The Gotham City Police Department (GCPD/GPD for short) is the police department servicing Gotham City, founded in 1820.
History[]
Batman Begins[]
During Gotham's economic depression, the police department struggled to secure the city from it and help its starving people, eventually transferring some officers from other police departments for assistance, such as Detective James Gordon from the Chicago Police Department. After the depression came to an end with the making of a monorail system designed by billionaire Thomas Wayne with the help of his company, Wayne Enterprises, the officers who were on duty the night Thomas and his wife Martha were shot dead in an ally outside the Gotham Opera House brought in the couple's eight-year-old son Bruce to be comforted by Gordon while Police Commissioner Gillian Loeb foresaw investigation on the murder, which the murderer's identity was solved as Joe Chill, a small-time mugger who sought payback from the Waynes when their work for the city got the depression to drive him out of his job. The Wayne's deaths eventually inspired other billionaire families in Gotham to do more help for the city to rebuild itself, and Gotham was ever since returned to normal.
However, the impact of the depression's held-back end brought more trouble since it left Gotham open for organized crime under mafia bosses like Carmine Falcone, which the department found even harder to stop, to plague it and wreck everything Gotham stood for, almost eating away its infrastructure through corruption even within the police department itself, such as Gordon's partner, Detective Arnold Flass. When Chill, who shared a cell with Falcone while in prison, was released in exchange for testifying against their relationship, Falcone had one of his assassins to kill him before the former mugger could experience his freedom. This brought the city's justice system into a frustrated state with the loss of one of their important aces in the hole against the mafia. Since Falcone predicted that Bruce Wayne was planning to do the crime himself so Chill wouldn't become a reminder of disgrace to the company because of what the mugger did to his parents, his prediction was proven correct when Bruce confronted him at his bar when his childhood friend Rachel Dawes, who was then Gotham's assistant district attorney, dropped him off there. In order convince the playboy not to take any frustration on criminals, the mafia boss demonstrated that true power comes being feared. So to prove Falcone wrong about feared people not being worthy to instill, Bruce set out on a nearby cargo ship to travel the world for seven years to seek the means to fight injustice and learn about stopping corruption, eventually training in martial arts with the League of Shadows, an ancient secret society with an injustice system used to infiltrate the infrastructure of any city they believe has succumbed to decadence and corruption, and that its destruction was necessary to restore the world to balance, having done so to Gotham once before by starting its economic depression. During this time, Gotham has become under most of Falcone's control, and due to how powerful he was, the police were just able to apprehend most his thugs in his crime family. Some of them, though, were declared mentally unfit for a prison sentence by Dr. Jonathan Crane, the corrupt head psychiatrist of Arkham Asylum, and transferred to the asylum itself, much to the frustration of the DA's office.
One night, sometime after Bruce returned to Gotham with the intent on fighting crime, he started making his presence as a bat-masked vigilante called Batman to the police department by visiting Gordon in his office to ask about Falcone's criminal operation, and the police's inability to stop him. As Batman pressed a stapler (which Gordon at first assumed was a gun) to the back of the detective's head, he told Gordon that together they could clean up the city. Gordon was unconvinced, simply believing the man to be "just some nut". Several nights later, however, when most of the officials in the city became worried about Falcone's activities, hope began rising in them when the police arrived on the scene of Falcone's capture at one of his own drug shipment locations in Batman's hands. Falcone's body, strapped to a spotlight, formed a symbol of a bat in the sky, enticing Gordon to realize that the man he met several nights earlier was serious about his intentions to bring down Falcone and his crime empire, and looked up with the other cops to see the Batman for the first time. Unfortunately, there was much fear and skepticism among the rank and file about whether Batman existed or if he was even human, and Loeb, displeased that someone in "his" city took the law into his own hands and was being glorified for it, refused to allow a vigilante handle justice and ordered for a massive law force to track him down. Gordon, however, not only realized Batman was human but also recognized the necessity of his actions. Batman informed Gordon of an ongoing conspiracy in Gotham that concerned Falcone and noted to that Flass was assisting the drug smuggling, hoping to speak with him about the other drugs that the police weren't able to obtain.
