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Investigations


Jari13X

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1 hour ago, Sacred said:

Completely agree, I've always been in favor of a state/federal level agency to investigate organized crime since local police don't really deal with that.

Our IRL counterparts being the LAPD and LASD definitely do assist in investigations into organized crime. They’d be involved in task forces composed of agencies on local, state, and federal levels. The scale of this isn’t really possible to emulate on here hence it’s handled by our fictional departments. Small local agencies like the Little Rock PD wouldn’t deal with it though, yes. 

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I'll quote something I wrote up internally some time ago about the existence of a third LEO faction:

 

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If legal faction management is insistent on the introduction of a third law enforcement faction, then I say it would be fine to oblige in the same manner other factions were forced to oblige with us, although this is a fundamentally different scenario. The problem with a third law enforcement faction at this stage of the server's growth is that unless it is attached to a script function or serves a very niche purpose (necessitating it to be a "part-time" faction composed of alternate characters) then it will fail. SAHP would fail because the highways aren't active enough and accidents are already handled by the traffic units of PD and SD. SABI would fail unless you made it part-time or subordinated some task under it related to the script, such as advanced forensic functions.

Here are the two successful LEO factions in existence and their purposes:
LSPD - necessary, municipal law enforcement. Existed since day one. 250 members
LSSD - wasn't necessary some years ago, but necessary now due to the jail and active county. Existed since 2020. 100 members

The LSSD failed once because it was basically just the LSPD but in beige, it had no function like the jail. The SAHP would meet a similar fate unless you made it exceedingly small, sub-20 members. Even then, to what purpose what all of that scripting and development be useful?

 

Ask seasoned faction leaders like Roozles and Smokey this. A faction without a designated purpose will fail, as we saw with SABI. What did SABI bring to the table that was unique outside of the LSPD and LSSD Detectives? Genuinely, nothing at the time. The rub with a faction like SABI is that you NEED a function solely dedicated to them, but one that can be done 24/7, or they should be part-time composed of PD/SD alts.

 

I also think that a faction similar to SABI should exist at some point, but more as a forum for PD and SD to have joint task forces and info sharing. SABI could facilitate that while investigating more niche aspects of roleplay, such as financial fraud or political corruption. I doubt that PD or SD would miss having to investigate if a club is serving minors alcohol.

 

What about a third LEO faction like SAHP? The answer is that there's not enough activity to justify its existence. There's already an overwhelming amount of LEO characters on this server, what function would it have that would make it fundamentally unique or different from the LSPD or LSSD right now? What about the illegal roleplayers who will complain about a new faction fucking with them? Investigating accidents would be cool, sure, but you'd need some scripting there or some very passionate roleplayers to make it a success. Plus, it has to fit into continuity. The highways aren't active enough right now to justify their existence.

 

This is from about three months ago back when there was discussions around new LEO factions.

 

I have had ideas kicking around for an SADOJ - FLE faction in line with the below write-up I had made in continuity management:

 

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The San Andreas Bureau of Investigation is the centralized hub authority responsible for the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, San Andreas Bureau of Firearms, San Andreas Bureau of Forensic Services, San Andreas Bureau of Gambling Control, and San Andreas Bureau of Medical Fraud and Elder Abuse. These agencies are all ancillary, specialized investigative details assigned to assisting the San Andreas Attorney General. Tracing their history back to the lineage of the San Andreas Rangers, these agencies conduct a wide variety of investigations, some of which include joint taskforces with federal counterparts, sexual predator tracking, electronic crimes, computer crimes, wire fraud, gaming violations, and beyond.

The critical issue with a purely investigative faction is to what degree it becomes involved in investigations under the jurisdiction of other agencies. Can it involve itself? Or does it offer help? What happens when nobody wants their help? I am absolutely for an investigative agency, but legal FM has repeatedly drilled over the past several months they have no plans or designs for a third law enforcement faction any time soon. An investigative agency needs the right amount of freedom to exist, it must be capable of operating independently, and it has to have a function which fulfills a niche nobody else is fulfilling.

 

The creation of this faction MUST be outlined from the very beginning with the specific concessions sought from current legal factions and their present and future responsibilities. PD and SD both need to know what they're sacrificing and what they no longer will have any responsibility for. They must have responsibilities that are their primary characteristics. Organized crime? Potentially later on, but to start with I'd envision it as an agency to facilitate info sharing and task forces between PD, SD, and JSA. Then you focus on setting up the niche investigations - gambling, alcohol control, loansharking, wire fraud, etc. This is the "investigator" portion of the faction. Then, when you've farmed enough investigators, you select the "special agents" who are the "hard" characters not permitted to have alts.

 

An investigative faction obviously can't be patrolling like a traditional law enforcement faction. The reality of an agency like the FBI or a state gambling control board composed of LEOs is they do a ton of office work with warrant services interspersed and field investigations. They aren't really going to be pulling people over or doing proactive traditional police work. They need to be working ties.

