The Sheriff's Department & You

[owen]

1 hour ago, SugarDavis said:

My question is directed toward the faction leadership;

 

Why is there currently more focus on the patrol side of things than the correctional side of things? It seems when the faction started there was heavy emphasis on corrections being the primary service this faction provides, and patrol being the secondary. 

 

Now I'm being told by current and former members of the SD that basically everyone is a patrol deputy and the only time the jail gets worked is when a command member forcibly places deputies into the jail. Their statements seem evident by the fact that a drive out to the county makes it seem like deputies make up the majority population for that area. 

 

So onto my question, are there any plans to roll back the number of patrol deputies and have more emphasis on the jail? 

 

The jail is still as much as a priority as the field-side of our faction. There has, however, been a shift in focus in how we are pushing our faction. There are fundamental issues (which were not expected pre-launch) about the activity, script limitations and overall atmospheric halt we have encountered within the confinement of the jail. The script will eventually be improved, and in which will bolster activity from jail factions and all inmates overall, same with more mapping.

 

I have gauged inmate role players that have spanned different factions, and the main issues (presented to myself) was:

 

• We need more script functionality (barber shops, commissary, laundry, libraries, drug stores (to smuggle, hide and store), a payphone system)
• We need more mapping additions to the jail (a barber shop, a laundromat, a chapel, a library, a better and more functional interior)
• We need active jail factions to ensure jail roleplay is consistent and interesting (it becomes very stale with regular inmates and no intricate political/racial role play).

 

This in turn has been something we (as Command and Leadership) are aware of, but it's not something we can dedicate our entire faction to if the activity and interest does not reach an acceptable standard. The jail is still of utmost importance, and it always will be — but we, as a faction (and for right now) have slightly shifted our focus over to other areas of the faction. 

 

The jail is a consistently up-hill battle, and activity will bounce from month to month — it cannot be just up to us to fix this though, it takes two to tango. 

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by owen

[Jonesy]

1 hour ago, SugarDavis said:

My question is directed toward the faction leadership;

 

Why is there currently more focus on the patrol side of things than the correctional side of things? It seems when the faction started there was heavy emphasis on corrections being the primary service this faction provides, and patrol being the secondary. 

 

Now I'm being told by current and former members of the SD that basically everyone is a patrol deputy and the only time the jail gets worked is when a command member forcibly places deputies into the jail. Their statements seem evident by the fact that a drive out to the county makes it seem like deputies make up the majority population for that area. 

 

So onto my question, are there any plans to roll back the number of patrol deputies and have more emphasis on the jail? 

I tend to answer this question every few pages and it seems like a few members have voiced their opinions already, and I'll expand upon their points. It was true that when the faction was conceptualized (by a different group of players running the show, the entirety of which have been removed and replaced by faction management and server management) the emphasis was on the jail. As the idea grew, it became obvious that a "Corrections only" faction would simply not be feasible due to the low jail population on this server so the even patrol / custody idea of the faction took shape.

 

The current style of the faction is that all deputies are "patrol deputies" and are required to staff the jail as required. The old system simply saw "custody only" deputies getting tired of staring at an empty jail and leaving in droves which left the jail empty regardless and nobody wanting to log in to staff it when it did get busy. As a result, the faction's rules state that there is a minimum manning ratio between inmates and deputies in custody. For every x number of inmates in jail, a deputy must divert from the road to go into the jail. Now obviously people do not check this or may not pay attention, which results in "command forcibly placing deputies in the jail". This is them simply enforcing the in place rules because while every member must be cognisant of the inmate:deputy ratio, command is expected to be doubly so. 

 

Now, referencing our previous post. In the first ~3 weeks of April, the jail had an average of 8-10 hours of staffing per day, referencing voluntary self-reporting which was done by approximately 60% of the faction's members. So the real likely number is more in the ball park of 12-15, a conservative estimate. At this time, the majority of our faction plays towards the tail end of peak time and in the American timezones which is why many European players do not see staffing in the jail. And when these American players log on after work, school, etc; the jail is more often than not empty.

 

And to answer your question, we do not intend on "rolling back" patrol deputies. As the faction expands and takes shape with more faction members, we hope to have full coverage of the jail when necessary, as well as more rooms, scripting, etc; many of which are being worked on tirelessly behind the scenes. 

 

Hope this answers your question!

[Jonesy]

45 minutes ago, Thimble said:

An outstanding faction, I don't think there's ever been a moment that I've doubted the judgement or any related procedures of even the lowest of rankers in the LSSD.

 

I know this was a thread for questions and/or potential criticism but I hope there's some room for a bit of good ol' fashioned flattery as well.

This faction will never say no to having its ego stroked! 

[Bospy]

I'll make it very transparent what our goals are in the present and the future. The OOC goal is listed below directly from our manual. It's one of the first things you see when you open our manual.

