Satavian Federal Police

Satavian Federal Police
Badge of the Satavian Federal Police
Abbreviation	SFP
Agency overview
Formed	1986 (1986)
Preceding agencies	Federation Police Constabulary Anti-Corruption and Counter Terrorism Service Federation Police Conduct & Standards Office Port Hope Police Constabulary
Employees	8,033 (June 2017)
Annual budget	€1.10 billion (2019-20)
Jurisdictional structure
Federal agency	Satavia
Operations jurisdiction	Satavia
Governing body	Government of Satavia
Constituting instrument	Policing Act 1986
General nature	Federal law enforcement Civilian police
Operational structure
Headquarters	Dominion Building, Port Hope
Sworn members	5,430 (June 2017)
Unsworn members	2,603 (June 2017)
Minister responsible	Damian Crosby, Home Secretary
Agency executive	Pieter Maurice, Commissioner
Services	11 111 Emergency Anti-Corruption Border Investigations Counter Terrorism Diplomatic Protection Organised Crime and Cyber Crime Operations Technology and Innovation NCD Local Policing Specialist Operations Support Capability
Offices	9 Bloemstad Office Burnaby Office Hondeberg Office Northport Office Port Arthur Office Port Hope District Command Reutenberg Office Talbot Office Victoriaburg Office
Website
https://www.sfp.gov.sv

The Satavian Federal Police (SFP) is the principal federal law enforcement agency in Satavia, and is tasked with policing the National Capital District, investigating serious organised crime and protecting the country's national security. The SFP has supreme authority over most other federal and provincial agencies, including all seven provincial police forces.

The SFP is an independent police body and is supervised directly by the Satavian Government and is accountable to the Parliament of Satavia. The SFP focuses on anti-corruption in other law enforcement agencies, investigating and ending serious organised crime, cracking down on the use and trafficking of illegal narcotics and counter-extremism and terrorism operations. The SFP also serve as a supplement to provincial police forces if help is requested. The SFP has been criticised routinely for its perceived heavy-handed policing tactics.

History

The SFP was formed in 1986 as a merger of the Federation Police Constabulary, Anti-Corruption and Counter-Terrorism Service and the Federation Police Conduct & Standards Office, and was given sweeping powers under the Federal & Provincial Police Act 1986. It came into controversy less than a year after its formation after the death of 21-year-old Divan Roberts, who was fatally shot by an SFP officer. The SFP claimed Roberts had been resisting arrest, but eyewitness testimonies stated otherwise. A High Court hearing later that year found that the SFP high command had deliberately misled the investigation that was being conducted by the Hope Province Police Service, and led to the resignation of several high-ranking officers.

In 1993, despite negative press coverage and public opinion and the poor reputation of the agency, the Government expanded its responsibilities with the merger of the Federal Narcotics Taskforce with the SFP. After the transfer of Port Hope to the federal government, the SFP was given local policing responsibility for the city.

Oversight

The SFP is overseen by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement and Police Ethics, which is made up of members from both the House of Representatives and Senate. It is accountable to the Parliament of Satavia and is independent of the Independent Policing Standards & Ethics Office (IPSEO).

As the SFP is charged with anti-corruption in the provincial police forces, the Satavian Military Police, a branch of the Satavian Army, is charged with investigating corruption in the SFP.

Organisation

The SFP is organised into six divisions, of which five operate on a federal basis and one - Port Hope Local Policing District - operates on a provincial level. Each division is lead by a Chief Superintendent. Furthermore, the SFP manages one Force Control Centre in Longwood, Port Hope, where officers receive 111 Emergency Calls and distribute police units across the NCD.

Functions

111 Emergency

The Satavian Federal Police, through its Force Control Centre in Longwood, Port Hope, receives 111 Emergency calls across the NCD. The force receives approximately 5,500 111 Emergency calls every day.

Anti-Corruption

The SFP is tasked with investigating corruption within the provincial police services, in addition to the provincial and federal government. The SFP most notably investigated sitting Prime Minister Milo Malan of electoral fraud, for which he was convicted in 2005.

