The Police Department & You

[Paranoid Cobra]

6 hours ago, Large Hazard said:

This is interesting to me. Is that actually a problem on this server? I attempted to roleplay in police factions twice on LS-RP and both times I ended up being turned off the whole thing by a complete lack of regular calls. My experience was basically cops and robbers with detailed emotes. It didn't feel like an authentic police experience at all.

 

So it's curious to hear that people are apparently turned off those calls on GTA World.

I personally would love to handle the 'weird' calls as this is what makes you explore the community more.. That old lady that's lost her grandson and wants PD to find him, but is really just having a fit of dementia? That's a great RP scenario that can develop itself very far!

 

+1 would handle regular calls if I were a cop.

[DomThomson]

And again, who said we aren't handling normal calls? The issue that is at hand is resources, while you might think 25-30 PD per 500 players is enough, it really isn't. Because while we may have a maximum amount of around three calls at a time, they are mostly a priority situation meaning they use a lot of resources. So, if you have a shooting, pursuit and then a trespassing, of course it's going to be hard to delegate units to the non-priority call because everyone is going to be tied up with the emergency calls. While I love responding to calls which will not result in a shooting but will be a pure roleplay interaction, I'm a decent amount of the time "forced" to handle calls of service with a higher priority such as shootings, stabbings, dead body found, pursuit, robbery, etc. and unable to handle other non-emergency calls of service. When you call nine one one about a person acting suspicious and you see a police car speeding past you with their lights and sirens on, it doesn't mean that they are ignoring your call, but because they have a priority call that they have to handle first. It's just realistic if you think about it, in metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, etc. the police response to non-emergency and non-priority calls is going to be an hour or more, in some areas you are even forced to go to the police station to report something which doesn't take priority. Yes, we do have people who don't want to handle these types of calls and after all, it's a game and if they don't want to handle them then you can't really force them to. But to answer it fully, we have supervisors who handle the assigning of units and their management to calls of service depending on the priority and severity, but unfortunately from time to time we run low on manpower to handle two priorities and an non-emergency call. 

[Bauer]

One of the things I love about this faction is the normal calls. I love going down and taking reports because someone had their car scratched by two bicyclists doing tricks. 😄

[Exploits]

5 minutes ago, Bauer said:

One of the things I love about this faction is the normal calls. I love going down and taking reports because someone had their car scratched by two bicyclists doing tricks. 😄

It's really the only thing I miss. There's so much potential variety in police role-play. I'm always disappointed on the amount of focus that goes into pursuits and shootouts and all the 'high adrenaline' events by certain players. I suppose it's a phase, though ... I also chased that high until it became unbearably routine to me.

[arandomgamer]

18 minutes ago, Exploits said:

I'm always disappointed on the amount of focus that goes into pursuits and shootouts and all the 'high adrenaline' events by certain players

How is it surprising? LSPD RP involves a lot of paperwork. Like a lot more than should be acceptable for a hobby/RP server.

So if someone writes a mountain of text while alt tabbed it might as well be about something interesting.

I don't think anyone logs into GTAW after a 8 hour shift at work to go to their second job.

Edited October 30, 2020 by arandomgamer

[Exploits]

6 minutes ago, arandomgamer said:

I don't think anyone logs into GTAW after a 8 hour shift at work to go to their second job.

Oh boy would you be surprised. I sure was. And some of them prefer it that way, strangely, or even want more of it.

 

We already touched on unnecessary paperwork here before, or even what is necessary. I know my biggest criticism is when the paperwork starts to overtake actual time in-game role-playing or even discourages role-play because involving yourself in a scene would require paperwork after the fact. Most of it just records stats of little value, and ostensibly none of them really capture whether the role-play was adequate.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Exploits

[arandomgamer]

3 minutes ago, Exploits said:

Oh boy would you be surprised. I sure was. And some of them prefer it that way, strangely, or even want more of it.

 

We already touched on unnecessary paperwork here before, or even what is necessary. I know my biggest criticism is when the paperwork starts to overtake actual time in-game role-playing or even discourages role-play because involving yourself in a scene would require paperwork after the fact. Most of it just records stats of little value, and ostensibly none of them really capture whether the role-play was adequate.

