The Police Department & You

[aldo]

20 minutes ago, Big_Smokes said:

 

Okay. In regards to your question addressed to leadership - I cannot deny under any circumstance that the Field Training Program is not perfect. As a matter of fact, it has undergone many changes over the year that I've been a part of this faction's leadership to make it better and as it stands, myself and the people that are in charge of it still are not happy with how it functions in it's entirety. Thus we have decided to start a new effort to improve it.

 

Rome was not built in a day and neither was the LSPD. As you are well aware, a year ago my faction was left in shambles due to severe mismanagement by prior leadership who changed things for the sake of changing them, not to make them better. This lead to us practically having to rebuild the faction and retrain an entire leadership team (out of the people above the rank of Sergeant I that were in my faction when I returned to it, only two now are left). This however is no excuse. The Field Training Program as it stands teaches Police Officer I's the very basics of both our in-character policy and does very basic out of character roleplay quality checking by our Field Training Officers (P-3's). Months ago we made the decision this simply wasn't good enough, thus we expanded our Field Training Program management team to include more people and therefore have more people involved in the process of checking Police Officer I's for both IC and OOC quality.

 

To improve on this, I'm currently working with my Commander of Operations to improve the synergy between operations sergeants and police officer I's. Why? Sergeants are the backbone of my faction and are people that have at the point of their promotion spent months in the faction tailoring their experience as law enforcement roleplayers. But as Keane rightfully stated in a prior post: Some lack of quality comes due to a lack of education. Some people in this thread rightfully pointed out a lack of knowledge from the lower echelon of my faction on how to deal with for example gang members from a ground level. For the time being, the focus of my people in Field Training Management will be to provide better education on how to deal with certain aspects of policing like for example gang members from a street level. We thoroughly believe that simply providing more material for people to work with as a start will go a long way in improving the standards/quality the rank and file bring to roleplay scenarios.

 

That being said, I cannot give you the exposure you so desire because as you said, you are not faction management any longer. Above are the current plans I and my relevant command members have been working on based on the feedback I have been given in this thread and that is all I can offer.

 

As for how I plan on taking on OOC misconduct? The right way, by dealing with it on a case by case basis. I have recently started speaking to some illegal faction leaders (and I encourage those who I haven't spoken to yet to reach out to me, my discord is Smokey#3454 and I am always available to speak to) and faction members who have told me about both good and bad experiences about the LSPD. However, the most frequent thing I hear is that ''I used to have a really bad opinion about the LSPD and it's leadership until I spoke to you''. Although we try our utmost to deal with OOC issues as they arise from within our ranks, as I have stated countless times before, me and the rest of my command team aren't always there to see every individual situation. Thus, for the time being, I am simply trying to raise awareness of my availability and the fact that OOC misconduct should always be reported to either a server admin or my faction's leadership. Raising awareness so that reports are filed in the first place is the biggest priority I have, because at the moment, all I can do is deal with the reports coming from my own chain of command. As this faction's leader and together with my team, we have nothing but one goal in mind, which is to make the LSPD better. And I cannot deny that to achieve this goal we need all the help we can get, just like everyone else. Feedback is a necessity.

 

 

This. Although reason and thinking should not be thrown out of the window, I think that it may be said there is no reason for members of the LSPD to roleplay cosmetic fear. Sure, people should not think of South Los Santos as the Vinewood Hills, but neither do I expect them to treat a completely dead/empty neighborhood like it's Fallujah. To add on to this:

 

 

I remember dealing with something like this. In this situation there was proper IC escalation for my faction members to genuinely start fearing the neighborhood from an IC perspective; the same as goes with for example Jamestown now or an area like the garage north of the taxi depot. Although there is reason to be wary due to a certain neighborhood's history or geographical location, there is no reason to fear it until there is proper IC reason to. Yes, Los Santos mimics LA. But it's not a carbon copy and nobody has ever claimed/said it's a carbon copy, so why should we act like it is one?

 

 

I don't see why my faction's size has anything to do with the standards that are upheld. If anything, one should expect smaller factions to have far higher standards then a large one considering it's leadership is far closer to the ground level then a large faction's. Have we let people back in with the opportunity to rehabilitate? Yes, we have. Have some of those people failed? Oh definitely. But so have people been accepted into the server and immediately banned due to poor roleplay quality. I have witnessed this firsthand as an administrator. Do you think it's fair to expect better from my command team who for the most part are regular players and don't have access to the tools administrators do? (Do not take this as a jab at administrators. I have the utmost respect for the work you guys put in and I know how tough it can be, it was simply pointing out every system has it's imperfections.)