When Batman was able to trail the drug smuggling to Crane, who was using the drugs to create a fear-inducing hallucinogen to mix with the city's water supply under the the "external tormentor" persona of "the Scarecrow", the psychiatrist doused Rachel with the toxin when she planned to turn him in for corruption and had the police summoned to draw Batman out. Meeting with him inside Arkham, Gordon offered to bring the drugged DA to the vigilante's armored car, the Tumbler, while Batman kept the police busy with a swarm of bats to make an unsecured exit from the asylum and escaped in the car with Rachel in tow. A few policemen pursued, only to lose him within minutes. It was later revealed that the Scarecrow was being used by Ra's al Ghul, the leader of the League of Shadows, who was planning on dispersing the fear gas with a microwave emitter stolen from Wayne Enterprises and watch Gotham tear itself apart through fear. Ra's' men then orchestrated a massive breakout at Arkham to keep the police busy, forcing Gordon and Flass to raise the bridges to the island the asylum was on once all the riot police were on the island with them to apprehend the convicts. Rachel eventually met with them and handed Gordon the antidote for the fear toxin, given to her by Batman after saving her. Gordon then got a patrol man to escort her to safety, but by then, the League began to vaporize the water supply in the island, incapacitating everyone, including the police, with fear. Gordon was able to insert the antidote on himself, but Flass came under the influence of the fear gas, so Gordon had to handcuff him to a water valve after he attempted to murder two civilians he was hallucinating as ghosts. When Batman arrived, he informed Gordon that if the League hit the entire city with the poison, and assigned him to drive the Tumbler to help hims stop them. As the League loaded the microwave emitter with Ra's onto a monorail heading toward the city's central hub, located beneath Wayne Enterprises, Gordon ordered the bridge leading there to be lowered and drove the Tumbler to the building, dodging blowing pipe releasing fear toxin and successfully destroying a section of the monorail tracks to stop the emitter from reaching the water board. Batman overpowers Ra's and flew out of the train when the tracks collapsed, leaving Ra's still aboard to be killed as the monorail car crashed and exploded.
Batman's actions sparked a change in Gotham and the police department's morality, leading to Gordon being promoted to Lieutenant by Loeb, who was convinced otherwise about a vigilante saving the city from such a terrorist attack. Sadly, though, the island that housed Arkham was completely destroyed, and half of the asylum's inmates, including the Scarecrow, remained at large. Though many other mafia bosses still had control of the city, many criminals have been inspired by the appearance Batman to adopt similar taste of theatrics. Batman promised to investigate and disappeared into the night.
The Dark Knight[]
Nine months have passed since the Scarecrow's and Ra's al Ghul's reign of fear, and relations between the police department and the DA's office have been tense since the election of Gotham's new district attorney Harvey Dent, a retired Gotham police officer's son who launched a campaign against the organized crime and corruption in the city to the applause of its citizens. Because of the caring abuse that his father gave him as a child, Dent grew to despise corrupt officers and spearheaded an initiative through his office to weed out that police corruption while in internal affairs. In response to Dent's "attacks" on the police department and the actions of the League of Shadows from months before, Loeb set up the Major Crimes Unit (MCU), a police subdivision led by Gordon, within the department to counter any possible terrorist attacks and rid the city of its organized crime to gain Dent's trust. Among the officers in this unit were some Dent investigated during his affairs. While Gordon's honest top officer, Detective Gerard Stephens, was loyal enough to distinguish the difference between punks who commit crimes for kicks and the sick animals who would enjoy it, two of its corrupt officers, Detectives Michael Wuertz and Anna Ramirez, were foolish enough to become involved in the mafia (or, in the case of Ramirez, she use to be an honest officer, until she was placed in a tough situation with unaffordable hospital bills involving her mother's life). At least in the MCU, acceptance of Batman, though reluctant, was growing and Wuertz led an official investigation on the vigilante's true identity and made progress by jokingly posting photos of Elvis, Abe Lincoln and Bigfoot on the wall of potential Batman suspects.
