Internal affairs
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The internal affairs (United States terminology) division of a police agency investigates incidents and plausible suspicions of lawbreaking and professional misconduct attributed to officers on the force. In different systems, internal affairs can go by another name such as "professional standards," "inspectorate general", or similar.
Due to the sensitive nature of this responsibility, in many departments officers working internal affairs are not in a detective command, but report directly to the agency's chief, or to a board of civilian police commissioners.
In fictional depictions of police departments, officers working internal affairs are often disliked or distrusted, by crooked and honest officers alike:
- In NYPD Blue, internal affairs is derisively referred to as "the rat squad".
- In some French police movies, internal affairs (inspectorate general of the services) are known as the bœufs-carottes, a kind of stew — because of their reputation for letting suspected policemen simmer until they have proofs to bring out a case.
Internal Affairs was also a 1990 film [1] (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099850/) starring Richard Gere and Andy Garcia which was set in the Internal Affairs department of the Los Angeles Police Department.