 

 

When we first launched, our goal was also to fill the niche of corrections roleplay - unfortunately, the realities of how jail roleplay works set in. I've made it very clear to our faction members that if we intended to launch patrol-focused first, Sandy Shores would NOT be our primary station. We would NOT have established a full infrastructure for custody operations. We would have told everyone involved it was our intention.

 

It was very much an experiment. I made that very clear from the beginning to everyone involved - this faction is always a work in progress, and at least for the first year, things will always be very much in flux, from policies, to procedures, to direction. The welcome letter people receive when they join our faction ensures they come to an understanding in this regard.

 

And as noted, on average, deputies are present in the jail at least 10 hours out of the day. This is something we track. We fully intend to push for more people of European and Oceanic timezones to apply next recruitment drive.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Bospy

[arrdef]

To the people who are vocal about their expectations of the jail, I would like, as an outsider who is familiar with prison RP, to share my own thoughts on the matter, generally speaking.

Managing and actively creating roleplay in a jail or a prison in a game server is a particularly complicated task for several reasons:

 

• Activity fluctuates in the jail, and always will; because it's an extremely niche thing to roleplay and so people often move on; sometimes it can take several weeks for others to replace those who leave. Meanwhile, deputies are still there and need something to do when the jail is empty.
• Many people may not cooperate and participate in roleplay that's offered due to an ideological opposition to the concept of correctional roleplay. This can be extremely frustrating, and this factor pretty much is unique to jail.
• Most people do not know what to do in a jail, since it's an aspect of life that is rarely portrayed in popular culture. When it is portrayed, it is very inaccurate at best. Those people need to be educated and actively guided, almost permanently, and that takes a lot of work. Work is typically not fun, so jail deputies preferring street patrol over custody duties is not surprising to me.
• In an ideal world, there would be perfect script support for everything on the server. In our world, this not the case; this is likely not due to malice by whoever is in charge of script, but probably because there are other priorities. To add to that point, requesting script and other support is not easy. It's not just, "hey give us a job script". Details need to be worked on, and examined on a frequent basis. Think the garbage job, but x5; and that's all for one small niche of the server.

 

Irregardless, deputies shouldn't be confined in the jail arbitrarily, this is not the way. They'll just resign, it will generate OOC drama within LSSD, and you'll be back to square one. I don't claim to have a solution (I don't know the specifics of jail in GTAW), but it should be a bit more subtle than that...

 

Before pointing fingers at the LSSD faction, you should definitely keep in mind external factors that they do not have any control over.
The LSSD chose to have a jail, and the people who lead LSSD are there because they want to manage it. That's axiomatic and it should not be called in question without a very good reason to do so; behaving like that is bound to just make things worse and heated. They deserve useful ideas and shouldn't be accused of "abandoning the jail".

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by arrdef

[SugarDavis]

Thank you @Bospy @Jonesy

 

And thanks for additional input @kestrelbirdman @Declan @owen @rams

 

It's unfortunate because jail/prison RP is always popular at first then fizzles out with time. I've seen it happen on every server I've been on. I think requiring players to be online for a portion of their sentence would increase jail activity. 

 

Before continuing on, I think its important to note that I've never been in PD or SD. I'm still fairly new to the server but have been listening to my friends bitch about both factions since they joined the server ~6 months ago. I think the chance to get my questions answered from the source vs second hand will clear up alot of my questions and concerns. Here's a few of my questions;

 

1) I've been told that the SD leadership has stated in the long run they'd like to be equal in size to the PD. Is this true? If yes, how is that feasible when your primary patrol (Blaine County) has half the population of the city. 

 

2) Besides making deputies dual track, has their been other considerations to give the jail guys more to do? I'm thinking something like having them pick up Court Services duties when the jail pop is low. Then you're killing 2 birds with 1 stone. Giving the jail guys more to do that isn't general patrol and making CSB an active component of the faction. 

 

3) Are there plans to have jurisdictional agreements with PD? Currently it seems the SD just floats around everywhere in the county and city. I've attached a map of the real LASD patrol areas. The colors represent different divisions but white is what falls under municipal agencies like LA, Long Beach, Burbank, etc. I think seeing something like this would be really neat. 

 

 

I also think it's necessary to mention that I'm not expressing my concerns to make you guys look bad. I've seen sheriffs factions fail on many past servers I've been on and generally it's always for the same reasons. I want this faction to succeed (because one faction having a monopoly on law enforcement RP is cancer) but I hear things that make me think you're straying down the path of other failed attempts at creating a sheriffs faction. 

 

Thanks!

 

 

[Tseard]

@SugarDavis

 

1. The LSSD has never mentioned anywhere that we are aiming to become as big in numbers as the LSPD and frankly, we won't. 

 

2. Could you elaborate on what you mean with court services duties? Deputies are able to host work details with inmates with approval from a Sergeant+. Work detail can mean many things such as picking up litter, to working with small companies under supervision. The courts on this server has mentioned that they are not interested in doing any court-related role play in-game and will instead keep it on the forum. We, however, are in charges of seizing assets for the state of San Andreas whenever there is a warrant for that. 

