The Police Department & You

[arrdef]

I was simply laying out some difficulties in applying even simple report-writing things into a faction in a systematic way. I haven't disputed the desirability of such a system, and I also haven't seen LSPD leadership dispute that in this thread. I was simply pointing out that in my experience on LSRP, the majority of players (including you, at the time!) were vehemently opposed to any kind of report-writing; and that it's very probable the same population exists on GTAW. This is something that LSPD leadership most likely is contending with right now within their faction.

 

On an important note, not everyone has the same notion of what is or is not extensive paperwork, and what takes you 5 minutes to type out may take 30 minutes for a first-time newbie. Your criteria is also very vague because there's a myriad of documentation that could be used as proof in one way or another, including documents reporting things that have very little to do with the case (circumstancial stuff).

On a last note, I'm pretty sure nobody here suggested that policing should be "just about back to back shootings"; so you don't have to invent people saying that nonsense.

Edited April 6, 2020 by arrdef

[eTaylor]

3 hours ago, arrdef said:

I was simply laying out some difficulties in applying even simple report-writing things into a faction in a systematic way. I haven't disputed the desirability of such a system, and I also haven't seen LSPD leadership dispute that in this thread. I was simply pointing out that in my experience on LSRP, the majority of players (including you, at the time!) were vehemently opposed to any kind of report-writing; and that it's very probable the same population exists on GTAW. This is something that LSPD leadership most likely is contending with right now within their faction.

 

Simply explaining the who, what, when, where, and why using facts isn't a very difficult standard at all. Nor is it hard to file it systematically. In fact, a lot of the police reports include a narrative instruction that includes the W's - yet this isn't followed. That alone would be a significant improvement. The other issue I have with your stance is your inconsistency by providing a false equivalence. LSRP is not GTAW. Paperwork on LSRP was pointless, it didn't serve a purpose. It wasn't used for anything other than promotion points and activity checks. No report ever, beyond investigative tracks, were utilized. Even then that only remained internally with several exceptions. Furthermore, reports had no standard. They were a quota. A cop didn't need anything on LSRP either, there was absolutely 0 accountability. Whatever the cop wrote down was solid irrefutable evidence, regardless of scrutiny. GTAW is not like that at all. 

 

I'll list how it works here using a modified proceeding sheet that is more relevant to this conversation. When a person is arrested the District Attorney's Office will be notified of the initial plea of a defendant pleading Not Guilty, and the District Attorney's Office uses this time to prepare for the official trial phase. Around this time a Plea Deal may be offered to the defendant by the District Attorney's Office. This is usually where most defendants plead guilty to modified charges or change in time and financial restitution. However, if this doesn't happen the proceedings move into the Discovery & Attendance Phase. An official Criminal Arraignment shall be filed, and assigned a magistrate for the duration of the case. And all participants from the prosecution and defense will be counted to be present. All appropriate evidence from both parties will be submitted during this period into the official court record. You can review the full explanation here. 

 

Quote

All appropriate evidence from both parties will be submitted during this period into the official court record.

Is evidence management and reporting not a core principle of policing? Because the only other alternative you're suggestion is retention of the current progressive deterioration, where those who put effort into reports become a niche and those who don't become a norm. When do you draw a line? When the District Attorney's Office literally needs to dismiss and drop cases because of shoddy reporting? 

 

3 hours ago, arrdef said:

On an important note, not everyone has the same notion of what is or is not extensive paperwork, and what takes you 5 minutes to type out may take 30 minutes for a first-time newbie. Your criteria is also very vague because there's a myriad of documentation that could be used as proof in one way or another, including documents reporting things that have very little to do with the case (circumstancial stuff).

 

This is, in my opinion, very charged. Essentially you're saying officers of the LSPD are either not capable of writing small reports, they're unwilling and as a result are neglecting the entire half of the legal system because it takes too long? I don't agree with any of that. Report writing is easy, and the absolute minimum we ask is something a six year old could do. It's not that members of the LSPD aren't willing, or are incapable (be it through language barriers or otherwise) it's simply that they likely don't see the internal importance of it, or because it's been told to them once and are left unaccountable internally. Also, my criteria is no vague at all. I'm talking about a statement of facts, which are primarily considered arrest reports. The only instances where other documentation may be included is when the detective bureau is involved, when an officer has filed an incident report or when an arrest warrant has been filed. To add to that, some officers may opt to add in their own investigations and screenshots. These are extras, the core is the arrest report. A report that is very important to the legal system. 

3 hours ago, arrdef said:

On a last note, I'm pretty sure nobody here suggested that policing should be "just about back to back shootings"; so you don't have to invent people saying that nonsense.

Then what are you saying? Because as it stands right now, the absolute far majority of cases brought before the court by the LSPD would never hold up in trial, and are only squeezed through into convictions because of plea deals. Half of that are dunked because of extremes. Cases where paperwork or evidence has been so severely mishandled that the entire grounds for the arrest and/or charges are so questionable it would damage the institute's integrity to even move forward with them. 

[arrdef]

I wasn't meaning to say anything more than I wrote. I've never roleplayed being law enforcement on this server and I never intend to, I simply wanted to share my two cents.
I appreciate the clarification on how law enforcement differs from LS-RP (re: accountability),  and on the criteria for what incident should be reported. The part about better accountability is great news to hear.

 

With that, I'll bow out. I certainly didn't intend to stir things up.

Edited April 8, 2020 by arrdef

[Mick]

 

 

0

 Advanced issue found

▲

 

 

4 hours ago, eTaylor said:

 

I agree with you that a lot of report writing is not up to par. I think that can put down to people not necessarily realising that what they write is evidence to a crime that can be used at court (and scrutinized) and not just a justification for putting someone in the game into game jail. I think you have a valid concern here and I too have sometimes dropped the ball in my reports pertaining to evidence because its a game. And that's coming from someone who actually did it for a living as well lol. I think this is something that PD could take as constructive criticism and work better on personally. Just my personal opinion. 

