Rural Police

LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY
Rural Police
Common signage used for sheriff's offices in rural San Andreas, GTA San Andreas, depicting one of several versions of the San Andreas sheriff's badge.
Games: GTA San Andreas
Locations: Rural San Andreas
Type: Law enforcement agency
Affiliations: SAPD
FBI
SWAT
Vehicles: Ranger
Weapons: Pistol
Pump-Action Shotgun
Nightstick
Members: Dozens of sheriffs

The rural police is a term referring to a branch of the San Andreas Police Department in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas responsible for policing duties in the country and desert areas of the state of San Andreas, encompassing Red County, Flint County, Whetstone, Tierra Robada, Bone County and all associated towns. As such, they are only found within said rural areas.

Description

A rural sheriff in Bone County.

Rural law enforcement in San Andreas is manned by "sheriffs" dressed in dark brown shirts with cream trousers and a sheriff's ten-gallon hat and badge. Due to rural San Andreas' less forgiving terrain, Rural sheriffs drive Rancher-based Rangers, although Police Mavericks, SWAT teams and FBI agents may join them in pursuits under higher wanted levels.

In other respects, sheriffs behave identically as urban policemen, regularly patrolling on foot in towns, as well as on their Rangers, and being armed with 9mm pistols and nightsticks (and in high wanted levels, shotguns). Getting arrested within any of the rural areas will usually lead the player respawning in front of any one of four sheriff stations.

It is unknown if the rural police are just one department or a collective of up to 4 sheriffs departments.

Cut content

The cut deputy patrolling his town.

gta3.img, a core GTA San Andreas model datafile, contains two files, dsher.txd and dsher.dff, which are presumably intended for rural sheriffs within the desert region of Bone County and possibly Tierra Robada; the texture map, which depicts a sheriff's uniform in a beige shirt, green pants and a different sheriff department patch, is interchangeable with the standard sheriff pedestrian model, down to the use of the sheriff's hat. The files were dummied out for unspecified reasons.

Similarly, cdeput.txd and cdeput.dff, also found in gta3.img were seemingly intended for another rural "deputy" model donning an all-grey uniform. The texture map is not compatible with the regular sheriff model, but if you change it to use the unused deputy's model as well it works perfectly with no apparent bugs.

Sheriff stations

There are a total of four sheriff stations in the entirety of rural San Andreas, with each station in charge of a rural county:

Trivia

  • Although rural law enforcement elements are intended to be seen within rural San Andreas, game programming may occasionally lead to sheriffs spawning momentarily within cities, either when the player enters cities rapidly from rural areas or when the player loads a savegame that starts in a city after being within a rural area.

Gallery

See also