As a crim main who will never EVER play a cop outside of learning how the system works and then deleting it. (Which probably is against the rules so I’m likely never going to do it.)
I think as long as there’s paperwork, it’s somewhat restricted (i.e. you can’t just idle around for half a day in plain clothes hoping to catch anything you can), and you still can tell it’s a cop when you get up close and see their name, there should be plainclothes detectives.
I don’t know how it works now. Does it hide their name out of uniform? What ARE the restrictions that are so bad? You shouldn’t have your hands tied so badly that this is an issue we all agree on.