So I'm watching TV news and what pops up? The Kali chief with 4 stars? How's that happen? I guess there are no standards. Maybe it makes them feel strong or bolsters their case for another pay raise.

I've wondered about that: Those fuckers decked out like North Korean generals. If someone has four stars, are there people with three stars, and two stars, and one star, like in the army? I doubt it.

It's really silly, especially when the department is too small to have any ranks between SGT and 4Star.

Police ranking summary

1 - nothing, no hashes or nothing => Maybe a new guy or 20 year old vet
2 - a couple of hash marks => Someone above (1), maybe call them a SGT.
3 - a silver bar or 2 => Lt, maybe a Captain?
4 - Bunch of stars or maybe a bird => Col or Chief.

I've met the police chief for Roanoke County, a pretty good size community. He wears a gold eagle (Col, CAPT) which seems appropriate.

A former city chief of police here wore one of her four star clusters upside down on one collar and right side up on the other collar.

Her firearm handling abilities were down right scary.

I don’t know what the Chief wears in Jerkwater. Nobody has ever laid eyes on him, AFAIK.

They make 1,2,3,4 and 5 star collar brass. Our Chief wears a gold eagle. Most of the Chiefs I know wear the eagle or just "CHIEF", some wear 2 stars, a couple wear 4 stars.

I've toyed with the idea of ordering a 5 star cluster for our chief as a joke.

Austin Police Chief wears the 4 stars.

I could see something like that in a large department like NYPD, LAPD, Detroit PD, etc., where you have several levels of Deputy and Assistant Chiefs in a large command structure.

Seems silly to me in smaller departments and probably ego driven by someone at some point in the departments history

Until the early 90's I had never seen or heard of a chief wearing any stars. Before this they wore colonel's eagles.

The chief of a small department I worked for consulted the IACP, IIRC, about rank insignia. The response was, if you are the chief your insignia is five stars. He only wore one because he felt five was over the top.

It sounded as though the brass of many agencies decided to aggrandize themselves by appropriating the highest levels of military rank insignia.

In the pic of generals posted above, it looks as though they are wearing the medals as a form of body armor.

In my local Sheriffs Department collar insignias are only worn with the Class A dress uniform.... special occasions, funerals, media events, meeting with the Trumpster (hey, it happened). Here is the breakdown.

- Elected Sheriff: 4 stars (only 1 sheriff, obviously)
- Undersheriff: 3 stars (only 1 US)
- Captains: 2 stars (3 Captains, one per division)
- Lieutenants: gold bar (around 15 LT’s I think)
- Sergeabts: 3 bar chevron (around 70 I think)
- Field/Facility Training Officer: 2 bar chevron (they are technically Deputies assigned as a FTO, probably 60-70 total)
- Deputies: nothing. Around 370 I think.

Non LE staff: nothing, done in some type of uniform, some not.

To be fair, aren’t we still in the middle of the war on drugs? Perhaps 3 and 4 stars is appropriate? [sarcasm]

I’m with a smaller department and just made Deputy Chief last week. I now wear a Lieutenants bar. Our chief retired from a much larger department as a Colonel and still wears the rank.

Just more militarization of the police.

Nothing new. Here's Chicago's 3 Star General Police Chief from 1893, for example:

A friend used to be the Chief of a small department in northern Illinois. He showed me a picture of him in his class A uniform. Gold braid on the hat and four stars on the shoulder. He had three patrolmen working for him, two of which were part time. I just laugh silently when he tells me his "war stories".

I really don't care which collar insignia they use, it's the ones with the big ol' salad bar of awards. My very first chief at my first agency tried to do that. He has received a couple lifesaving awards earlier in his career, so each of those got a different ribbon, and then he added an American flag ribbon because America. His "assistant chief" got two...a flag, and a second one that nobody knew what it was for ("basically just because I work a lot of overtime" he said). Both of them, and the salad bars, were gone fairly shortly after I started.