Cop

The Cop is an investigative role in Mafia, common in both IRC and forum games. It is a Town role, although anti-town roles with similar abilities also exist (especially in games with multiple anti-town factions).

Abilities
The Cop may select a target each night, and will be informed of their alignment. Usually, this will take the form of either a GUILTY, for mafia, or an INNOCENT, for town. 3rp Parties may check as either INNOCENT or GUILTY, depending on the game, but GUILTY seems to be more common.

Balancing Roles

 * Miller
 * Godfather
 * Nexus
 * Reflexive Roleblocker
 * Lawyer
 * Framer

Common variants

 * Flavor Cop - Instead of Alignment, learns flavor/role info on target. When a Scum player has this ability, they are called a Stalker.

Uncommon variants

 * Day Cop - Can investigate one player during the day phase.
 * Stripper Cop - played by undulatingUltimatum in Pick Their Poison. Could select three people to lapdance each night, and would get a sane result from one of them. Would not be told which player was read.

Sanities
In larger games, a cop's check may not be indicative of the player's alignment. Cops which get predictably incorrect checks on players are cops with sanities. Sanity is usually not clarified by the moderator in Role PMs - and sometimes may not be mentioned in role-reveals.


 * Paranoid Cop - All targets come up guilty.
 * Naive Cop - All targets come up innocent.
 * Insane Cop - Anti-town targets come up innocent. Town targets come up anti-town.
 * Random Cop - checks are random Don't use this. It is rather unfun.

Dethy is a game variant where all townies are cops of varying sanities (which are not revealed on death).

Strategy
Be sure of your sanity before you claim. In smaller games where only one cop is assumed, don't reveal until you have at least one guilty - unless you believe you're a target for a nightkill, in which case attempt to publically indicate your clear targets.

Trivia
BlazerC is infamous for pulling cop roles often in forum games - to the point that when Deceptive was BlazerC in Meta Mafia, he was All The Cops. He could send out a cop of questionable sanity each night, receiving an effectively random result.