Prime Minister Admiral R.E. Ffolkes created the Northern Oregon Provincial Police in January 2008 using selected officers of the Portland Police Bureau as its cadre. The first chief constable, Donald Allen, was immediately faced with a difficult situation. The Portland Police Bureau was now restricted to the city limits of the city of Portland itself. Ffolkes intended that the Provincial Police would take over the policing of the remainder of the province, a rugged, mainly rural region infested by bandits and raided on a regular basis by biker gangs and slavers. Allen divided the region into districts, stationing a detachment of his constables at the District Watch House that served as district headquarters. Each district maintained a regular series of patrols along main roads and along the frontier. At the Watch House, mounted response teams would wait to answer any requests for aid from the public or the patrolling officers.
The system worked well, especially in conjunction with military units. The Provincial Police constables quickly gained a thoroughly detailed knowledge of their districts. Aware of who was supposed to be where, and gaining the trust of the public, the constables found themselves able to lead powerful military detachments into the country that used to serve as a refuge for the bandit gangs, and within a year, most of the large bandit gangs that plagued the area had been destroyed.
The outside raiders remained a much more enduring problem for law enforcement. Again using the rugged mountains and deserts to the East, raiders could infiltrate into the more remote borderlands and escape before the Provincial Police and Royal Army could react. Constables routinely served as scouts for the army, but that, in itself, was not enough to end the problem. The army launched a series of campaigns agains the communities across the borders that served as support bases for the slavers, Indian tribes, and bikers. With the absorbtion of the old Warm Springs Reservation and the Hanford Campaign of 2012, the level of raiding became much reduced, though the area of the Province of Northern Oregon tripled, extending all the way to the old Idaho border by the end of that year. The Provincial Police found themselves stretched painfully thin, and were much expanded in the next two years.
With the the threat of major bandit gangs and raiders at a lower level, Chief Constable Allen began to put greater emphasis on routine law enforcement and crime investigation. In 2017, the Crime Investigation Division, or CID, was created to investigate complex crimes. Allen created a Law Enforcement Academy at Corvallis in 2020 to train both his and village constables from across the province.
Chief Constable Allen retired in 2021. His replacement, Chief Constable Jeremy Pruitt, master-minded the creation of a Crime Laboratory in Corvallis and move the headquarters of the Provincial Police there from Portland in 2026. Pruitt spent much of his years as chief constable improving the often dilapidated Watch Houses, jails, and other facilities.
Chief Constable Pruitt resigned and was elected to Parliament from Corvallis in 2036. His successor, Chief Constable Gretchen Frazier, has made her emphasis on improving the training and professionalism of her constables. She remains quite popular among the rank and file as a result of her well known concern for their welfare, though she is coming increasingly under fire from budget-conscious provincial officials for not doing enough to keep rising expenses under control.
Statutory jurisdiction includes all territory within the borders of the Province of Northern Oregon, plus all inland navigable waters that border the province, i.e. the Columbia River adjacent to the province.
The rank structure of Northern Oregon Provincial Police officers is as follows, with their RCMP and Military equivalent in parentheses:
The prefix "detective" is given to officers who have been assigned to investigative work after completing the appropriate selection and training. Detective ranks parallel uniformed ranks and range from Detective Constable to Detective Chief Superintendent.