As work with Batman and Dent to take down the new leader of Carmine Falcone's criminal empire, Sal Maroni, and the rest of the mafia progressed, the MCU were able to track most of the mafia's laundered money to five major local banks funded by a few corrupt foreign and international companies owned by the mafia's now-imprisoned accountants using marked bills, and persuaded Dent to approve search warrants for them to search and seize the money. However, the mafia was wise to this due to Maroni's inside agents in the MCU and the DA office, and had the money transported to a secure location with the help of their only remaining foreign accountant, Mr. Lau. Because of this, the police department instead found the vaults empty save for marked bills, which Gordon kicked away in frustration. As Lau left for his company in Hong Kong, LSI Holdings, the police and Dent turned to Batman to get him back so that they may use him as a testimony to imprison the mafia and cut off all their funds. Batman did so through an elaborate scheme and literally delivered Lau to the unit outside their headquarters. While Lau refused to hand over the money, he promised to testify against all his clients in exchange for immunity, protection, and a charted flight back to Hong Kong. Using this offer to testify, the MCU tied up the mafia in a reco case and arrested many of them. All was going well until the Joker, a face-painted psychopath noted as one of the theatrics-adopting criminals during the start of Batman's presence, who was hired by the mafia to take out Batman himself, emerged onto the streets in a chaotic and violent fashion with the gruesome murder of a former rookie officer, Brian Douglas, who joined a group of Batman copycats inspired by the real Batman to fight crime themselves. The Clown Prince of Crime then began putting out hits on mafia trial Judge Janet Surrillo, Loeb and Dent, giving Batman an ultimatum in the process; if Batman didn't reveal himself underneath his mask and turn himself in, then all three of his hits will die along with countless others each and every passing day. Little did the mafia bosses who hired the Joker know that he was simply using them to gain control over every level of Gotham's infrastructure though their inside agents and orchestrate his own plans to destroy social order and replace it with his own ideals of mindless anarchy and chaos.
Gordon and Stephens managed to get to Loeb's office in time and block the threat off, but the Commissioner drank a glass of whiskey that was laced with acid by the Joker, killing him. Meanwhile, on the other sides of town, Surrillo was killed by a car bomb the Joker implanted with the help of two corrupt MCU officers, and Dent was saved by Bruce Wayne as the Joker came to kill him personally when Wuertz led him to a fundraiser held in the DA's honor at the Wayne penthouse. As the homicidal spree continued with the murder of two men who shared Dent's name, the MCU eventually found a clue at the crime scene naming the city's mayor, Anthony Garcia, the psychopath's target at Loeb's funeral, held at Gotham City Hall, while disguised as an honor guardsman along with his men. Gordon faked his own death saving the 40-year-old mayor with the help of Stephens and Ramirez, then disguised himself as a van driver to drive Harvey Dent to safety when the DA falsely identified himself as Batman to lure the Joker out of hiding. When the Joker attacked the convoy in a semi truck armed with a bazooka, Batman flipped the truck forward and left the Joker himself open for Gordon to walk up behind and arrest. The lieutenant was then promoted to Police Commissioner by Garcia in Loeb's place immediately afterwards. However, things only got worse as the evening went on as the Joker's capture was actually planned the whole time by the fiendish clown and while he was locked in the MCU jail, Wuertz and Ramirez were tasked by the mafia to kidnap Dent and Rachel Dawes, who has not only become the DA's assistant but also his girlfriend. The unit contacted Batman on the matter to question and brutally beat the Joker in the interrogation room for the missing couple's whereabouts, but the mastermind switched the locations when he told the Dark Knight of their positions; Batman then went to save Rachel while Gordon went with all the available units in the police department to save Dent, meaning they were actually heading over to save the opposite person. When Batman discovered Dent instead of Rachel, he hesitated out of fear but rescued him only seconds before the building ignited and caught the left side of Dent's face on fire. At the other location, Gordon was not able to save Rachel and she was killed when the building exploded. The Joker, in the meantime, completely destroyed the inside of the MCU headquarters, murdering dozens of its finest officers, through a phone-activated bomb surgically implanted inside the stomach of one his men in the jail cells, Kilson, and abducted Lau, the very person he needed in order to have control over the mafia's funds and the reason he let himself get caught.
