Citadel Security Services: C-Sec

Citadel Security Services, almost always called C-Sec, was the police force that handled law enforcement aboard the Citadel. A volunteer service answering to the Citadel Council, it was headed by an officer known as the Executor, who frequently acted as the link between the police and the Council. Its roughly two hundred thousand constables were charged with maintaining public order across one of the most densely populated places in the galaxy, as well as suppressing piracy, enforcing customs law, and conducting search-and-rescue throughout the station and the surrounding space.

Authority and composition#

C-Sec answered directly to the Citadel Council, and its chief of operations was the Executor, whose office in the era of the Reaper threat was held by a turian named Venari Pallin and located within the Presidium Embassies near the Citadel Tower. Befitting a culture of public service, it had been the turians who first proposed creating a police force for the Citadel, which may explain why more than half of all C-Sec officers were turian. Humans formed the largest minority, with at least a hundred and sixteen serving in a single ward by 2185, followed by salarians and asari.

In total some two hundred thousand constables were responsible for keeping order on the crowded station, a duty that extended beyond ordinary policing to piracy suppression, customs enforcement, and search-and-rescue throughout the Citadel and the space around it.

Divisions#

C-Sec was organized into a number of specialized branches. The Enforcement division consisted of the uniformed officers who patrolled the station, settled disputes, disciplined minor infractions, and responded to emergencies. The Investigation division was made up of detectives who gathered evidence, solved crimes, and pursued their perpetrators. The Customs division screened the passengers and cargo passing through the Citadel's ports, seizing contraband and arresting smugglers.

The Network division, also called E-Crimes, handled cybercrime such as identity and copyright theft, hacking, viral attacks, and the detection of illegal artificial intelligence. The Special Response division dealt with hostage situations, bombs, and heavily armed criminals, and in the event the station itself came under attack its members, equipped with military-grade weaponry, formed the front line of its interior defense. The Patrol division crewed ships that served coast-guard functions, including search-and-rescue, piracy suppression, and the interdiction of illegally transported materials. Patrol vessels were not meant to repel a naval assault on the Citadel, a task reserved for the Citadel Fleet.

Recruitment#

A posting in C-Sec was a prestigious one, and entry was tightly controlled. Applicants had to be sponsored by a Citadel Councilor or by the ambassador of an associate Council race. Most who joined had behind them many years of distinguished service in the military or police forces of their own people, though a promising applicant who could demonstrate genuine talent would be fairly considered even without that background. New recruits were generally posted first to the comparatively calm Presidium, where they could gain experience and learn protocol before being assigned to the busier and more dangerous Wards.

Relations with the Spectres#

For all its long and respected history with the Council, C-Sec was frequently at odds with the Council's Spectres. Many of its members, Executor Pallin foremost among them, regarded the practice of placing Spectres above the law as a dangerous one. The Spectres, for their part, grew exasperated when C-Sec's devotion to procedure and due process hampered their work. The friction ran inward as well: some of C-Sec's own detectives, Garrus Vakarian among them, occasionally found themselves chafing against the service's strict regulations, rules likely meant to keep order among the many species and factions sharing the station. As at least one officer learned, C-Sec was not above keeping disciplinary files on its own people when the Executor judged it warranted.

History#

In 2183, after the attack on Eden Prime, the Council charged C-Sec with investigating the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius and the Systems Alliance's accusation of treason. The officer assigned to the case, Garrus Vakarian, found no evidence and was ordered by Pallin to drop the matter, yet he continued to pursue it on his own, an investigation that ultimately led him to join the cause of Commander Shepard. Around the same time, C-Sec detained the krogan Urdnot Wrex after a report that he had made threats, and other officers pursued their own cases against smugglers operating through the station.

Saren's eventual assault on the Citadel later that year devastated the service, and in the years that followed C-Sec underwent a radical restructuring. With many positions left vacant by the casualties of the attack, humans came to fill a great number of them. Under Pallin's authority the service tightened security to guard against further geth infiltration, instituting no-fly lists, prohibiting weapons and bio-amps, and restricting travel even on the slightest suspicion.

During the Reaper invasion, C-Sec was stretched to its limits, its officers struggling to manage a vast influx of refugees while triaging which crimes they could still afford to pursue. The surprise Cerberus assault on the Citadel caught the organization off guard, and its headquarters was among the first targets struck, leaving officers without communication and the response disorganized. With the intervention of Commander Shepard and the crew of the Normandy, command of the headquarters was retaken and a coordinated defense organized, though the attack left lasting strain, with automated turrets and traps to clear from the wreckage and a civilian militia raised to make up for the shortage of officers.