Why do police ignore any non action related call? What can be done to prevent it?

[PeopleKind]

The amount of times police just ignore calls is ridiculous.

 

For example tonight a kid got stabbed and was bleeding out, so we called 911. FD arrived first, meanwhile literally 10 /different/ police cars (both marked & unmarked) drove by casually, completely ignoring the call. But the second shots are fired in the area? Half the cops on the server were right there. Same with most non violent calls, robbery calls, etc etc. It's a re-occurring issue & you see it every day, frankly its ridiculous.

 

It's clear most LEO's here ignore every call that doesn't result in immediate action such as pursuits or shootouts. They seem to only want action, which isn't fair to the regular civilian RPers that become victims due to suspects & criminals knowing nothing will happen because the police seemingly only exist to get into pursuits & shootouts.

 

Why does this happen & what can be done to prevent it? Police shouldnt be ignoring basic calls. This isn't a cops n robbers server, you cant just ignore the "boring" calls like this.

 

[Rhy Rhy]

Don't even get me started on response time for car accidents.

[Koko]

I guess your mileage will vary depending on particular cops. I know for a fact that there's a few cops who will go to every little call and give it their all (I play on morning times often and on my FD char it's the same stable of cops in most non-emergencies). Shoutout to the couple of people RPing burnt out disgruntled traffic cops, they're great to interact with as well.

 

I honestly don't have an answer as I don't play a cop. In the case of FD the issue is numbers. We just are a niche faction and we often don't have enough people when we're needed. We try to respond to all calls but obviously it's not always possible for us. In the case of LEOs in their defence it's also really easy to get stuck in a massified scene that goes on for an hour, particularly large-scale shootouts in places like Forum or the Rancho Projects, where there's multiple dead and a whole small army needed to stand around securing the scene. Sometimes these also devolve into followup searches, crime broadcasts, or people tunnel-visioning into the night's sidequest.

 

On the other hand, we've had this conversation pretty much every month on these forums re: cops, and there's a fraction of that playerbase that's of the opinion that you should be able to pick and choose the calls to respond to. I don't agree with that, but at the end of the day there should be a system regardless to ensure players feel listened to when they call for a cop for something that's not action-packed. I understand units not being available on peak times when everything's going to shit, but otherwise it makes no sense to let a call go unanswered.

 

I don't know how PD operates. In FD the highest-ranked member who is free roleplays our Metro/Dispatch and will assign units, rather than us picking and choosing. That's how we resolve the issue of who goes where as it's decided for us whenever there's multiple units out, and everything that we can respond to gets a response.

[PeopleKind]

11 minutes ago, Koko said:

I guess your mileage will vary depending on particular cops. I know for a fact that there's a few cops who will go to every little call and give it their all (I play on morning times often and on my FD char it's the same stable of cops in most non-emergencies). Shoutout to the couple of people RPing burnt out disgruntled traffic cops, they're great to interact with as well.

 

I honestly don't have an answer as I don't play a cop. In the case of FD the issue is numbers. We just are a niche faction and we often don't have enough people when we're needed. We try to respond to all calls but obviously it's not always possible for us. In the case of LEOs in their defence it's also really easy to get stuck in a massified scene that goes on for an hour, particularly large-scale shootouts in places like Forum or the Rancho Projects, where there's multiple dead and a whole small army needed to stand around securing the scene. Sometimes these also devolve into followup searches, crime broadcasts, or people tunnel-visioning into the night's sidequest.

 

On the other hand, we've had this conversation pretty much every month on these forums re: cops, and there's a fraction of that playerbase that's of the opinion that you should be able to pick and choose the calls to respond to. I don't agree with that, but at the end of the day there should be a system regardless to ensure players feel listened to when they call for a cop for something that's not action-packed. I understand units not being available on peak times when everything's going to shit, but otherwise it makes no sense to let a call go unanswered.

 

I don't know how PD operates. In FD the highest-ranked member who is free roleplays our Metro/Dispatch and will assign units, rather than us picking and choosing. That's how we resolve the issue of who goes where as it's decided for us whenever there's multiple units out, and everything that we can respond to gets a response.

I agree, its fine if youre stuck on a scene and all that, but like tonight where 10 different cruisers clearly not responding to anything just drove by without responding to the call, theres no excuse. If youre on duty & not busy, you should respond to any call, and if a major call comes in while your on a smaller call, then obviously it should take priority and you go handle it. Yknow?

[Kenshi]

28 minutes ago, PeopleKind said:

I agree, its fine if youre stuck on a scene and all that, but like tonight where 10 different cruisers clearly not responding to anything just drove by without responding to the call, theres no excuse. If youre on duty & not busy, you should respond to any call, and if a major call comes in while your on a smaller call, then obviously it should take priority and you go handle it. Yknow?