Border Investigations

Main article: Satavian Border Force

The SFP work closely with the Satavian Border Force once a suspect known to immigration has entered the country. In 2011, the SFP arrested an Estmerish-born Imaguan citizen named Pete Grant, who was arrested three weeks after he entered the country legally and was held for 295 days at an immigration centre without charge, which was later ruled as unlawful. The SFP was forced to apologise and pay compensation.

Counter-Terroism

Terrorism, whilst rare in Satavia, still occurs and the SFP are Satavia's counter-terrorism force. Almost all terrorism in Satavia is domestic, and the SFP work closely with the Security Service to prevent terrorism. The last major terror attack in Satavia occurred in 2016, during the 2016 Government House attack, when a neo-functionalist 25-year-old named Philip Snow attempted to gain access to Government House in Port Hope, where he planned to assassinate the Governor of the Hope Province, Helena Warwick. Snow murdered five people, one security guard, three civilians and SFP officer DS Mark Rafe, whom he stabbed, before himself being killed by another SFP officer.

Diplomatic Protection Unit

The Diplomatic Protection Unit protects all embassies and diplomatic missions across Satavia and the Patrick Islands, in addition to the Parliament buildings in Port Hope. DPU officers are heavily armed, and also protect all foreign emissaries in Satavia, as well as the Prime Minister, President and the Speakers of the House of Representatives and Senate.

Organised Crime Prevention

The SFP is also engaged in preventing organised crime, which is particularly prominent in some rural regions of Satavia. The SFP routinely carry out raids on suspected gang bases, although it has been suggested that some organised crime groups may have infiltrated the SFP.

Local policing

The SFP manage all local policing in the National Capital District, where they took over the role of policing the capital from the Hope Province Police Service in 1999.

Insignia & Uniform

Satavian Federal Police ranks and insignia
Rank	Commissioner	Deputy Commissioner	Assistant Commissioner	Superintendent	Detective Chief Inspector	Detective Inspector	Detective Sergeant	Detective Constable	Senior Constable	Constable	Recruit
Epaulette insignia
Military equivalent	Lieutenant General	Major General	Brigadier	Lieutenant Colonel		Captain	Warrant officer	Sergeant	Lance Corporal	Private	Cadet

Ranks in the Satavian Federal Police are largely based upon those of the provincial police forces, which in turn are primarily based upon police forces in Estmere. The highest rank is Commissioner, which has been held by Pieter Maurice since 2018.

SFP officers have similar uniforms to those of the Hope Province Police Service. Typical headdress for non-specialist officers is a type of slouch hat, although baseball caps and peaked hats are increasingly commonplace. All officers are equipped with a stab or bullet-proof vest whilst on duty, and a high visibility jacket may be worn as well.

An SFP officer guarding the entrance to the Nuvanian Embassy in Port Hope

Commissioners

Since its inception in 1986, the force has had nine police commissioners. It is customary for commissioners to have served previously as a commissioner for a provincial police service or a federal agency. The current commissioner is Pieter Maurice, who has previously served as police commissioner for the New Borland Police.

Rank	Name	Term began	Term ended	Time in appointment	Notes
Commissioner of the SFP
Commissioner	Johan van de Witts	22 February 1986	5 December 1986	286 days	Resigned following the death of Divan Roberts and subsequent High Court case
Commissioner	Edward Mulberry-Bingham	5 December 1986	1 January 1990	3 years, 27 days
Commissioner	Pieter Macleson	1 January 1990	23 January 1990	22 days	Resigned following revelations of an extra-marital affair with a junior officer
Commissioner	Andrew Reece	23 January 1990	8 October 2002	12 years, 258 days	Died in office
Commissioner	Daniel Warwick	8 October 2002	22 April 2007	4 years, 196 days	Pressured to resign by government of Edward Norton over faliure to contain 2007 Satavian Riots
Commissioner	Dawid-Jaques Pienaar	22 April 2007	3 September 2007	134 days	Resigned following the end of the 2007 Satavian riots
Commissioner	Ricky van de Merwe	3 September 2007	1 January 2014	6 years, 120 days
Commissioner	Edwin Moltenberg	1 January 2014	1 January 2018	4 years, 0 days
Commissioner	Pieter Maurice	1 January 2018	Incumbent	6 years, 308 days

Equipment

Communications

Officers communicate with each other using analogue two-way radios. A trial in 2019 aimed at the possibility of using Apple iPhones proved unsuccessful, even though Apple iPhones have been rolled out with other provincial police services.

