recognize those powers from any other investigator. As a result, it was common for investigators to be threatened with punishments of their own or be outright ignored upon attempting to enforce punishments on offending officers (especially if the offenders were of a higher rank).

Furthermore, by the summer of 2022 blatant corruption within the UPD was rampant, making the investigation of officer misconduct (let alone following through on any punishment) even more difficult. This eventually led to Dark resigning due to IA having effectively no power over or support from the majority of the UPD. The department itself continued to technically exist for three months afterwards (during which time it conducted no significant action) before being disbanded by UPD High Command on October 20th, 2022.

As a result, throughout it's existence only the Head of IA (Chad Gable at the time of dissolution), and Olivia Copper (a high ranking trooper in her own right) were able to fully carry out the duties of Internal Affairs.

However, in February 2023 the UPD began planning to reimplement the idea of Internal Affairs, with the initial plans revolving around each department having its own specific IA division rather than one for the entire UPD.