But there's no way for you to know if they're responding or not. Just because they're not running code doesn't mean they're not responding. The policy got changed a while ago where you can't run with lights to non-emergency calls anymore. Granted, some, myself included still "break policy" and do it anyway. I've got the feeling you're paraphrasing with the number, as I doubt you sat there counting every cop car that passed. But if you said that shots were fired in the area, could be they're containment units trying to locate suspicious behavior related to that shooting. Could be they're as I said earlier en-route to other calls, could be on their way back to the station with evidence, could be en-route to backup calls, other traffic stops, augment someone else somewhere, list goes on.

 

I'll delve a little further and share some statistics with you. 

Alot of people, much like yourself, see one instance they don't agree with, and then that's all they see. 

What I mean in this particular case, there are alot more people playing than just you. At peak, Catering to 900 plus people is not easy.

 

Someone in the LSPD did some data analysis on the call volume, for the period of  00:00 01/AUG/2023 - 13:27 14/AUG/2023. So a 2 week period.

In those 2 weeks?  1,467 emergency calls were made.

On average, that's just over 100 calls made to 911 Daily.. And these are specifically calls aimed towards the LSPD & the LSSD, we're not county the LSFD here.

On average, that's about 1 emergency call every thirteen minutes

 

On average, during peak. The numbers of the LSPD range from 20-35-40ish. Sometimes, that number swells to 70+ like now, when fresh recruits graduate academy and get thrown into the meatgrinder.

Know that those cops, do their own police work, their own traffic stops, if they respond to any scene, that's them out of action for as long as that scene lasts, could be as simple as a few minutes, could be as someone else said, hours. Shootings can tie units up to a scene for upwards of an hour. Processing individuals takes time aswell. Cops get into traffic accidents aswell, those need to get investigated and means someone from traffic has to come down and do an investigation, which takes time aswell. Detectives might need help canvasing an area, or need officers for >insert any of the dozens of reasons here<. 

The LSPD prioritizes roleplay above all else, so all of these officers in situations I mentioned above, make sure to actually provide meaningfull roleplay to the best of their abilities. 

 

With all that said, I summarise, please don't immediately jump to the conclusion "Oh, the police did not respond to my scene, and left me in a very bad mood. How dare they." And while that might suck, agreed. Please think that you might've needed police, but as you said yourself, somewhere down the block, people were shooting at eachother. On the other side of the freeway, someone was breaking into someone else's home. At the same time,  a pursuit was barreling down vespucci with 0 regards for human life. Happening at the same time as a break-in in mirror park, an overdose in vespucci, and 2 traffic stops, one on a stolen vehicle, and another that had a K9 snif run on it, only to have that K9 detect guns/drugs in the car. And lastly, someone trespassing onto IMEX property again and trying to light their cars on fire for a laugh.

 

I'll take that IMEX situation a little further, I'm a traffic officer, assigned to the traffic desk, that's a specialized assignment. To spell the obvious, my focus is mainly related to vehicle offenses, stolen cars, etc. I picked up a "Boring" call as you'd say because nobody else was available, and went across town to deal with it. Was at IMEX. By the time I was done, 45 minutes had passed. Taking into account getting witness statements, canvasing the area, preliminary police investigations, gathering evidence. And that was just me. For one scene, so you see, in those 45 minutes, I would've already missed another 4-5 emergency calls. Cause I'm already working this one. See what I'm getting at?

 

The server does not pause itself, your scene was one among many that happen around the clock. Sometimes it just be that way.

If you find the above to be unacceptable? Sign up & become part of the solution, like the 30 new recruits that graduated today.

 

Hope this helped create some new perspective on the matter 🙂

 

Credits to @Miharu for the statistics

Edited September 3, 2023 by Kenshi

[Wiphyz]

58 minutes ago, PeopleKind said:

Why does this happen & what can be done to prevent it? Police shouldnt be ignoring basic calls. This isn't a cops n robbers server, you cant just ignore the "boring" calls like this.

Incoming, "i ShOuLd bE aBlE tO rP wHaT i WaNt, nOt bE fOrCeD tO gO oN caLLs I dOnT eNjOy" comments.

 

It's an age-old debate. People are here to enjoy themselves and have fun. A lot of cops don't see those "boring" calls as fun, so they ignore them. It's not a hard concept. It is however hard to address. There are two very opposite sides of this coin. One side who RP's the PD position and all of its duties (positives and negatives) and the other side who are only out to "have fun", where they pick and choose what calls they go to. It doesn't seem PD management or server management are intent on forcing either side to do one or the other.