I think maybe 10% of Incident Reports actually go anywhere. There's a lot that needs to be trimmed.

Do you really need a full blown paragraph narrative of a parking/speeding ticket? A screenshot/gif should suffice.

There's just a lot of unnecessary work that someone who comes home to RP for a bit shouldn't be expected to do.

Edited October 30, 2020 by arandomgamer

[Ronnie two poles]

On 10/25/2020 at 9:07 PM, Ronnie two poles said:

Hello, a current new member of the faction speaking.  To be honest, it's lackluster, frustrating - and just outright boring. So I thought I'd give some transparency to the community about how I think the faction could be improved. Before I go into detail about everything, I know there will be people that will ask me:

 

Ronnie, why did you not bring this up to so and so, or go private on the LSPD forums and try to bring awareness or change or some sort of constructive criticism that could be discussed among leaders to take the best appropriate action deemed necessary to fix your regard? 

It's not that easy! People tend to say this and this will change and "we'll work on it, thanks for the feedback blah blah blah" but it never does anything. I had a situation a year ago I brought up to FM and was practically ghosted, I can't speak on FM now, but 1 year ago it didn't help. I want to provide insight to the community as someone who's new to the faction and not bias in any regard. 

 

But Ronnie, what kind of insight do you posses that makes you entitled to such a strong opinion? Ronnie, you're only a Police Officer I, don't you think you're in too soon to make a judgment? I know this server is not LSRP, nor does it try to portray itself as such but I'm not some random who is upset and flustered over major issues, I've held administrative levels on LSRP and helped with FM overall some years ago. I'm not clueless to the process of legal RP, OOC administrative back ends of factions or whatever else. I know it's not easy to run something like faction management, but I feel like something needs to be addressed. 

 

Anyways, after an entire year of dealing with LSPD's recruitment (which finally got a new change of direction recently and looks a lot better!) I made it into the faction somehow. I've been in for two weeks, tomorrow - and I'm disappointed. Not only am I just de-motivated to go in game to get denied an FTP that's necessary for my promotion - this faction is just too overwhelming and crosses the boundary of what a video game is versus realism and standards of emulation/simulation of a real life department. I do think being in the faction would be maybe okay after a POI gets promoted, you get 56 days total to do everything I'm going to list here in a second, but let me tell you why even with 56 days, something like this would make someone who wants an overall good introduction to the faction, completely demotivated not even two weeks after joining.

 

Within 56 days, you're going to go on a ride-along with Police Officer IIIs if you find them in your timezone, and during your scheme, you must complete a checklist of 100+ boxes of silly things, that could be covered in the RP'd police academy. Instead of getting your bearings for about 3 real-life weeks in the faction and getting promoted, you go on hourly long ride alongs which are RP'd like it's the marine corps + evaluation patrols to judge if you're deemed capable for the next scheme. During these patrols you pray to God himself the person who takes you is OOC decent enough to RP covering some of these hundred + tick-marks and knock them out for you. Also, on top of all of that - you must also go in-game at another time and take two additional hourly long courses, you must separately sign up for (which also could be covered in the police academy) and it's just excruciating and not fun. (Better pray both of those classes are in your timezone, or someone is generous enough to offer a private course.) I personally think these two needed classes for promotion could be covered with a simple manual for both and a "R&U."

 

 

Another thing I noticed, during peak times the majority of POI's stand around AFK in the departments, because they can't find willing FTOs or they have to beg someone higher command to assign/force them to a FTP, which could potentially deem for a poor patrol because your guided partner was forced to take you. That is if you are denied for the typical reasons such as, "I'm busy, logging off, it's late etc." Seems pretty unrealistic that departments are flooded with cadets doing nothing at all, and instead could be on LINCOLN (patrol alone) - but even the requirements to get to the phase of being a POI and LINCOLN perms are still very overwhelming and require a lot of filler work in one week.

 

Nobody, who potentially goes to school/work/has real-life, friends, family, etc would ever want to turn a video game into basically a part-time job. It's not fun, it's not because it wants to be realistic, honestly, nobody really seems to know why there's just so much to learn. In the said checklist, there are extensive things to go over such as the arresting process which is already fairly confusing as it is. 