Ashamed of himself, Gordon went to the Gotham General Hospital the next morning to console Dent, who promised that he will soon pay for not listening to him earlier, blaming not only Batman and the Joker for Rachel's death, but also Gordon, as it was his men working for the Joker through Maroni who abducted them both. This act caused Maroni, who was just contacted by the Joker to meet with him at the shipping yard where the mafia's money was contained, to finally confront the police near Dent's hospital room and give them the the villain's location, now finding craziness "too much" for mafia business. Gordon prepared all available units to re-apprehend Lau and the Joker and finally seize the mafia's funds, but the Joker already burned Lau alive with all the money, effectively making the mafia powerless and giving himself complete control over all their men as he claimed the city as his own, first contacting the Gotham Tonight Show. On the show, an M&A lawyer from Wayne Enterprises named Coleman Reese was preparing to reveal Batman's true identity on the air to stop the Joker from killing further, but when the clown got through on the phone lines proclaiming that his ultimatum against Batman was simply a ruse for the hero, he announced a new one; if Reese wasn't dead within an hour, then he will blow up a hospital. This got the police department, who were watching the show when this threat was announced, to call off their ambush on the Joker and the mafia and refocus attention on securing and evacuating every hospital in Gotham as Gordon went to save Reese from a mob made up of people with family members in the hospitals. Luckily, thanks to a text from Batman, Gordon became aware that there were also police officers with relatives in the hospital, such as Ramirez (as usual) and an officer assigned to help protect Reese named Berg. Just as Berg was about to shoot them, Gordon swiped his gun away just as another hospital patient relative in a pickup truck was about to ram into them, only to be stopped by the seemingly passing Lamborghini of Bruce Wayne. Meanwhile, the Joker snuck into Gotham General disguised as a nurse and killed Dent's hospital room police guards, Jeremy Polk and Willy Davis, before proceeding to convince Den to seek revenge by putting the clown's anarchy to chance. As Dent left, the Joker departed by destroying the hospital as planned and escaping with a bus-load of hostages, among them Gotham Tonight host Mike Engel.
Seeing the explosion from afar, Gordon had his unit secretly search for Dent and call the National Guard for assistance as the Joker announced his regime for Gotham on TV through Engel and warned its citizens to flee if they want no part of it, placing them in an emergency evacuation by ferries. Believing that the mafia men already slapped in prison by Dent may be involved in the rising anarchy, Gordon talked with Garcia to let him bring the inmates onto one of the ferries since Dent might allow it for their safety. When the mayor asked him where Dent was, Gordon had no choice but to tell the truth but didn't know how long he'll keep it quiet. Dent, meanwhile, went on a city-wide killing spree against Wuertz, Ramirez and Maroni for their roles in his and Rachel's abduction, flipping his scarred-on-one-side double-sided cointo determine their fates. When both corrupt officers pleaded for mercy, the scarred DA shot Wuertz dead when the coin flip landed on the scarred side and spared Ramirez by knocking her unconscious when the coin flip landed on the un-scarred side. To escalate the chaos he made so far, the Joker had explosives planted on the ferries and gave the passengers of each the choice to blow the other up by midnight otherwise he'll blow up both. Tracking the soundwaves of the the Joker's new threat to the under-construction Prewitt Tower, Batman contacted Gordon to meet him there the police SWAT team to help him rescue the hostages from the Joker's clown-masked henchmen while he flew into the tower to confront the Joker himself and save the ferries. But to surprise, the henchman he landed was unmasked as a gagged Engel, giving the vigilante the clue that the Joker had the hostages dressed as his henchmen to lure the SWAT into targeting them, which meant that the supposed hostages must be the real men. Unaware of this, though the SWAT taking aim at the clown-masked hostages, but Batman foiled the shots by forcing the hostages out of the way and attacking both SWAT moving into the building and the Joker's disguised men until the SWAT realized the reason why Batman was protecting the clowns and began attacking the men dressed as the hostages. With that done. Batman went up higher into the tower and faced the Joker as the psychopath started a fistfight with him using rottweilers and a crowbar. Though infuriated that none the ferries blew up because the passengers' readiness to believe in good, the Joker prepared to destroy them himself but Batman disarmed him of the detonator and threw him out a window for a police helicopter to grab. The copter missed, so Batman had to hoist the psychopath up himself so that he could tell the vigilante that he was already counting on the only last successful piece to his regime to break the city's spirit: driving Dent insane to the extent of exacting revenge against the criminals and corrupt officials responsible for Rachel's death so that the city would lose hope once the scarred DAs rampage became known. Horrified, Batman left the Joker's arrest to the SWAT team, but not before the clown reminded him that there fight may last forever.
