The core keyboard and mouse controls
The interact key E does most of the physical work in Police Chief Simulator: opening doors, opening boxes, flipping the power switch, entering the speed gun's aiming mode, and pumping fuel. TAB opens the tools menu where your crowbar, broom, flashlight, stamps, pen, and ticket book live; anything you pick up can join it. Patch #6 (September 19, 2026) added two official key bindings: Stash = I and Ammo Use = E. The official launch-week devlog also confirmed two radial menus: a fully customizable Tools Menu and an Interaction Menu for dealing with residents — checking IDs, issuing tickets, searching, and arresting.
Furniture placement is hold Ctrl with an item in hand, rotate with the mouse wheel, and left-click only when the highlight turns green — the same flow appears in both demo and full-game footage. There is no confirmed controller button layout: even the Steam forum threads about controller support date to the Prologue, and every full-game video reviewed for this page shows keyboard and mouse only. Treat the game as mouse-first by design.
Station controls: stamps, pen, shredder, scanner
Paperwork is mouse-driven. Pick up the green stamp and click a valid registration form to accept it; the red stamp rejects a form, but the game requires you to mark the rejection reason first or the rejection fails. The pen, unlocked a few days in, corrects fixable mistakes like misspelled names, wrong sex, or a bad birth date — community guides are explicit that wrong photos and expired IDs cannot be corrected, so those forms must be rejected every time.
The scanner is operated by hand: open the lid, put the case file inside, close it, and press the start button; the database search and printing happen automatically as long as the printer has paper. The evidence board uses drag-and-drop — pin printed documents to the victim, suspect, and location slots, connect the dots, then take the photo when the game confirms the connections. A red button on the board wipes a case you started wrong.
Everything at this desk has a physical supply chain worth respecting: forms live on a shelf and run out, printer paper runs out separately, the shredder fills up with rejects, and the magnifying glass drains your energy per use. Players who keep one spare of each within arm's reach process visitors twice as fast as players who discover their shortages live — supply management is the hidden skill of the registration desk.
Phone, computer, and shopping controls
The rotary phone is dialed digit by digit — renovation 369-777, garbage collection 123-123, Tony's pawn shop 612-555 — and numbers you have called are saved as contacts you can click instead of dialing again. Phone menus let you buy items and request delivery. Several players note the delivery driver regularly gets stuck at the town's four-way traffic light, so order early in the day if a room upgrade is blocking your progress.
The station computer runs two apps that matter: the Hired In hiring app, which lists each candidate's strength, charisma, intelligence, and daily wage, and the case computer, where you search citizens by name and print documents. In the locker room, a management board gives you a top-down view of the station for dragging employee files between rooms — the closest thing the game has to an org chart.
