There’s been an influx of players applying to the LSPD in GTA roleplay like it’s a real police force—except the crimes are fake, the paperwork is real, and everyone appears to be shouting codes they found on Google into their headsets

From vampire nightclub owners to Proclaimers-singing reality TV stardom, pretend journalist bank robberies, and genuinely astonishing in-game Shakespeare ensembles, GTA roleplay is no stranger to turning full-blooded virtual violence into imaginative theatre production. The latest subculture to capture my imagination, however, is RP police academies.

And I’m clearly not alone. Because while player cops in GTA roleplay servers are nothing new—I first happened upon the homemade law-serving scene back in 2017—having spent the last few weeks revisiting some of my favourite servers (and dipping my toe into some new ones), there’s definitely a bit of a blue-line renaissance going on out there on the crime-ridden streets of Los Santos and Blaine County right now.

Across major FiveM and RageMP communities, joining the LSPD isn’t a case of spawn-in and sound the whaler either, it’s a proper ordeal. There’s a genuine hiring pipeline, for example, complete with application forms, background checks, interviews, academies, and performance reviews. Assuming you get through all of that, you can indeed rule the streets with an iron fist a la Officer Tenpenny (don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it), but actually getting there is, clearly, far from straightforward.

Before trusting you with a make-believe taser and a squad car, most RP servers demand you have a working mic and the ability to use push-to-talk (those au fait with GTA RP will know this is far from a given). They expect a believable character backstory, as well as for you to pass a voice interview, attend an academy covering radio codes, traffic stops, report writing and at least pretending you won’t go totally power mad on day one.

But if you want to see how deep this rabbit hole goes, look no further than Eclipse RP, one of the most structured police roleplay communities around.

On Eclipse, you’ll typically go through:

• An in-character written application via the LSPD’s so-called “Employment Office,” outlining your character, motivations, and suitability
• A review by commanding officers, who reject plenty due to unrealistic characters or rule-breaking records
• A formal voice interview, checking your RP maturity, clarity and communication skills
• A full Police Academy, where you’re taught radio codes, de-escalation, arrests, traffic stops and scene control
• A Probationary Officer phase, completing supervised patrols with Field Training Officers
• Finally, full officer status, trusted with independent patrols and reports

Which, truth be told, is all a wee bit too much for me—I say with a straight face while being the guy who once posed as a lawyer and tried to clear a serial killer of murder in a GTA 5 roleplay server. In my defence, I was ad-libbing that the entire time which, evidently, did not help the defence of the man facing jail time. Seriously, though, while unsure if I’ve got the wherewithal to commit this hard to GTA RP personally, I love the fact there are so many others who are, so many years on from the scene’s humble beginnings more than a decade ago. And you ought to hear it in motion; robbers screaming expletives at beleaguered coppers who in turn recite police codes they’ve clearly pulled from a Wiki or Google or who knows where at the top of their lungs down their mics—it really is hilarious.

On my travels over the last few weeks in GTA RP, I’ve been taken aback by how many player cops there are in some servers, and how sophisticated it all seems today in comparison to how it was when I started out. It’s still not quite EVE Online levels of virtual-to-actual-reality blurring, but it is pretty full on. Any videogame pursuit that requires real-life paperwork generally fits that billing, I guess.