After receiving a call from his wife that she and their children were being held by gunpoint by Dent ant the same building Rachel died in, Gordon headed over there with a few oblivious police units to create a perimeter while he went inside only to be knocked to the ground. Batman appeared to help control the DA, but Dent attempts to determine the individual fates of the vigilante's, his own and Gordon's son James Jr.'s with the flip of his coin. To save the boy, Batman charged at Dent and both ended up falling out of the building as Gordon hoisted his back up. Dent died from the fall, and Gordon headed down to check on Batman; Batman, while still wounded from the bullet and the fall, convinced Gordon to place the blame for the deaths of Dent's victims on himself so that all the good Dent continued to stand. Gordon relented by calling his officers back in when they failed to catch up with Batman. A funeral for Dent was made the next day, and the police department began its manhunt for the missing vigilante as he disappeared on the Bat-Pod into the night, never intending to be heard from again.
The Dark Knight Rises[]
Eight years have past since the Joker's reign of chaos, and the police department had successfully eradicated the city's organized crime under "The Dent Act", a document dedicated to Harvey Dent that was signed by Mayor Garcia to slap all key individuals with known links to the mafia into Blackgate Prison, a maximum-security facility located near the MCU, without any chance of parole, The worst of them, including the Scarecrow, were locked away there, except for the Joker himself, who, rumor had it, was locked away as one of (if not the only) soul-remaining inmates at Arkham, or perhaps he escaped. Nobody was really sure. Gordon, however, remained in guilt over letting Batman taking the fall for Dent, and waited for a chance to admit the truth to the city. He thought he got the chance on the eighth anniversary of Dent's death, at a memorial ceremony (funded by the Wayne Foundation) held at Wayne Manor in Dent's honor, when he wrote a speech confessing what really happened, but decided not to use it since he felt like Gotham wasn't ready yet. Fortunately, a rookie MCU officer named John Blake became aware of the truth after connecting Batman's true identity to Bruce Wayne through their similar backgrounds. Gordon immediately saw the young officer's intelligence and dedication, and allowing Blake to report directly to him and his deputy commissioner Peter Foley, who was, though not corrupt, however arrogant and would seek glory by "bat-hunting" Batman, believing Gordon was too compassionate to do so.
When word came out that U.S. congressman Byron Gilly, who attended the ceremony, had gone missing, Blake took the chance of pressing Gordon for more information about Harvey Dent's death, hinting that he knows Batman's identity in the process. But Gordon pushed aside Blake's inquires and left to investigate the congressman's disappearance. The following night, the police located Gilly in a bar via a signal sent out from his cell phone. engaged in a firefight with some gunmen employed by Phillip Stryver, the corrupt executive vice president of Daggett Enterprises, a company run by a power-hungry rival of Bruce Wayne's, John Daggett, in an alley adjacent to the bar. After Stryver's men vanished, Gordon found a manhole slightly ajar and deduced that they must have escaped into the sewers, so he and a few of his officers descended into the manhole, but soon come under fire. With his taken out by an explosion, Gordon was subdued by two thugs and dragged through the tunnels. Foley, unaware that Gordon has been captured, failed to send in anyone to rescue him. Disoriented, Gordon woke up to see huge construction projects from Daggett Enterprises underway in the sewers and a multitude of heavily armed mercenaries. As two of the mercs, the thugs brought him to their leader: Bane, a respiratory-masked militant affiliated with the League of Shadows, who was hired by Daggett to help absorb Wayne Enterprises to the Daggett empire. Angry at the two thugs for bringing the police commissioner to his headquarters, the Wrestler Brute of Humanity killed one of them. Before killing the second thug, he acquired Gordon's speech about Harvey Dent and began to read it. Gordon took this opportunity to escape by rolling over and falling into an open pipe. But as the current carried him away, several mercenaries shot at him with automatic weapons, and he was hit at least once. He was luckily found alive (albeit in critical condition) by Blake at the end of an outflow pipe at a waste water treatment plant and promptly sent to Gotham General. Foley temporarily took over Gordon's position as the active leader of the police department.
