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The Police Department & You


Big_Smokes

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2 hours ago, Greyfeather said:

This sounds like an interesting feature.

 

As I understand it, irl police will be allowed to engage in electronic surveillance only after first having obtained legal authority. Typically, that authority is granted by a judge or magistrate on the demonstration of probable cause, which provides a check against potential abuse of listening devices by the police. 
 

Will there be a similar process in game, or is use of wires a discretionary decision made by the police? If it is discretionary, will police log a disclosable record of the matters that led them to believe probable cause existed? Can I then interrogate that record?

 

I hope to eventually RP as an attorney, and I’m starting to consider the prospect of challenging the admissibility of unlawfully obtained evidence to help obtain acquittal for criminal role players. If the intention is to keep the playing field even, I imagine a high level criminal role player would like the legal means to beat any charges that arise from these investigations.
 

If I’m over thinking it, please just tell me I’m over thinking it!  ?

 

San Andreas is a single party notification state. That means you can record a conversation so long as one party is aware they are being recorded.  Absent this awareness, a warrant is required. 

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8 hours ago, Big_Smokes said:

It's not so much that I don't want to see factions shut down period, but I want us to have to work for it and not have the other party feel like we got an ''easy'' win.

Don't you think that maybe if you got an easy win is because you did a good job, and it's not your job to be lenient? I think organized crime groups should understand that they should up their game a little. And I also think that you(as PD) should do your job regardless of how "easy win" it may look. I think that it will be healthy for the illegal factions if you guys used all the tools given to you. They have to fear law. Everyone has to fear law.

Edited by Gambler
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12 hours ago, Gambler said:

Don't you think that maybe if you got an easy win is because you did a good job, and it's not your job to be lenient? I think organized crime groups should understand that they should up their game a little. And I also think that you(as PD) should do your job regardless of how "easy win" it may look. I think that it will be healthy for the illegal factions if you guys used all the tools given to you. They have to fear law. Everyone has to fear law.

Couldn't agree more to this.

21 hours ago, Big_Smokes said:

It's not so much that I don't want to see factions shut down period, but I want us to have to work for it and not have the other party feel like we got an ''easy'' win. This is why I previously refrained from allowing undercover officers to insert themselves into factions, because the tool is simply too strong. I would only ever authorize that if things go too far (i.e. faction starts to commit mass murders and they NEED to be taken down. That hasn't happened here yet, though)

 

Wires, moles and trackers however level the playing field. It's not necessarily easy for the police department to obtain, because it requires us (any law enforcement factions with investigators) to obtain serious information about person x, property x, you name it, before an electronic surveillance warrant will be granted. I know we previously spoke about arrest / search warrants in topics other then this one, and the same (if not more stringent) requirements will be tied to obtaining these warrants. Surveillance is the name of the game, and it's already given the police department (through a considerably high amount of work) the opportunity to gain a lot of information, but it's always shy of giving us that hammer we need to hit the proverbial nail in the head. 

 

I have a history of being a vice / organised crime investigator personally, as that's what I previously did on the community I played before I joined GTAW and it will always have a special place for me. I was personally a big part of spearheading the movement to get this added to the server. What everyone, my detectives included, has to understand about wires is this: They are no joke. Wires are a seriously powerful tool (which is why for example the FBI took them very seriously in the 70's/80's and used them to seriously hurt LCN in New York) and that is the way we are going to approach it too. I know that a lot of you in the community have complained in the past about the LSPD's DB incapability to do a lot of damage specifically to non-open criminal factions (so discount gangs and motorcycle clubs for a moment) because it is extremely difficult to effectively identify a faction's chain of command through surveillance unless they openly advertise it.

 

That being said, this is the tool that levels the playing field. This is not going to make the police department (or any other investigate entity) overpowered. If anything, this merely levels the playing field. All those conversations you're purposely having inside buildings now because you know there's nothing the LSPD/LSSD/SABI can do about it? That time is over. This forces you, the criminal roleplayer, to always be on your toes. This forces you to think twice about what is safe and what isn't.

 

To give you an example of what wires are useful for, I'll bring up the most basic thing. Buy busts. You've heard about them, right? For those of you who don't know, a buy bust is when an officer in plain clothes approaches you, the criminal, to buy contraband from you. Previously we were very apprehensive about doing these types of operations, because officer safety (as it should be) is one of our number one priorities. Wires however give us the ability to, in real time, listen in to what the officer is doing instead of relying on texts or calls to know how they're doing.

 

This tool has been widely available to police departments in the US (and probably across the globe as well) and it will simply function as something that will level the playing field. What is the point to playing a high level LCN character when you know that the LSPD can't physically ever do anything against you not because of incompetence, but because the script simply doesn't support it? There is only so much cosmetic fear you can roleplay without it getting dull and not feeling like you genuinely might be at risk.

