History
The Raccoon Police Department was formely an art museum before being renovated and used as the central station for the city's police force. Made up of the nation's finest officers and ample funding from Umbrella, the R.P.D. was a showcase of a police station, equipped with far more technology than would normally be appropriate for a small city. The Chief of Police was Brian Irons, who had been chief since the department's inception and most likely contributed heavily to the use of a former art museum due to his tastes. Despite this, the station was still filled with Irons own personal art collection, making it easy to mistake it for a museum.
The R.P.D. was secretly in the firm grasp of Umbrella due to the bribes awarded to Brian Irons for his silence on Umbrella's secrets within the city.
In 1996, the Raccoon City branch of S.T.A.R.S. was established thanks to the ample funding provided by Umbrella. Due to the incident at the Arklay Research Facility, S.T.A.R.S. was quickly disbanded in the summer of 1998. Following this and the need for a special police force to tackle the increasing amount of crime in the city, the R.P.D. quickly established the Select Police Force. This force was comprised of the best the R.P.D. had to offer, and the department arranged for more recruits to be employed from across the country, one of which was Leon S. Kennedy. The SPF became the R.P.D.'s equivalent of SWAT.
Downfall
The entire Raccoon Police Department was wiped out in late September 1998, with a last stand by the Select Police Force failing on September 26th. Due to the intentional mismanagement of the ammunition and weapons cache by Irons, the entire police force was left at a severe disadvantage against the oncoming zombie hordes. Survivors remained in the precinct, but were slowly killed one by one by the attacking zombie hordes and Licker specimens, as well as their own police chief who had since gone mad and begun hunting down his own officers. A large fire also broke out in the backyard of the department preventing escape. Finally, a plan was forumulated to escape through the city sewers, but the survivors were soon cut down, leaving only five officers alive in the precinct.
Armaments
The R.P.D.'s standard issue handgun was the Beretta M92F, which replaced the Browning HP as the standard weapon for all police officers. Instead, the Browning HP was relegated as a backup weapon, being kept in the glove compartments of squad cars and stashed in the department's weapons and ammunition cache. Other weapons were kept in abundance, such as the Heckler & Koch MP5 and MAC-11 submachine guns and Benelli M3 Super 90 Shorty, Franchi SPAS-12 and Remington 870 shotguns. The SPAS-12 was used as the support weapon for police officers, commonly found in the trunks of squad cars.
The R.P.D. squad car was the Ford Crown Victoria P71 Interceptor, which itself is used by police forces such as the New York Police Department.