Transport

Ariel Transport

The SPF has access to an Air Support Unit, Arend II, which is made up of helicopters that are stationed at air force bases across the country, and four that are stationed at Cape James International Airport.

Maritime Units

Whilst possessing no maritime units itself, the SFP has the power to commandeer any civilian-owned vessels and has full access to a provincial police service's maritime units.

Road Vehicles

Only three variants of a road vehicle are in use by the SFP as of 2021. These include the locally-made Barrett Commodore, which serves as the generic vehicle of choice and is used in local policing in Port Hope. The standard livery used on police vehicles is a Yellow/Blue Battenburg marking.

Class	Image	Type	Notes
Patrol vehicles
Barrett Commodore		PC	Produced in Nuvania and Satavia, serves as generic road vehicle of choice, paticularly in local policing
Land Rover Exploration II		PC	Produced in Estmere and in the process of being replaced
WMW 5 Series		PC	Produced in Werania, used primarily in high-speed pursuits and highway-patrol

Weaponry

All sworn members of the SFP carry firearms on their person, in contrast to the provincial police forces, which do not provide firearms to all officers. Officers routinely carry Tasers, pepper spray and truncheons. Firearms provided to officers are usually handguns, such as the Glock 22. Specialist units, such as Armed Response Units in Port Hope, Diplomatic Protection Units, Counter-Terrorism Command and officers serving with the Narcotic Taskforce are armed with automatic rifles, most commonly the SIG Sauer SIG516.

As all officers are armed, a higher percentage of arrests end in the deaths of both police officers and suspects than in other provincial police forces. At least four people have been killed by negligent discharge of a firearm by SFP officers since 2010. Several others have been killed in accidental discharges, of which two were determined to be caused by lack of proper maintenance on the firearm.

Police & Civilian deaths

Police killed in the line of duty

Several SFP officers have been killed in the line of duty since the force's inception in 1986. The latest officer to be killed was Derek Du Plekker, aged 28, who was shot and killed whilst attending a burglary in progress in Crowe District, Port Hope.

Rank	Name	Age	Date	Circumstance	Location
Constable	Dawid Smuts	33	28 March 1987	Gunned down by members of the Vespasa Nine drug cartel during a drug bust operation	Warwicksberg, Orange Province
Constable	Edward Malan	27
Detective Inspector	James Pienaar	49
Detective Constable	Jacobus de Klerk	24	24 December 1989	Abducted and beaten to death with a cricket bat during a stakeout	Port Hope, Hope Province
Constable	William Mckinley	38	15 March 1992	Assaulted by a fleeing murder suspect, died of his injuries in hospital	Konnigstad, National Capital District
Detective Inspector	Nelson Smith	42	1 January 1995	Gunned down by Donald Merdoch during the New Year's Massacre	Windstad, Orange Province
Constable	Bernard Frey	24
Detective Sergeant	Richard Wordsworth	32
Constable	Alexander Willem Hayes	19
Detective Constable	Edward Myers	26
Constable	Jan Vertel	26	15 March 1999	Shot and killed during a routine traffic stop	Port Hope, National Capital District
Detective Inspector	James Malkirk	50	30 May 2004	Fatally shot during a counter-terrorism operation	Northport, Orange Province
Traffic Officer	Arthur Longman	19	12 November 2009	Held hostage whilst unarmed and later shot by both the hostage-taker and accidentally by Special Forces, died of injuries in hospital the same day	Port Hope, National Capital District
Detective Sergeant	Mark Rafte	38	8 January 2016	Stabbed fatally whilst guarding the entrance to Government House	Port Hope, National Capital District
Constable	Derek Du Plekker	28	27 September 2020	Shot and killed whilst attending burglary in progress	Port Hope, National Capital District

   shaded rows denotes when officers were killed in the same incident.

Civilian deaths involving police

Since the force's inception in 1986, there have been 48 civilian deaths in SFP custody, of which 12 were determined to be suicides. 16 civilians were killed in incidents that were later found to be due to a breach of policing ethics, including the high-profile death of Luke Chancellor in 2017, who was beaten to death by three officers whilst in police detention.

