TranXify

I am one of the staff officers in the LSPD. I've heard this statement a few times before, which motivated me to look into the matter to see if there is an issue, and if there is one then what can be done to fix it. I ask you, or anyone who is complaining from any sort of bad roleplay experience with an officer to please forward it to me or any staff officer so we can handle it. I would also be happy to hear some of the general actions that occurred, or you were told about, that led you to feel the way you currently feel. With all that in mind, I can say that PD's leadership has already taken some strides to improve on this matter. Operations Bureau is trialing a system with Community Policing, which is intended to encourage the officers to interact a lot with the people frequenting certain areas, business owners, etc. Operations is continuously working on this system where they are considering ways to improve it and what not. Regarding roleplaying with emotions and feelings, I can already tell you that a lot of faction members do that. However, a lot of faction members might also not allow their character to display those emotions to the public often, which I also find to be realistic. IRL cops are expected to remain professional and not display their emotions. Then why would I tell the faction members to display all sorts of emotions on a traffic stop? I would find that to be honestly unrealistic. There are places where an officer can display emotion, I just believe that the majority of players don't get to witness it. Finally, the person I can definitely speak about the most is myself. I like to believe that some people reading this might actually recognize my forum name from the amount of business cards my Police Officer II has been handing out. I've been focusing on community policing and interaction in certain areas myself. My character also does tend to get frustrated every now and then, but usually doesn't show much of it to the public. TLDR, we're already looking into ways to increase roleplay interactions between PD and the players. We're taking baby steps, and any reports or specific feedback would help out a lot. As I said above, we're already trying to create more community policing which would result in more interaction. If you, or anyone, has any suggestions regarding how the PD can increase its interaction with the players, then please drop them in this thread or forum PM me or any staff officers.

My main concern is that in real life, you get a few ways that you can recognize someone outside of their hairstyle and clothing such as body weight and facial features. However, in the game it is quite difficult to do that. Otherwise, seems like a fine update.

Sending a message to "Administrators" through that means gives me the same error, but even if the error did not exist, I don't think you'd even reach anyone from the LSPD by doing this. The ways to get in touch with PD for non-emergency calls: 1) Call 991. Whether or not you get a response depends on the nature of the call and the amount of people on duty. There are way more officers online at 9 PM than there are at 5 AM server time. 2) Visit one of the police stations. I believe you will most likely encounter an officer at Mission Row, followed by Rockford Hills, followed by Vespucci HQ. You can visit any of these stations and look for an officer to roleplay with. 3) You can send a forum PM on the LSPD forums to the appropriate person who can handle the nature of your concerns. I understand that it can be difficult to figure out which Command Officer or Staff Officer to contact based on the nature of your request, but you can forum PM any of them with your issue and ask them to either help sort the issue or guide you in the right direction. Feel free to send me a forum PM on the GTAW Forums explaining the exact issue you are trying to address and I'll point you in the right direction.

I'll answer the first general question you've asked first: "Are there any instances where it is acceptable for a member of the police to breach corruption rules if their lives are at imminent risk and the situation at hand inevitably leads to a character-kill? " The answer is that it... depends. PD Staff always stated to their members that if roleplay is incredibly dynamic and it makes sense for a PD member (based on very good and realistic development) to break one of the OOC corruption rules, then they must inform the Chief of Police right after the situation of exactly what happened. The Chief of Police will then review the situation that occurred, and if the roleplay is deemed to be of good enough quality and development, then the person is not punished. If the roleplay was not realistic enough, then the person risks being removed from the faction. In most case scenarios, officers will have enough time to approach the Chief of Police and ask for corruption permission anyway. To answer your specific scenario, though, about the detective who got kidnapped and is being coerced to release case file information. There are two factors that I am considering: 1) Kidnapping a police Detective would lead to your criminal organization or gang to being chased to the end of the Earth. The federal police would probably get involved, and your local police will focus its resources on the group. It would most definitely result in them being forced to change their method of operation and might risk multiple of their members being locked up or their entire organization burning to the ground. Not many people, IRL, are willing to take such a risk. It is difficult for us (the LSPD) to put such pressure on criminal groups in game because we are not as big as any actual police department, and we don't have the FBI to jump in if need be. 2) The current rules do not balance the risk that the criminals are taking when they kidnap the detective and coerce him to speak up, and the amount of time it takes to build those case files. Case files on criminal groups or gangs take literal months to years of people's time. No one wants all that time to be wasted. With both of these points taken into consideration, I would personally never give any PD member the permission to leak case file information.