[Trupiano]

 

I'd like to see more demonstrations from PD. I think it would give the community a great chance to see PD in action as well as give PD a chance to use some of their favorite tools they might not otherwise get to use very often. It would be a great chance for PD to pull out all the stops without messing with criminal RPer's Roleplay.

[alina2137]

Hello, @Big_Smokes.

This message is directed mostly at you as you are the leader of the faction, but this is something everyone in the faction should read too.

I wanna start off with saying that this is in no way bashing on the LSPD faction, because I am tired of constantly seeing people bash on this faction instead of offering any good and reasonable ideas for the faction to improve. I think that if we all take a different approach, we're gonna come to an understanding and eliminate any OOC hate and toxicity.

Without further ado, my "complaint" is how the chases look most of the time on the server. When an officer gets into a high speed pursuit, all the available units immediately jump into it too because they want a piece of the cake. While I can understand that everyone wants a piece of the cake, I think that everything would work out better for the players and the faction if you guys made a special unit for high speed pursuits and nerfed the normal police cruisers a bit. Considering real police cruisers are rugged, reliable cars that have been in service for - in some cases - more than 10 years, I think the normal cruisers should just be everyday work vehicles for the PD and a high speed pursuit unit consisting of modified or even modded vehicles should be created to chase down mallrats in their Elegys and what not.

Keep in mind that this is only a game and we're aiming to portray everything as realistically as possible. If all of the available units get into a chase, then who's gonna respond to 911 calls? There have been situations where players have been waiting for ages for the police to come, because some idiot took every single cop car in the state on a 30 minute pursuit outside of the city. If you guys established an actual pursuit unit that's focused on strictly chasing down mallrats in Elegys and so on, it would allow for the normal police cars to keep doing their everyday job unless they're called in to help with the pursuit.

My next point: the modified cruisers make you low key not wanna take the L and keep going instead of calling off the pursuit when it gets too dangerous and catching the criminals later. That's something to consider. Once again - I am not bashing on the faction, but just how we all subcontiously metagame sometimes, I'm certain that cops subcontiously don't want to let go and take the L sometimes because they know they're sitting in overpowered cruisers and they can do whatever they want. My idea is to force normal cruisers to interact with people more and respond to 911 calls and do casual patrols more, instead of jumping into chases all the time.

Also, I wanna add one more thing: the lack of police work that I sometimes see.

Example:

When a (dead) body is found on the street, the coroner unit or the medics come in and take it away for further action. The police never take any statements or even ask questions, they simply get back in their vehicles and proceed to do whatever. I had this happen to me multiple times when reporting crimes or being a witness - the cops wouldn't ask a single question, they'd just move on like nothing happened.
I think this should be somehow resolved with new rules, but that is just my feedback and it's up to you.

Stay safe, have a wonderful day and remember to wash your hands and all that.

[Zach..]

 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, hentai! said:

 

Hey there,

 

We do have specific units made for what you described exactly: High speeds. These units are only available to select traffic members, or if there's a lack of those said people, they can be assigned to regular units for that specific pursuit, and then put back. Additionally, supervisors actively "close off" pursuits when we have enough units, as we don't want what you're describing to happen.

 

As for the body issue, if there's a body alone on the streets with no one around, there's not much we can do. If there's someone around, the person should be taking statements. If not, feel free to message someone in command.

[SULLI]

13 hours ago, hentai! said:

When a (dead) body is found on the street, the coroner unit or the medics come in and take it away for further action. The police never take any statements or even ask questions, they simply get back in their vehicles and proceed to do whatever. I had this happen to me multiple times when reporting crimes or being a witness - the cops wouldn't ask a single question, they'd just move on like nothing happened.
I think this should be somehow resolved with new rules, but that is just my feedback and it's up to you.

When it comes to dead bodies we tend to pick and choose which ones we really look into. A lot of the time we get bodies that are people who died from bugs and accepted death instantly, jumped or fell from buildings and accepted death instantly, got run over and accepted death instantly, crashed their BMX and accepted death instantly, got DM'd and accepted death instantly.. We don't actually have a way to see how the deceased became deceased on scene. We only know this when it's taken to the morgue and we check the information there. General rule of thumb is, if we find a body and there are say casings around, lots of witnesses or it's a CK body THEN we tend to spend time investigating it. 

 

We probably get called to 30 odd bodies found a day. We just don't have the resources available to be able to investigate, thoroughly, every single one. It's not possible. So we pick which ones are worth our time. As Fusco stated, if there ARE people around any of the bodies we do approach to get any details.

 

Hopefully in the near future we'll get a command to see how these bodies came to their demise. This would really help us out!

[shiroq]

8 hours ago, SULLI said:

We probably get called to 30 odd bodies found a day. We just don't have the resources available to be able to investigate, thoroughly, every single one. It's not possible. So we pick which ones are worth our time. As Fusco stated, if there ARE people around any of the bodies we do approach to get any details.

30 odd bodies found a day, yet somehow we have 8 officers drag racing and getting suspended for it. We have officers constantly pulling people over for simple tints and all kinds of other minor things wasting their time. If there is lack of resources to deal with on going things, why are certain resources not being diverted to where it matters?

[joaoivis]

Not sure if this was a regular speeding mallrat or a terrorist attack. Counted more than 9 cruisers before taking this pic chasing someone. This put the lifes of the people passing by in danger too since you have at least 10 cars speeding around town. Just my opinion.

Edited April 14, 2020 by joaoivis
typo