 

Either way, as a faction leader I refuse to adopt a policy that completely prevents people from being given a second chance. That however does not mean everyone is instantly guaranteed one. We have refused countless persons in the past over roleplay concerns and have given them bans with the hope they take the time to rehabilitate. Some do, some don't. Unfortunately because we have no logs access or anything like that we are reliant on outside sources to provide information, and due to these being incredibly busy at times, it's not always a possibility. The best we can do in those situations is inform their line management OOCly of the concern and ask them to keep their eyes on the person while they settle back into the faction. There have been cases where people have been found still sub-par and they were removed, and there are cases where people rehabilitated and stayed. It's how our system works and I believe it is the most fair way to give people a chance to be a part of the LSPD.

 

As for your last question, that was an agreement made between myself and player management leadership that I will not comment on in public. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to them.

 

 

Our recruitment policy reflects that of the LAPD. The fact of the matter is that you're not even required to have citizenship to join the LAPD, so I'm sure you'll find those people there as well. 

''Candidates must be at least 21 years of age, have a high school diploma or GED, and be a US citizen or permanent resident alien who has applied for citizenship. One does not have to be a resident of Los Angeles to become an LAPD officer.''

''A resident alien is a foreign-born United States resident who is not a U.S. citizen. A resident alien is also known as a permanent resident or a lawful permanent resident, which means they are considered an immigrant who has been legally and lawfully recorded as a resident of the country.''

 

However, as faction leadership we feel like we haven't done our jobs in correctly encouraging players to apply with american characters that fall into the first category (aka be a US citizen) and we aim to start doing exactly that.

 

Considering I was asked for transparency, I'm going to be open here and give you guys a look into the day one goals I've posted in my command team forums so you can get an idea of what my most imminent challenges were to deal with when roozles and I took over the faction about a month ago:

- Work on the callsign system / internal field management aka improve synergy between middle-high ranking personnel in the field. We have overhauled this system by removing and tweaking where necessary. This goal has been achieved.

- Work with Human Resources to create new roles such as dispatchers. This goal has been achieved and dispatchers are currently in trial.

- We currently have an idea to reform the faction from an organizational standpoint, due to the fact that we have a bunch of defunct offices that serve no purpose. - This goal has been achieved. Together with our command team, we re-organized the department and it's forums. So far the feedback is that everyone (internally) finds our forums a lot easier to use and by shuffling responsibilities around, we have created / changed divisions and bureaus to better represent the department we mostly base off of.

- We are looking at avenues to work together with OB and by extension the Field Training Program to bring officers more actively towards ADAM/LINCOLN callsigns - We are still working on this goal. Over time, we have also taken feedback from this thread and have amended our purpose to not just making Operations Bureau (and by extension, field training) more active, but also improve the overall quality.

- As most of you will have noticed, we have been working tirelessly with MRCAD and the other legal factions to improve both our standing with the community and the amount of activity/roleplay that we're bringing to all the other legal factions such as the media. It is our intent to keep working with all relevant parties, involving you yourself, to keep bringing more unique roleplay to both the faction from a political standpoint and in general bring more attention to our day to day activities. - This goal has very much been achieved. Working together with the faction leaders of FD, Gov, DOJ, DA's Office, Weazel & Saints News, legal political roleplay and our interaction with the news has been booming. Besides this, we've also worked with non-government factions to provide police roleplay realistic and relevant to their own projects.

-  One long winded thing about boosting recruitment. - Still in the works.

- One current issue that we're facing is that we have a lack of response to passive calls (911 calls that aren't hot and heavy) or units unnecessarily clearing from such calls to attend pursuits, shots fired, etcetera. We will be working on initiatives together with you and the supervisor team to keep the faction focused on actually attending said calls. Any suggestions are welcome. - Partially we've achieved this goal but we still feel like it needs more work. My supervisors/command staff (and by extension everyone in patrol) have done an amazing job so far at trying to cover this.

