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Resident Evil 2 Police Station Walkthrough - Full Raccoon City Police Station Guide for Resident Evil 2

It's the Raccoon City police station is the first safe haven for both Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield in Resident Evil 2. In our Resident Evil 2 police station walkthrough, we'll be walking you the first section of the police station, through the opening hour of the game until you're tasked with the obtaining three medallions.

But if you instead need help with any later stages of Capcom’s remake, then you’ll want to head over to our complete Resident Evil 2 walkthrough. Here you can find all the information you need to make it through the apocalypse alive, including weapon guides and more.

In this Resident Evil 2 Raccoon City Police Station Walkthrough we'll be covering how you can collect first aid sprays and pistol ammo, as well as providing you with map locations for additional items like documents.

Resident Evil 2 Police Station Walkthrough

No matter if you chose Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield for your first playthrough of Resident Evil 2, this portion of the game will play out exactly the same. It’s only in the later stages that the two campaigns begin to diverge, with Leon descending into the sewers, and Claire going to an orphanage.

Police Station 1F Item Locations

A quick note about our map of the first floor of the police station, pictured below. The green circles signify the locations of healing items like green herbs and first aid sprays, while the black circle denotes gunpowder and ammunition.

Green = healing items, black = gunpowder/ammo. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Police Station 3F Item Locations

As with the map above, these are all the locations of the items on the third floor of the police station. Once again, black items signify the gunpowder/ammunition items.

Green = healing items, black = gunpowder/ammo. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Starting out from the entrance to the police station, where Claire and Leon will have just escaped from a horde of zombies, you want to head forward. Interact with the typewriter to log your first save of Resident Evil 2, and then look to the small computer screen at the back of the desk.

The beginning of the nightmare. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Interact with the computer, and Leon/Claire will see a police officer in need of reinforcements in the eastern hallway. Turn to your right, and in the far right corner of the main hall, you can see a metal shutter. Interact with the lever with the glowing red light next to the shutter, and Leon or Claire will squeeze underneath, putting you in solid dark with only a flashlight.

Use the lever to open the shutter. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Venture down the hallway straight ahead of you, and follow the path around to the right. You can go through the white double doors on your left to retrieve some pistol ammo, but return back into the hallway after, and look to your left.

It's pretty dark in here. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

You’ll now hold down A/X on your controller to lift a fallen cabinet out of the way. Proceed down the hallway further, but take the next path on the left. Open up the door on your right, which leads to the toilets, and the middle cubicle will be holding a first aid recovery spray for you to pick up.

First aid spray in the toilets? | Hirun Cryer

Continue ahead back in the hallway, and you’ll hear the shouts of the police officer in danger. Head through the door on your left next to the reception-type window in the wall, and then interact with the metal shutter in the next room, which will cause Leon/Claire to enter a cutscene where they attempt to save the officer.

That's gotta hurt. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Making it Back to Safety

And now is where the challenge truly begins: the police station is crawling with zombies! Back up towards the door, and one zombie will burst through at you, so be prepared to aim quickly with the left trigger, aim at the head of the zombie, and blast away with the right trigger.

Aim and fire! | Hirun Cryer

With the zombie down, head out into the hallway, and another zombie will burst through a window in the corner. It’s worth noting that, especially on Standard and Hardcore difficulties, the zombies in Resident Evil 2 nearly always get up after you’ve shot them in the head a few times, so keep in mind that any zombie, unless their head explodes, can get back up for another go at you.

Your aim is to now make it back down the hallway, to the metal shutter where you first exited the main hall of the Raccoon City police station. As you walk near where you lifted the fallen cabinet out of the way, two zombies will begin shuffling towards you from the opposite end of the path.

Understatement of the year, Leon. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

You’ll want to put the zombies on the ground as quickly as possible. If you’ve got some spare ammo after you’ve done this, then you should head right at the end of the path, because there’s a now-open storage closet with one zombie waiting inside. But, if you can take this zombie down, then you can pick up more pistol ammo from within the closet.

Either way, you now need to head back to the metal shutter at the end of the hallway. Simply interact with the shutter itself, and this section of the game will come to a close. A cutscene will now play out, where Leon Kennedy/Claire Redfield is introduced to Marvin Branagh, the dying police lieutenant of the station.

Meet Marvin Branagh. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Getting the Combat Knife

After the cutscene has played out with Marvin, you’ll be given a combat knife, which can use with the left shoulder button, to ever get out of a zombie’s grab. Now head down the path on your right, and you can interact with the box on the wall with yellow tape, cutting through it with your combat knife, to open up the shutter on the left.

Use the knife to get rid of the tape. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Pick up the green herb on your right, and the pistol ammo on the bench on your left in this new room, before heading through the door at the back left of the room. In this dark corridor, head forward to the end of the corridor, and interact with the corpse on the ground, who has suffered a particularly gruesome fate.