The LSPD is the faction responsible for handling Firearms Licensing, and they have their own forums that is separate from the GTAW forums. In order to post on the forum, you require to have an account. Creating an account is quick and simple. If people create topics without a forum account created on the LSPD website, it can be quite confusing and difficult to keep track of people and their topics. I am not even sure it's possible to create topics without being a registered user to start with. It's just how the forums are. If you need something from the LSFD, such as a fire marshall inspection for your business, you will need to create yet another account on the LSFD forums. If you need something from the LSSD, such as a ridealong with LSSD, you will need to create yet another account on their forums. I am not entirely sure why those factions chose to have their own forums. It could have been to allow faction leadership to have control over the forums, or to allow for different aesthetic, or it could be to allow those factions to have a separate website that they can focus on. I am not sure why things were set up this way, but they were set up this way for organization purposes. I hope this answers your question as to why two accounts are needed. The two websites are separate for one reason or another and you need to create an account to post on the LSPD forums, just like you need to create an account to post on the GTAW forums.

I am not sure of the actual statistics of the nationalities of our faction members, and hence can not verify or disprove whether there is a disproportion of nationalities to start with. I believe that counting the number of people who are online on Teamspeak at any one time is however not the most scientific and diligent of experiments or assessments to go off of. There are multiple factors that can affect the amount of people online on TS at any one time, such as timezones. To answer your question, though, I do not think that it is weird that we only have 1 or 2 players from individual countries at one point of time on TS. I believe we have people from all across the world. The LSPD does not take into consideration your nationality during the recruitment process, nor is it asked on the application. Hence, your nationality does not affect your chances of joining the faction. Nonetheless, we do consider the English skills of the individual. We do not ask for unreasonable skills, we only ask for what is required of a faction member to be understood by their fellow faction members and the server as a whole. If people do not meet those requirements, then unfortunately they can not uphold our standards and will face difficulties if they are allowed into the faction. It is the same way that the server considers the English ability of individuals when they apply to the server.

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

Keep in mind that those places have other expenses, and not all businesses are the same. Some businesses need to hire more staff per opening and hence make less profit per opening. For a bar or lounge, you might need a bartender and maaaybe 1/2 security guard and you're good. Meanwhile, for a stripclub, you need dancers, guards, bartenders and maybe a manager on top. You also have the costs of liquor, advertisements, protection/extortion, personal expenses. Hence, the expenses add up, and some businesses are naturally more profitable than others.

I don't think that the problem with extortion can be solved in any one singular way. It needs multiple approaches and multiple solutions working hand in hand. I can not speak for everyone else, but I know that this topic is not the only way I am attempting to do my piece of trying and balancing this issue.

I do agree that the exact maximum amount is tricky to calculate. I don't think 5% of the market price of a business is fair. I am not sure what is the market price of businesses, but my educated guess is about 500k. 5% of 500k is 25K. Getting extorted for 25K/week is absolutely insane. I am pretty sure that's more expensive than what any faction is currently charging. Having the limit based on the owner's total assets is also not fair. Some people have a lot of money on the server for one reason or another, but they don't use all their money. I don't think it is fair to tax two different people who are running the same business a different amount simply because they have more assets/script money. Profit and/or sales is a very good thing to consider when coming up with the maximum amount, but they vary wildly from opening to opening and from business to business. Something that I would like to highlight is that currently some extortion rates are literally higher than what people pay for their leases, which is a bit weird. I've seen leases vary from 10k/month to 30k/month. Meanwhile, it is quite common to see people getting extorted for 10k/week, which is 40k/month. Hence, you're literally paying less for your lease than you are paying for the extortionists.

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.