 

3. The LSSD has statewide authority over the entirety of the state, and so does the LSPD. Every faction can patrol and do its own operations without limitations. We do not have a primary and secondary jurisdiction (like it was on LSRP). We do, however, prioritize our patrol in the county and do also prioritize county calls. But every patrol deputy is free to patrol any area he'd like.   

 

I'm also interested in your last line in your reply.

 

''but I hear things that make me think you're straying down the path of other failed attempts at creating a sheriffs faction. ''

 

Could you elaborate on that? We're a 3/4 month old faction and are constantly working and updating on bettering our faction. I couldn't see a reason why we are already on the path on failing.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Tseard

[Declan]

The Sheriff's Department won't even think of equaling PD in size for a good few years — currently, we're taking in an average of 5-10 people per drive and it's only opened when we need fresh faces. 

 

Specific patrol agreements wouldn't work because of how small the map is in comparison to LA. The LSPD would be left with South Los Santos, West Los Santos, Vinewood and the Harbor (ocean docks or whatever it's called in GTA 5) area, it just wouldn't be feasible. 

 

I don't believe there are any specific jurisdictional agreements right now and if there are, they're pretty lax. We don't step on PD's toes and vice versa.

 

Quote

"but I hear things that make me think you're straying down the path of other failed attempts at creating a sheriffs faction. "

 

I don't know who your sources are but they're completely wrong. This faction is here to stay for the indefinite future. 

[arrdef]

The districts shown on the map are not legal forcefields keeping tan and blue guys apart, either.

 

If you are using real life maps and real life practices as an argument, you should take notice that LASD cruisers can be seen outside those districts, and LAPD / LASD are often together on scenes.

 

You should also take notice that there is a long list of states in the U.S where a sworn law enforcement officer of Anywhere County will have authority in all places of that state. This is so he can help someone from a different agency, or continue an investigation if it leads outside his area, for instance.

 

Given that violence is much more widespread on GTAW than in real life, scenes requiring the presence of multiple agencies are ubiquitous, so I question the usefulness of such agreements or partitions.

Edited April 24, 2020 by arrdef

[liq]

@SugarDavis —

 

Stipulations about whether this faction is going to be as big or as small as a similar faction aren't appropriate. We do not look at what others do. We focus on ourselves and our faction. I'll let a faction leader answer that one, but in realistic expectations, and as Bospy previously mentioned — it's a continuous work in progress. We adjust structures constantly based on what is the focus at hand while trying to build on the stable foundation the faction is on. This translates in us not having the proper infrastructure to support that many members, at least not in the foreseeable future. But nothing is off the table.

 

Deputies role-playing in the jail have a plethora of opportunities to give to inmates and to themselves, and they all range from opening different facilities in the county jail to having the ability to join dedicated groups (such as parole) to have more to do with anybody role-playing inmates. I don't mean to regurgitate what everybody else has said so far, but the truth is that the jail needs script support because it's an impediment for both inmates and deputies (i.e. inmates do not even have a payphone system, illegal FM hasn't come up with a system for how shanks are attained in the county jail, contraband is virtually obsolete because there's no commissary system to begin with, and so forth). The custody services segment of the faction is a niche within a niche. Only dedicated role-players stick around to role-play lifer characters. Those that get arrested and don't take it seriously end up by being nuisances on an OOC basis because they simply do not role-play, or AFK around the jail. The fact that the timer of IC arrests goes off when you're offline and it goes off 3x faster when you're in game is a huge impediment as well, because that means the turnover rate for arrested vs. released needs to be higher, but arresting players is not in this faction's purview at all. Court services are existent and the faction has the necessary material to handle such requests, but the way the judicial system is structured is that there's little to none to actually do in-game. The most someone has done is release people who have received their court verdict. All of the court role-play is done on the forum, thus there's zero opportunity to role-play bailiffs, court staff, or more.

 

The LSSD and the LSPD function through the basis of the Mutual Aid agreement which was enacted by both faction's leaderships at the time of the faction's creation. The rule of thumb is that there's no designation of where one may patrol and nobody should feel constricted by being in any geographical areas whatsoever. Situations function on a first responder basis, whereas who responds first inherits the responsibility of commanding that incident. Of course, this is all done with collaboration being in everybody's interest, and on a case by case basis, agreements can be made on scene. The patrol zone the Sheriff's Department focuses on is the county. It's why the only functional station is the Sandy Shores Sheriff's Station to begin with. All deputies start their patrol in the county and float around based on the overall activity of the server. This is as realistic as plausibly playable — otherwise? The Sheriff's Department would have a huge reach. It would inherently be the sole agency responsible for policing South Central by definition. And that's not what the server is made for.

 

-

 

I don't think you're being given accurate information, which is why I'm glad you're taking it to this topic. I ask you to take whatever you have "been told" and what "seems" to be with a pinch of salt. No matter whatever answer you get anywhere in the community and even on this topic, only the faction leaders and the server's FM and management are able to give you an answer on what's actually happening.

 

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by liq