Is the power out everywhere in this place? | Hirun Cryer

After the brief cutscene, head forward down the dark hallway in front of you. A zombie will appear in the window at the end of this corridor, and after you’ve turned right round the corner, it’ll burst through the window behind you, so be prepared to put a few shots in its head.

Obtaining the Map of the Police Station

Now continuing back down the hallway, you’ll see that the path ahead of you is blocked. Take the double doors on your right, and in this room you can pick up the ‘Record of Events’ document on the desk to your right and the bloodstained ‘police station 1F map’ on the blackboard.

The events seem unpleasant, to say the least. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Turn to your left once you’ve picked up the map, and hop up onto the ledge ahead of you. Now press A/X to jump through the window just underneath the ceiling. In this next corridor, you’ll find a zombie ahead of you trying to get into the vending machine, but take it out with a few bullets, because you don’t want it coming after you later.

Is there life after death? | Hirun Cryer

You can now head through the door nearby marked ‘west office.’ In this room, there’s a zombie pretending to be asleep at his desk, so deal with him, and then pick up the gunpowder on the next just next to the stealth zombie. There’s also a document on the same desk as the gunpowder, which details the many ways in which you can put it to use.

Gunpowder is more valuable than gold dust in Resident Evil 2. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Now turn around, and you can open up a locker to retrieve some pistol bullets. Head to the eastern end of the room, near the stairs leading up to the door, and you’ll find that there’s a document on a desk, labelled ‘Rookie’s First Assignment.’ This tasks you to open up Leon’s own desk, and if you want the solutions to the two dial locks on the desk, head over to our Resident Evil 2 dial locks guide.

But otherwise, head back out into the hallway from where you came. A zombie will get up off the floor as soon as you reenter the hallway, so be prepared to either run past it, or put a few shots in it.

Now turn right, and down the hallway that leads towards a window. If you want to stop the zombie breaking through, you can head right when you get to the end of the hall, pick up the wooden boards on the ground (don’t forget the green herb!), and use them on the window to board it up, preventing the zombie from getting inside.

You'll need to be quick to stop the zombie breaking in. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Should you wish to save, there’s actually a safe room of sorts through a door, right by where you picked up the wooden boards. In here you can save using the typewriter, pick up some more pistol ammo, and use the item box to deposit any unwanted items that you might need later.

Otherwise, head straight up the stairs back out in the hallway. On the second floor, there’ll be a zombie on the floor with some pistol ammo right by it. On your way up to the third floor, there’s a zombie banging against the window, and since the walkway is so narrow here, be sure to prepare yourself to put it down quickly.

I hate this guy, he always comes back for more. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Once you’ve reached the top of the stairs turn right, and head along until you can go through the broken wall on your right. On the desk you can pick up a key, which you’ll need for a little later on in this level.

This key is going to open up a lot of areas to you. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Head through the door to the left of where you picked up the key, and you’ll see a Licker scamper across the window on the outside of the building. Follow the corridor around to the left, and you can take a door on the left that’ll lead you to the western storage room.

Finding Your First Hip Pouch

In this new room, pick up the gunpowder on your right, and you can combine it with the gunpowder that you picked up earlier, to create more pistol ammo. Now head round the corner, and head towards the bars running from the floor to ceiling. When you’re up against the bars turn around to your right, and you’ll see a hip pouch on the desk in front of you, which will expand Leon/Claire’s inventory slots by two.

The hip pouch is crucial for Leon Kennedy. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

Head back into the middle of the room, and there’ll be a door on your right, which you can take through to the library area of the Raccoon City police station. Once you’ve passed through this door, Marvin will radio Leon, telling him to return to the main hall immediately.

The return to Marvin. | Hirun Cryer/USG, Capcom

In order to do just that, head across the walkway in the middle of the library, and down the stairs on your right. There are three live zombies on the ground floor, but you only need to take down the one at the bottom of the stairs, because the other two are easily avoidable.

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Now use the key you picked up earlier on the door with the red ‘exit’ sign above it, and you’ll be back in the main lobby area of the police station. Head down the stairs on your left, and a cutscene will play out with Marvin, in which he tasks Leon/Claire with finding three medallions to escape the police station for good. For a full guide on how to do that, and continue with the story of Resident Evil 2, head over to our Resident Evil 2 medallions guide.

If it's more content for Capcom's remake that you're after, head over to our essential Resident Evil 2 tips page. Alternatively, you can hit up our page on how to unlock Fourth Survivor in Resident Evil 2 with the enigmatic Hunk, our article on how to unlock the magnum in Resident Evil 2, or our Resident Evil 2 Leon's desk locks guide. If you want more Resident Evil goodness, check out our definitive ranking of the best Resident Evil Games.

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