When Blake pulled him out of the pipe, he was informed by Gordon about Bane's underground army and took it upon himself to to relay the message to Bruce Wayne, persuading him to return as Batman. Having learned that Blake deduced his true identity, Batman, wearing a ski mask, visited Gordon in the hospital and Gordon recognized that the masked man as Batman. In critical but stable condition, he implored his old friend and ally to come out of retirement and counter the rising threat. The next night, Bane attacked the Gotham Stock Exchange to make a series of bad trades under Bruce's name using a sample of his fingerprints, and Batman reappeared for the first time in eight years to stop him. Foley, witnessing the motorcycle skirmish outside the exchange with Blake, proceeded to finally his chance for the "bat-hunt" he had been waiting for all those years, resulting with Bane and his henchmen getting away with hostages while a couple were captured. In a wild goose chase through the streets in the Bat-Pod, Batman escaped in his new armored jet, known as the Bat. The next morning, after learning that Foley neglected his orders to search the tunnels for Bane because of Batman's reemergence, Gordon promoted Blake to detective status in response to the police finding a connection between Daggett Enterprises and Bane. With the Wayne fortune fraudulently wiped out, Blake learned of a Wayne Enterprises board fight ensuing with Daggett attempting to take over the company, proclaiming that he would use it for weapons manufacturing and that soldiers like Bane would be an example of improving the projects to such extent. Little did the Daggett Enterprises board who hired Bane know that he was simply using them to gain control over every level of Gotham's infrastructure through their activists and orchestrate his own plans to finish Ra's al Ghul's work on destroying Gotham by destroying the city's approving evolution and replacing it with his own ideals of oppressing revolution and pain.
Luckily for the Wayne empire, Blake helped Bruce secure the company's by having Wayne board member Miranda Tate take it over in their absence. However, when Bruce and Batman disappeared and Daggett's dead body was found in the dumpster, Blake took into custody the cat-burglar employed by Stryver to be behind Gilly's abduction and the theft of Bruce's fingerprints, Selina Kyle, and learned that Batman had been captured (perhaps killed) by Bane following a fight in the latter's underground lair. A few days later, the miliant kidnapped the Wayne Enterprises board and took them into the bowels of Gotham. Now seeing the threat Bane represented, Foley informed Gordon of the situation and, in panic, he ordered Foley to send the entire police department into the sewers to destroy Bane, also tasking Blake to further investigate the Dagget leads by any means possible. Unfortunately, the young detective discovered Dagget Enterprises cement workers were planting explosives around the city and radioed Foley on it, asking him to call back the massive seek-and-destroy mission. But his warning came too late as Bane took the biggest step of his master plan: ripping Gotham's infrastructure apart with the explosive-laced concrete and isolating the city from the outside world. Worse still, explosives surrounding the tunnels go off, trapping most of the police except Foley and a few others underground. As Bane was fully aware that Gordon was still in the hospital, he sent two of his mercenaries to murder the commissioner. As the mercenaries forecefully entered the Gotham General, the alarms sounded and Gordon was alerted to their presence. Despite his still-weak state, he dragged himself out of bed and outsmarted his attackers by hiding in the corner of his room and shooting them. He then left the hospital with Blake (who rushed to his aid in anticipation that Bane would send his men to kill him) and they go into hiding. They watched in horror on TV as the bombings reached Gotham City Stadium, killing Mayor Garcia and crumbling the football field to the ground.
