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| Police Officer | Prohibition Agent | Unbribed Precinct | Bribed Precinct |
You think Al Capone got to where he was without bribing the boys in blue? Half of the police force was in his pocket – and for good reason. A bribed cop leaves you alone. You can ignore the start-of-turn message about cops descending on the corner of X and Y (if that precinct isn’t in your pocket, any crew passing through – even accidentally – risks getting arrested and everything in their vehicle confiscated), you don’t have to worry about your gambling operations getting busted and all the money confiscated. And heat? You can fuggeddaboudit, because it doesn’t really matter.
Bribes will keep that cop happy for 250 days (310 days with Respect for the Law as a starting skill), and during that time you can ask them for spare weapons – even a Tommy gun if you have 3+ Favors with them.
If they have connections with a rival outfit as well as the Feds you can ask them to pull some strings to set the Prohibition Agents (“Prohies”) crawling over a rival outfit’s operations. It removes one character from the rival outfit (unless there’s only one left), meaning it’s easier for you to make a move on them. Win-win!
“You broke the cardinal rule, Mickey. You got caught.”
To bribe a cop you usually need to be on good terms with them, usually a relationship of 15 or above. If you’re not, check who they know. If they know a business owner or hooligan who owes you a Favor? Ask that business owner or hooligan to put in a good word for you to increase your relationship score. After that they should be easy to bribe.
If you kill a cop’s family member, though? Bribing isn’t going to fly – ever – and you’re on your own. Best of luck to ya. (If you have Shadow Government and enough political influence you can get even unbribable cops off your back.)
The cost of paying off a cop will vary, from a few hundred to a few thousand – price goes up the bigger your outfit gets, and might also depend on the map, if you have any related Laws enacted (see Shadow Government), and if you chose Respect for the Law as a starting skill.
“And when the cops, when they assigned a whole army to stop Jimmy, what’d he do? He made ‘em partners.”
Can you avoid bribing cops if you don’t want to? Sure, but you better keep an eye on which corners they’re “descending on”, especially if you’re using automated delivery routes, because they can and will arrest you.
The green symbol at the bottom of a precinct marker indicates that the precinct is currently paid off. You can’t pay them off again until it’s time to renew the bribe (“Paid off until [date]”), but then you normally have a few turns’ leeway before you get prompted start-of-turn that your agreement has run out. Wait too long and they’ll start arresting your people again. If you at the map and filter it for police precincts, you can see which ones need bribing, even if you haven’t had the notification yet.
You can’t bribe the Prohie.
Note: If you’re trying to get someone arrested to be able to promote them to the Jailbird captain role, you need to do that before you’ve bribed too many cops or you just won’t be able to get arrested. You can loiter in a rival’s territory, next to an unbribed precinct, standing over a dead body and you still won’t get arrested.
Can you kill a Prohie or a cop?
No, the game doesn’t give you that option. And beside basically saying hi, you can’t even interact with the Prohie.