- Last but not least, we'd like to edit our faction page on the main forums to make it more up to date / bring it up to standard. - Still in the works.

 

Since day one more things have been added and there will be more added as we go on in time. All I ask you to remember is that I've only been this faction's leader for about a month now, and in addition to the points made above we have done many more things that you can find out about in the IC media. To build on this, following the many comments in this thread, I am going to start discussions on all levels of the faction to do exactly what is asked - find ways to further improve roleplay standards. All of my faction members have a horse in that race and in addition to initiatives I can start as the faction leader, I'm going to see what my faction members need in order to facilitate them.  I know these are only words to you; but it is all I can offer until results are in. The intention is there, the will is there, and as always we do intend to get the job done.

 

The point I was trying to make is that improving the LSPD is a group effort that is going to require long term support. I am very motivated as well are my command team and we're doing the best we can, but we're going to need time and your support in order to get the job done. I am not in the business of making promises I cannot uphold, I have never done so, and I never will. Thank you for all the positive comments in this thread so far and thank you all for bringing this feedback forward, all I can ask is to keep it coming.

best of luck with this, it’s looking great! 

[Lloydski]

On a note about using British slang - probably THE hardest thing for me as a Brit is roleplaying an American character. The biggest offender for me is using "cheers" when thanking someone, and I almost always have to correct myself (and sometimes I don't even notice!). On the flip side, we have quite a few foreign national characters with dual citizenship or otherwise  - so generally the ones that are over-the-top British are purposefully done so. Once again, this comes back to my point of character choices - it's not something you can 'dictate' to someone, and is once again the same reason that there are a large number of Eastern European and Asian characters.

[aldo]

33 minutes ago, Lloydski said:

On a note about using British slang - probably THE hardest thing for me as a Brit is roleplaying an American character. The biggest offender for me is using "cheers" when thanking someone, and I almost always have to correct myself (and sometimes I don't even notice!). On the flip side, we have quite a few foreign national characters with dual citizenship or otherwise  - so generally the ones that are over-the-top British are purposefully done so. Once again, this comes back to my point of character choices - it's not something you can 'dictate' to someone, and is once again the same reason that there are a large number of Eastern European and Asian characters.

why would you have trouble not typing ur own slang on gtaworld! ??

it’s not like you are speaking with your voice.

Edited October 29, 2019 by aldo

[Guest]

@Big_Smokes Thank you for your reply and transparency like that is welcomed. However, I do have a bone to pick (only one) with part of your response.

 

The rehabilitation concept is great on paper, but in practice this is GTA World we’re talking about where most players treat their opinions as fact. As aforementioned, I will refrain from mentioning names but it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together to come out with four when I explain the following scenario:

 

A member with a track record for poor and otherwise subpar roleplay, bigger than Katie Price’s body count with men, has been given yet another chance upon chance despite their roleplay quality being a detrimental factor to the faction. This individual has been welcomed back into the faction (forgive me if I’m wrong) based on their reputation as being a nice person and “willing to change” despite not changing for over a year when multiple staff members and PD members wasted their time trying to help this individual. I do not see this as fairness or rehabilitation, I see this as a weakness in decision making (without intending to offend) and some sort of anti-tolerance for this behaviour needs to be employed in order to rebuild your faction and it’s members’ reputation and eventually eradicating the insults people spew out against them for their experiences based on the past (and sometimes present)

 

Whilst I do not have exposure to knowing whether or not Player Management gave the green light to let this person back in the faction, it is ultimately YOUR responsibility (and your Command team’s) to make the correct decision in regards to your member base. I’m being hyperbolic when I say the following comparison, however if Player Management told me I could have 500 chimps acting as Mercenaries wreaking havoc in the city does not mean that I should accept that as the standards I’m trying to set in the server - for example.

 

I hope you know what I’m getting at by saying this. It is ultimately down to you as a faction leader to filter out these bad apples and protect your reputation. Not only are you making a poor choice by choosing to give out multiple chances, you are also doing a major injustice to your faction members that wish to excel in standards and really show the server what your faction has to offer. 
 

Take it with a pinch of salt if you must, but there needs to be a clear and fine line between being a nice person and being a good role player fit for a massive faction in a server that has the ability to disrupt factions and individuals’ roleplay - sometimes permanently.