Before I explain my suggestion, I know that a similar suggestion has already been posted. I am creating this suggestion because I have certain rules that I think are fair and are the ones I am suggesting. Short description: Limit the amount that can be extorted from businesses, and how many businesses that a faction can extort. Detailed description: The rules I would like to suggest are simple: Limit the amount of money that can be extorted from businesses. This amount can be a static amount regardless of the business, or a variable amount based on the business type. If it is variable based on business type, the amount of money that the business makes scriptwise as well as how much it would realistically make should both be considered. I would like to suggest 5k/week as a maximum or lower. Extortion should not be used as a money making machine, and we should encourage the illegal factions to focus on roleplay rather than gaining more money. Limit the number of businesses that an illegal faction can extort. I am not sure what would be a good number as I do not know how many illegal factions there are etc. The number decided upon should be low enough that the illegal factions can actually focus on the few businesses they decide to extort. Quality over quantity. Limit the control of illegal factions over businesses. I do not think it is fair for illegal factions to have any say in a business's set of policies or opening times. Business owners put a lot of time, effort and even IRL money into their businesses. It is not fair to then not even have control over your own business because a mob or gang wants to control it. Commands to add: N/A Items to add: N/A How would your suggestion improve the server? Currently, there are no rules regarding extortion whatsoever. Illegal factions are given the freedom to judge what is a fair price and rule set for their extortion. I believe a set of rules will be beneficial to let both sides (illegal factions and business owners) to better understand what is realistic and fair, and what is not. That will encourage business owners to report unrealistic or unfair extortion as the rules are better defined. Moreover, there will be a lower chance of unrealistic or unfair extortion to start with as we'd be taking a proactive approach, rather than just reporting every bad encounter. I also believe that it will allow the illegal factions to focus more on the roleplay than making money. It will allow the illegal factions to actually provide some sort of service to the owner (as they will have only a few businesses to extort and focus on) rather than just getting paid at the end of the week. It will naturally make illegal factions think twice before committing to extort a business, which will reduce the likelihood of the less profitable businesses (such as 24/7's) of being extorted. It will also reduce the likelihood of multiple gangs/mobs extorting the same place, and gangs/mobs will be more encouraged to actually fight for territory rather than letting go. Additional information: I worry that with this suggestion, illegal factions will just always go for the maximum amounts provided because... why not? Hence, I believe that the amounts (especially money that can be extorted) should be lowballed.

You are suggesting that PD and SD are required to police the server, rather than provide policing roleplay. I do agree that those factions could have a hand in policing the server and maintaining law and order, but I actually do not believe it is entirely on them. This is what has been said previously. PD and SD can not single handedly, and I do not even think that it is their job OOCly, to police the server. Keeping things somewhat balanced from an OOC perspective is always nice to allow a chance for roleplay to occur.

You'd have to prove that first, which can prove difficult. If the criminals really want to, and with enough time, they can probably find a reason to somehow cause you nuisance that is justified. Also, sending in multiple reports that are not sustained make you look like the bad person. Once again, with no rules regarding extortion at all, it is difficult to know whether it is portrayed realistically or not. I can't speak on behalf of others, but if I find myself in a situation where I am considering reporting someone, I would only do it when I am 100% sure that it is poor rp/portrayal/rule breaking.

I think that's honestly looking at it a bit black and white. I do agree that reports need to be filed in order for change to take place, but I also understand why some people would avoid filing reports. One reason was already highlighted, which is the possibility that the owner/victim simply wants the RP to be over with so they can just forget about it, or keep their interaction with the criminals to a minimum. However, another possible reason which was not highlighted and I believe affects some people is the possibility of backlash and being unsure of what is "good portrayal of extortion" and "bad portrayal of extortion". You see, if you file a report on a criminal faction / individual about poor portrayal, who is extorting you, and your report is not sustained... well, now the person who is extorting your character very likely is not a big fan of you OOCly and might even be holding a grudge against you. Now, you might get into bigger shit, have to pay a higher price, have the person be a nuisance in some way, get harassed, or have them try to find any reason to CK you. Orrrrrrrr, none of that might happen and they might not see the situation any differently and not allow their emotions affect their IC actions. However, the possibility is there. I did not create this thread with the intention of /complaining/ about the state of extortion. I highlighted questionable actions that I've observed, and was simply wondering about the opinions of other individuals to have a better judgement and understanding of the situation as a whole. I do not think that's a sin.