Edited September 3, 2023 by Wiphyz

[Barbary]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we have way more 911 calls that we do LEO characters on patrol. When you have a call volume that high, you're forced to triage what calls you respond too. As much as I vastly prefer going to a simple robbery call or a traffic collision (I'm not being sarcastic, I fucking despise shootouts) when you're getting emergency calls once every 15 minutes, plus the calls for help that come internally whenever someone picks a fight with an LEO, plus also having to maintain a patrol presence so you don't leave sections of the map like total ghost-towns, it turns into a tidal wave of work.

 

We've had this conversation when it came to dead bodies.

We've had this conversation when it comes to the high amount of robberies.

 

There's far more crime on this server than the current LEO population can handle.

My hot take? We need a third LEO patrol faction. Bring in SAHP at this point, at least then we won't have two departments that're spread thinner than peanut butter from the bottom of the jar.

Edited September 3, 2023 by Barbary

[Koko]

1 minute ago, Barbary said:

My hot take? We need a third LEO patrol faction. Bring in SAHP at this point, at least then we won't have two departments that're spread thinner than peanut butter from the bottom of the jar.

 

I don't really think there's enough people out there to make up a third faction. I mean, SAPR is there, God bless, but we have a stable population to pull from, and at the end of the day what matters is mostly the people who remain in a faction long enough to make scenes (particularly non-emergency ones) enjoyable and effective. Boots and probies are fantastic for internal RP, but it takes a while for them to be fully operational, or often to even be able to grasp a scene that isn't described in a flow chart in their training manuals.

 

Our population is just tapped and the internal mobility is low. People who do Gang RP have been doing it for years and want to continue doing it (eventually a few of those may try a cop alt) and people who do Cop RP have been doing it for years and have no intention of stopping. There's very little wiggle room there to bring more people in without a boost to the overall population.

[Barbary]

1 minute ago, Koko said:

 

I don't really think there's enough people out there to make up a third faction. I mean, SAPR is there, God bless, but we have a stable population to pull from, and at the end of the day what matters is mostly the people who remain in a faction long enough to make scenes (particularly non-emergency ones) enjoyable and effective. Boots and probies are fantastic for internal RP, but it takes a while for them to be fully operational, or often to even be able to grasp a scene that isn't described in a flow chart in their training manuals.

 

Our population is just tapped and the internal mobility is low. People who do Gang RP have been doing it for years and want to continue doing it (eventually a few of those may try a cop alt) and people who do Cop RP have been doing it for years and have no intention of stopping. There's very little wiggle room there to bring more people in without a boost to the overall population.

 

You're not wrong, but it's the best bad option I've got. You're not gonna get a faster response time with the current LEO population, so you either have to up the LEO population or decrease the amount of calls. One's more likely than the other.

[knppel]

24 minutes ago, Kenshi said:

On average, during peak. The numbers of the LSPD range from 20-35-40ish.

Over the past two years we had a significant population raise on the server, while for my best knowledge, police numbers (average active duty) did not exponentially grow.

 

If we look back further, say 2015 samp times, where it was not unusual the PD and SD had over 100 people on duty at prime together at times (for 600 server slots), we even see a decline in ratio of cops and criminals.- I do not have the latest statistics for on duty robbers, but I'd estimate due to the number of emergency calls and what I see ingame that these concepts are not much less played than 8 years ago in samp, even if our design here now offers much more options too in the civil sector.

 

15 minutes ago, Barbary said:

There's far more crime on this server than the current LEO population can handle.

This really. However I for my part am not sure if yet another LEO-faction on top of the various ones we have in place is a good solution.

Sure, such will create a hype when it's new, but hypes tend to be short lived.

And trust me when I say it: Police (and Sheriff) is still a rock solid concept in 2023.

 

7 minutes ago, Barbary said:

up the LEO population or decrease the amount of calls. One's more likely than the other.

I personally would suggest a mix of both raising the entry hurden for criminal activity while lowering the one for LEOs but that is something neither side will like to hear.

 

However at the current state it's just so that LEOs are restricted both by server regulations and internal ones on top (speaking purely ooc now, not to take in account ic restrictions yet), whereas for criminal activity- specially the one that causes constant work, such as street violence, robberies and so forth- the entry level is low, I can immediately get into it with my new char or crew.

And yes yes, factions also regulate criminal activity of their members but: I am not demanded to be factionized to do crime in general.

In obvious contrast to law enforcement.

 

It's only the more sophisticated crime methods that demand people to say, set up factions, apply for schemes and so on. Which cause less work typically ic (and if, then investigative often so much more entertaining than the tagless corpse in the middle of the intersection).

Edited September 3, 2023 by knppel