 

To close off my wall of text, I respect that the LSPD as a faction has had a reputation to build from the ground up from what I considered a cringeworthy previous leadership and a fucking Godsend when they were finally booted, but in order to keep those standards you’re trying to set at the highest bar, you need to be an asshole in the kindest way possible. It may sound controversial, but you need to be the bad guy sometimes in order to protect the good guys. Put your faction, it’s members and the roleplay quality first and you can’t go wrong. If you put friendships, memes and social points in the server first then you are only failing those that believe in you to be the faction’s mender from an otherwise shambolic leadership prior to yourselves.

[pateuvasiliu]

On 10/25/2019 at 2:10 PM, Henning said:

However, I've seen a slipping trend when it comes to my interactions with PD specifically relating to No FearRP and more importantly, unprofessional behavior. Cops flashing their lights only to pull up behind you and yelling and/or use their megaphone to say "Learn how to drive!"

You can't complain cops are robotic and then bring something like this up, which is the opposite of robotic.

 

Either they are robots who are always polite, by the book and have no emotions, or they are allowed to call you an asshole when you are one. You can't have your cake and eat it too. 

I know people that have been arrested a dozen times, where is THEIR fear? Most people seem to commit crimes because they know OOC that the jail time/fines are a joke.

Edited October 29, 2019 by pateuvasiliu

[Lloydski]

1 hour ago, aldo said:

why would you have trouble not typing ur own slang on gtaworld! ??

it’s not like you are speaking with your voice.

I think you're confusing the term 'slang' with 'accent', maybe?

[aldo]

1 hour ago, Lloydski said:

I think you're confusing the term 'slang' with 'accent', maybe?

nope

[aldo]

On 10/25/2019 at 2:27 PM, Maca said:

That was very insightful and down to a tee, Keane. I hope many members of the LSPD can take advice like this and apply it to their faction, even if they aren’t being taught it.

 

@Bryar1427 I respect that you roleplay a person with a decent background of development. However, there is something you really need to be taking into account as it appears that you may be mistaken with the whole “who’s going to shoot me in broad daylight in somewhere I’m from” approach. 

 

A fairly fresh example is the death of rapper Nipsey Hussle. He was outside of his own clothing store, Marathon Clothing, in Crenshaw, Los Angeles. Nipsey was shot over 10 times to the torso and head over a minor altercation with somebody also from his area. Over a simple verbal altercation over seemingly two once-acquainted friends, Nipsey tragically lost his life from a jealous, reckless Rollin 60’s Neigbourhood Crip, the same gang Nipsey was from.

 

This was in broad daylight in the middle of a busy strip of shops in South LA. He died over asking that man to go away because he was suspected of being a snitch. Please don’t assume that your character is “safe” because they’re from that area or it’s daylight... you might find yourself caught up in a sticky situation if you cross roleplayers that are hardcore into their knowledgable Los Angeles gang culture roleplay.

bruh preach it ❤️ 

 

also.. to the people complaining that gang bangers seem to be shooting all the time and not rping the consequences after it... these bangers commit shootings all the time however most of the time nobody gets hit. shootings and murders are not new to them and they've been brought up around it their whole life, so stop complaining about how a 19 year old banger had just busted off at a rival gang in broad daylight. 

 

back on topic: PD are actually doing a great job right now and they pretty much always bring the correct amount of units to a scene depending on the area or the perpetrator. 

Edited November 2, 2019 by aldo

[Mitch]

So I'm kinda curious so here we go, 

 

What's your thoughts on making it mandatory to use the megaphone more when trying to stop someone for a simple traffic stop? I have a lot of issues with hearing and sometimes it's very hard to realize when a cop is stopping me because the sirens are so quiet / other music is playing. 

[Westen]

4 minutes ago, Mitch said:

So I'm kinda curious so here we go, 

 

What's your thoughts on making it mandatory to use the megaphone more when trying to stop someone for a simple traffic stop? I have a lot of issues with hearing and sometimes it's very hard to realize when a cop is stopping me because the sirens are so quiet / other music is playing. 

If the unit is partnered, I'd argue that that's a completely reasonable request. If it's a single officer, then I would disagree. Taking your hands off the movement keys to type /m LSPD stop the car is difficult under the best of times, even moreso when you're behind someone with lights and sirens who could slam on at any minute.