Personality:

Frank Tenpenny is a corrupt police officer and is depicted as a very violent, sadistic, callous, manipulative, and impulsive man. Tenpenny is also quite arrogant and ruthless and can be easily angered if things do not go his way. Tenpenny is a sociopath and appears to have a few qualms about abusing people verbally or physically and seems to be fond of practicing brutality on others.

Tenpenny's notable trait is his egocentric superiority complex, in which he expresses enjoyment in manipulating others and being "in charge" of those around him. Such as the case in which he insisted his right-hand man Eddie Pulaski call him by his title (Officer Tenpenny) instead of his first name. Tenpenny seems to, in particular, enjoy controlling Carl, as he often uses Carl as his "dog" to do dirty jobs for him and to protect himself from various attempts by several people to expose his own crimes, all while blackmailing Carl and threatening him with harsh retribution that "(he) will think God himself has crapped on (him)." His treatment of Carl as his favorite "dog" has reached the point that he only wanted to kill him long after he has no use for Carl, as Pulaski said that Tenpenny will find an excuse to keep Carl alive despite Pulaski's wish to kill him sooner.

While Tenpenny claims that he supported every gang in the town to "took the trash out" by having them kill each other, he actually sided with the drug-dealing Vagos and Ballas to weaken both Aztecas and GSF (who oppose the drug business) in order to gain more power and respect from them instead of preventing them from committing more crimes and gain the drug money for his own use.