An additional 36 people have been shot and killed by SFP, five of whom were innocent bystanders, and eleven of whom were unarmed. The killing of Divan Roberts in 1986 was particularly controversial, as police claimed he had resisted arrest and had threatened to shoot the arresting officers. Eyewitnesses told the High Court that Roberts had been unarmed and had his hands up when he was shot nine times in the torso, arms and head. He died instantly. Since 1986, 173 people involved in police pursuits were killed, in addition to 158 sustaining serious injuries. A report published by the IPSEO in 2018 showed that a suspect was much more likely to be killed when dealing with the SFP than any other provincial police force or federal agency.

Controversies

On 13 September 1986, during an operation designed to reduce the high number of illegally owned firearms in the Orange Province, SFP officers stopped a car driven by 21-year-old Divan Roberts. During the stop, Roberts, who did not possess a firearm, allegedly threatened to kill the officers, in addition to supposedly resisting arrest. Roberts, ethnically Bahian, was shot seven times as he was getting out of his vehicle. Roberts was pronounced dead at the scene. The SFP initially claimed that Roberts had threatened to kill the officers before resisting arrest, however eyewitness reports contradicted this. Some days after the shooting, the SFP unlawfully attempted to force the Orange Province Police Service to end its investigation, which the OPPS did. On 29 September, however, the High Court ordered the OPPS to reopen its investigation into the death. The OPPS charged both SFP officers involved in the incident with murder and on 3 December both officers (whose identities were withheld under the Protection of Identity, Vulnerable Persons and Secrets Act, 1935). The High Court also ruled that the attempted coverup by the SFP was unlawful, and on December 5, SFP commissioner Johan van de Witts, in addition to a large proportion of the SFP's high command, resigned.

During 1995, SFP officers were responsible for one-quarter of all deaths in custody across Satavia, despite the SFP having no local policing jurisdiction at the time.

In a 2004 counter-terrorism operation in Northport, Orange Province, SFP agents killed all 14 suspects that they had hoped to question, in addition to two uninvolved bystanders. One SFP officer, DI James Malkirk, was killed during the operation. His death was attributed to the firefight that occurred during the operation, although it has been suggested that he may have been killed by negligent discharge.

In the wake of the escalating financial crisis, riots occurred across Satavia in 2007. Port Hope saw the most violence, where the SFP was found to have aggravated the situation, particularly due to their heavy-handed tactics that involved the deployment of police horses to disperse rioters. On occupancy staged outside the Reserve Bank of Satavia and in the surrounding area went on for four weeks before SFP riot control officers moved in and dispersed the crowd with water cannons and police horses, killing six rioters in the process. The SFP was praised by some Satavian right-wing media organisations, such as the Daily Satavian, but many centrist and left-wing media organisations condemned the heavy-handed response. The SFP's failure to contain the riots led to the resignation of Daniel Warwick as commissioner in April 2007, and his successor Dawid-Jaques Pienaar later that year.

On 24 April 2017, Luke Chancellor, a 17-year-old male who had been arrested for dangerous driving, driving without a license and driving under the influence of alchohol, amongst other vehicular-related charges, was beaten to death in police custody by three officers at a Port Hope police station. The incident, which was captured on CCTV, was triggered when Chancellor, who had behaved well after his arrest, but the nose of one of the police officers, caused him to react violently, punching Chancellor in the head three times. Two other officers assisted, and Chancellor, whilst restrained, was punched twelve times in the head by the three officers, although a pathologist's examination suggested that Chancellor was killed by the first punch. Consequently, Officer A, who was not named for legal reasons, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for Murder with a mitigating factor, whilst Officers B and C were sentenced to five years each for assault and battery of a corpse. The sentences were regarded as light and caused mass uproar in some areas of Port Hope.

In 2019, the force was again facing criticism after a civilian bystander was killed by negligent discharge when an officer accidentally discharged his firearm when stowing his handgun. The officer was suspended but faced no charges. The family of the killed civilian announced they would sue for damages against the SFP, who settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

See Also

• List of law enforcement agencies in Satavia