ELI5 – I see these references on cops movies: “He works at 3-6”, “I work at “5-4″… what are these numbers? It cannot be precinct number because there is a reference about a cop working at “5-4” but the precinct number shown by the camera is 12th Precinct NY.

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ELI5 – I see these references on cops movies: “He works at 3-6”, “I work at “5-4″… what are these numbers? It cannot be precinct number because there is a reference about a cop working at “5-4” but the precinct number shown by the camera is 12th Precinct NY.

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Hollywood is Hollywood, what they say may sound cop-ish and might not be accurate for all or most law enforcement agencies.

Depending on the jurisdiction, a police department have their area divided into precincts and those precincts might be further broken down into beat numbers.

So officer 1 would work for a certain precinct, be assigned to a certain unit such as patrol, homicide, gang, narcotics, robbery, etc. Then they could be assigned a beat (especially patrol) and possibly a certain shift.

For example this is the Chicago PD’s beat map

https://news.wttw.com/sites/default/files/Map%20of%20Chicago%20Police%20Districts%20and%20Beats.pdf

Perhaps r/askleo and r/asklo might be better subs.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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