 

TL:DR - To some of you this tool might seem very minute and to others it might look overpowered. Both sides I get. If you're an associate then you probably won't care about this addition - and rightfully so, because it's not really meant to have an effect on you. This tool is there for police detectives to have the ability to bring the hurt to faction middle management and leaders - which is something I believe both sides have been waiting for for a long time. IF you can't tell, I'm personally very excited about this addition because I know that it will finally give the police department the IC ability to start genuinely ramping up investigations. In turn, I know this will bring many more people to the detective career path and will hopefully result in a more active police department detective bureau - something that the entire server will benefit from.

 

If you are worried about usage of wires, you can find reassurance in this: In the Los Santos Police Department, using a wire illegally will simply not be allowed, period. I will put an OOC restriction on it because the tool is too powerful to be abused. The only times that people will be using wires will be to either wire up a police officer during a buy bust, to wire up a confidential informant (which we always OOCly vet with LFM/IFM to ensure they have IC reasons to rat instead of just OOC) or to wire up a business for which a warrant has obtained.

 

If there are any further questions, please let me know. I do not want any of you to be confused/concerned about our wire usage. I am personally very invested in it (because I roleplay a detective as well) and will not accept any abuse of the tool.

It's not overpowered by any means man. That's what realism is. The bureau does their job and racks the charges up, while criminals try and fight them out trying to outsmart the other side. If they can't and the cards fall from their place, it's over. You had to be careful, end of story. The more PD will put effort into this, the more careful criminals will be. That's simply how it's meant to be. We want to see RICO come into play, life sentences, we want to see people flip like they do modern day, we want to see the bureau pressuring them into cutting deals. Perhaps trim their sentence down and let them have a namechange if someone flips as a form of witness protection, while the ones who don't and want to suck up their sentence get CK'd for life without parole.

 

The simple truth is that the playing field is NOT even. It hasn't been through several decades.

The bureau has far too many tools and resources set all over the place to bring down whatever they want.

And don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean crime is dead. Its only evolved in newer and more creative ways than before, but the current state of the server is nothing less than 1970s New York the way you put it yourself.

 

So enough time and effort should be put accordingly into the factions that are going about and causing the mayhem like we're in a different century.

In the modern day,  extortion of businesses is more or less dead and very situational, so is LCN presence in the west coast far as that's concerned. These updates aside, there didn't really seem to be any major investigations going on into anything. If they were and I'm wrong, it's a good thing. The arrests haven't been seen at all though.

Edited by Flow
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 This new wire feature could provide great RP for attorneys, detectives and organised crime, it'll probably be great if it gets done and RPed properly. You'd be able to have elaborate detective, snitch and undercover RP, organised crime'd be talking while walking on the street or a park like IRL, maybe exchange notes or use runners for hits or deals, have meets or sit-downs in ''clean'' places. Looking forward to see how it gets implemented.

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As someone who considers this server as the first truly heavy roleplay server they ever roleplayed, I honestly think that LSPD is probably the most realistic police department portrayed in a roleplay game or server. Yes, it's a video game, so the roleplay is never gonna be 100% perfect or exactly like the real life Los Angeles Police Department, however I think the LSPD and LSSD does a good job of character portrayal for each of their officers and they create an enjoyable experience. I was honestly surprised by the amount of realism found in the department, and I'm glad that the cops aren't portrayed as people who's only thing in life is to be a cop and do arrests. Once again, neiter LSPD or LSSD is perfect, however I believe this is the most realistic police department which is in a roleplay game/server and as such, I have to give props for that. 

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1 minute ago, xdthe said:

As someone who considers this server as the first truly heavy roleplay server they ever roleplayed, I honestly think that LSPD is probably the most realistic police department portrayed in a roleplay game or server. Yes, it's a video game, so the roleplay is never gonna be 100% perfect or exactly like the real life Los Angeles Police Department, however I think the LSPD and LSSD does a good job of character portrayal for each of their officers and they create an enjoyable experience. I was honestly surprised by the amount of realism found in the department, and I'm glad that the cops aren't portrayed as people who's only thing in life is to be a cop and do arrests. Once again, neiter LSPD or LSSD is perfect, however I believe this is the most realistic police department which is in a roleplay game/server and as such, I have to give props for that. 

Thank you for your feedback! I can definitely say that recently we've been exploring more and more avenues of community policing and increasing interactions between officers, and between officers and the public. We've already some progress, but we still have a long way to go.

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Just now, shareef2 said:

how can one file an OOC complaint on an officer? im running out of ideas on how to bring up my issue to the pd, it seems no one wants to take care of it! everyone is very hard to contact

Feel free to send a private message to any STAFF officer on the LSPD forums and your report will be taken and investigated. Here is a link to the forums: https://lspd.gta.world/index.php

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