 

But Ronnie, it's only 56 days and you can get it done faster. POII is great and the faction is dandy and fine after the POI scheme. I don't entirely disagree with that, but it kind of takes away from the fact that it doesn't really feel like you earn anything whenever an influential member of the faction, promotes his friends to higher, higher ranks and bluntly put, pisses off, a handful of members who feel it's not fair whom could have worked as hard, if not even harder for those ranks. But hey, what do I know. I'm only a POI who's been here for 2 weeks. Click here for source.

 

But I thought I'd give the community some transparency since we tend to just throw that word around so loosely in our faction. My perspective is described as someone who's new, and just disappointed. Where is the fun? 

 

Ronnie, this all sounds like something you should have brought up to HC in PD. 

 

This is very important to me, but I also think it's important for me to show people interested in joining the faction in the future too. I'm not trying to steer anyone away, but I do think reform of the entire division/introduction, POI scheme is needed. It's not fun, it's not real life, it's only a video game. This scheme is the introduction of the faction that will stick with new members their entire term while RPing with the LSPD. You're immediate overwhelmed with "homework" for a lot of useless, filler material that is not needed on a video game.  

 

In conclusion, nobody wants to change their lifestyle around a video game even for a month just to do something that could be substituted/included elsewhere. A lot of the POI scheme, manual etc are filler. The situations that stem out on a day to day typically conclude about the same. It's really not that much of a learning curve to be fluent in this faction, it's just unnecessary work made up for whatever reason, for no reason. This is a recent update from the beginning of this year. It used to not always be this extensive and uncalled for to get from PI to PII. Where is the fun? 

 

Update on this, some things are changed but it feels like a portion of the scheme was updated and the things I kind of mentioned were delayed until later on in the scheme. You still have to take the courses, which still makes zero sense. You still have to fill out the entire checklist to be promoted, so nothing was really changed unfortunately. Kind of disappointing, but who knows maybe it can still change. 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

 

 

 

14 minutes ago, arandomgamer said:

How is it surprising? LSPD RP involves a lot of paperwork. Like a lot more than should be acceptable for a hobby/RP server.

So if someone writes a mountain of text while alt tabbed it might as well be about something interesting.

I don't think anyone logs into GTAW after a 8 hour shift at work to go to their second job.

 

Yeah, every single thing you practically do is logged it feels like. So it's discouraging to do anything that's out of the norm because you're going to be bombarded with tons of paperwork. 90 percent of the paperwork is just "RP" it seems it just sits in a section on the forums, taking up room for what? Idk, I mean there is some paperwork we do that's necessary for like investigations, incident reports etc - but the rest just feels like, my favorite word - filler.

 

 
 

 

Edited October 30, 2020 by Ronnie two poles

[arandomgamer]

5 minutes ago, Ronnie two poles said:

it seems it just sits in a section on the forums, taking up room for what?

Quite frankly I think people should be asked when arrested/ticketed if they will contest it OOC, and if they don;t, the report should be kept very short and sweet. If they don't contest the report all the paperwork you write just sits there uselessly. ( and that's like 99% of reports because people almost never contest them ) It's just extra work done for no real good reason and it burns people out.

 

You don't need any more information than what they were driving, their plates and their fine.

Edited October 30, 2020 by arandomgamer

[eTaylor]

5 minutes ago, arandomgamer said:

Quite frankly I think people should be asked when arrested/ticketed if they will contest it OOC, and if they don;t, the report should be kept very short and sweet. If they don't contest the report all the paperwork you write just sits there uselessly. ( and that's like 99% of reports because people almost never contest them ) It's just extra work done for no real good reason and it burns people out.

 

You don't need any more information than what they were driving, their plates and their fine.

This would also significantly help improve reporting quality. I rarely contest my charges and yet officers are forced to waste time and effort into my paperwork, time and effort that is much better spent actually writing a proper report with proper interest. Bad reporting has a negative effect on court cases and procedures. Sure, you can argue that all reports should be high quality but it’s not practical, and it’s easy to burn your officers out. I’m sure if PD took a week to go through reports and inquire about the disparity in quality they’d come to the same conclusion.