Bane's plans unraveled as he held the city hostage and institute his own regime under the threat of detonating a nuclear bomb, formally the core of a Wayne Enterprises fusion reactor meant to serve as a source of renewable energy, telling Gotham that the detonator was in the hands of a civilian to give them a false sense of hope and enticing them to obey his orders. Gordon asked Blake to help get him in front of a camera so that Gordon could try to lead the people of Gotham against Bane. Blake agreed, despite knowing such an act could possibly get Gordon killed. The situation reached the pinnacle of destruction that even the remaining police were unable to handle when Bane read Gordon's ceremony speech as evidence on the truth of the circumstances behind Harvey Dent's death, revealing it to the entire police department and the rest of the city, thus ending the manhunt against Batman. Unfortunately for Gotham, he took this opportunity for the city's shock to liberate the criminals imprisoned in Blackgate under the Dent Act and wreak havoc around Gotham, much to both the police and the citizens' discomfort. With that done, Bane incited his men and civilian mobs to brutally drag all the rich and powerful from their homes and perform mass convictions on them in a kangaroo court headed by "Judge" Jonathan Crane. Watching the broadcast from his apartment, Blake scolded Gordon for his part in the Dent coverup; Gordon angrily tried to defend himself by saying he had no choice, given the circumstances of the time, and he was grateful he had a friend like Batman to take the fall. But Blake had no sympathy for the commissioner and remained disgusted with him.
About six months later, a trio of Special Forces operatives led by Capt. Mark Jones were smuggled into the city along with emergency relief supplies and met the police in the storeroom of a supermarket (the police department's new base of operations). Gordon, Blake, Foley and Jones decided to try and free the trapped cops in the near future. Also, using Geiger counters supplied by the Special Forces, they managed to eliminate one of the trucks as a decoy, leaving only two to choose from. Jones and his men, however, were unaware of the bomb's failing condition, so Gordon sent them and Blake to talk with Fox. After they learned and are about to inform their superior officers, they were ambushed by Bane's mercenaries, killed, and hung from the city's one remaining bridge. With 18 hours remaining before the bomb went off, the police began final preparations to identify the correct truck, mark it with a GPS, and figure out how to keep it from detonating. Foley, however, was absent, so Gordon angrily went to his house and pleaded his second-in-command to help him. Foley, demoralized and terrified for his family's safety, refused, so Gordon reluctantly enlisted Miranda instead. With Miranda's help, they found what seemed to be the correct truck and Gordon marked it with a GPS. Strangely, they were immediately found and arrested by a roaming band of mercenaries who took them before the kangaroo court, given the choice by Crane between exile or death. Gordon chose death, but it turned out that "death" and "exile" were the same thing: walk across the frozen Gotham River to the safety of the mainland while trying not to fall through the ice. All of the police officers were included in this sentence, but Bane took Miranda away.
That night, Gordon and his men were sent out across the ice near the remaining bridge, but when they were about a third of the way across, the commissioner found a trail of gasoline on the ice, with an emergency flare lying next to it. The mercenaries overseeing the execution on the near side of the river suddenly fell unconscious and Batman, having escaped captivity from an ancient prison that Bane placed him in after his defeat months ago, emerged from the shadows and met Gordon on the ice. Elated and relieved, the commissioner ignited the fuse and threw it onto the trail of gasoline, revealing a giant, fiery Bat-Signal painted on the bridge. This spread as a message telling Gotham that the Dark Knight has risen. As the police department explained what had happened during their attempts to stop the bomb, Batman gave Gordon a device that can block the remote detonator signal to the bomb (the EMP guidance mount from the Bat), instructing him to get it onto the bomb before sunrise, since Batman planned to lead the trapped police officers in an all-out assault on Bane. He even tasked Blake to lead an exodus of Gothamites out of the city in case they fail and save as many lives as he could. True to plan, Batman freed the the police and had them clash with the main bulk of Bane's army in a bloody street battle. While Foley kept the militant's army busy, Batman clashed Bane himself and demanded to know the triggers location until Miranda intervened, revealing herself as Ra's al Ghul's daughter, Talia, who Bane gave the chance to finish her father's work. Meanwhile, Gordon used a bus to block the marked truck in an alleyway, only to find that the truck empty - Talia had them mark the wrong truck. Dismayed but still thinking on his feet, Gordon and his men rushed to find the only remaining truck as the men seize an armed pickup belonging to the mercenaries and used it to fire on the bomb truck.