 

My rough idea would consist of "investigators" composed of alternative characters, focused on crimes such as gambling/white collar crime/laundering/traditional organized rackets like extortion. The other half of the faction would be full-time "special agents" with the authority to investigate organized crime, kidnappings, and more FBI-style crimes. Basically, one half of the faction is composed of part-time office worker alts who sometimes exit the office for stings/busts like alcohol control and gambling or gun trafficking, and the other half of the faction is a proactive investigative force which does the heavy lifting RICO stuff and federal-related stuff. Cybercrime, kidnappings, capital crimes, hardcore robberies, aggravated rapes, serial killers, etc. This is very unique RP they can engage in. I foresee a lot of plainclothes work and sometimes raid jackets with kevlar. I wouldn't even segment their responsibilities. If you're a special agent, ALL of these will be your responsibility. You'd treat this as the Los Santos Squad of the San Andreas Bureau of Investigation.

 

This agency should never have any OOC corruption permission equivalent. Much like the FBI is in real life, the professionalism and culture would prevent a lot of the "traditional" police corruption you'd see. You all wear suits, there's crony politics and leapfrogging, but to get that high up in a state law enforcement agency you are absolutely scouted for any sketchy ties or bad motivations.

 

4 hours ago, Copacetic said:

PD and SD gonna investigate them alone? With no assistance from the State of San Andreas? Seems a little unrealistic and ineffective. 

It's worth noting in real life while many states have massive task forces with assistance from local prosecutors and state agencies, CADOJ - FLE is pretty tiny in comparison in real life and a lot of gang investigations within municipal Los Angeles concerning "organized crime" are mainly under the umbrella of federal law enforcement task forces which include the LAPD/LASD. It's not entirely unrealistic for the LAPD or the LASD to be involved in organized crime investigations or even spearhead them. The LAPD has a museum theft detail.

 

 

5 hours ago, Brett said:

But it's not worked on, nor have any attempts been made to fix it. It may not be under your jurisdiction of the faction to control it, but you would be hard pressed to make a legitimate argument against someone else coming to do this job, because it's not like the SD as a 2nd LEO has brought more peace on the server to begin with.

The fundamental pitfall of any legal roleplayer is viewing crime as something undesirable or that it needs to be "controlled" in the context of our roleplay community. While this would be an excellent objective for a police simulator, our server is geared towards providing a fun experience for both the legal and illegal roleplayer. Realistically, yes, police officers want to prevent crime. The founder of policing, Robert Peel, outlined the goals of police as solving crime. However, the objective of the LSSD was never to bring more peace to the server, and "bringing peace" to the server should never be anyone's OOC objective outside of the part of portraying police. The objective of the LSSD is accurate police roleplay. One of the byproducts of that is more peace, but it is not and should never be the ultimate objective of a law enforcement faction to totally end all crime on the server. This is policing the server. This is a mixture of IC and OOC, fundamentally metagaming.

 

If you develop an investigative agency with this mindset, no illegal faction roleplayer will flip to become an informant, nor will any of them ever bother to cooperate with you. Interactions with illegal factions are dictated not only by IC mindsets. If they know your intentions on an OOC basis are to be an obstacle, they will stonewall you. You should not be an OOC obstacle, only an IC obstacle. If they see you as an add-on to enhance their roleplay, they will cooperate or give you leeway. Multiple criminal factions have cooperated with SD on an OOC basis to create exceedingly interesting roleplay. This has already happened numerous times with SD's investigations. We've had several notable informants.

 

An investigative agency specifically created to enforce an IC ordinance or to punish criminals will fail and end up in the faction archive.

 

5 hours ago, Brett said:

So the argument of "Well just having us brings less harm," is just about as an effective as the LSPD saying that about the LSSD when it opened when that same line of argument was used against a 2nd LEO. I'm pretty sure you would have disagreed with that too, so please don't try and then make it towards someone else. Because the argument runs much deeper then simple three agencies. 

I will clarify that I am not arguing against the existence of a third LEO faction, I am just opposed to it being poorly executed. I've been personally debating the idea of proposing the existence of a SADOJ - DLE equivalent but it would have to be entirely separate from the Courts and the District Attorney to as to avoid bias in having a judge that doubles as a special agent on his alternative character. In addition, it'd have to be rubber stamped by both PD and SD, but as of right now I don't think either party wants to see this kind of project.

 

You need to launch a faction as a project, and you need to have the right organizational goals and mindsets at the top. Without any of that, like I said, it will end up archived.

Edited by Bospy
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Private investigative agents, agencies could become an actual thing if not for the fact IFM gave weapons suppliers the wires/tracking devices.

Now, people need an IC or OOC linkup for usually quite expensive bugs if they want to RP an investigator with tools they'd have access to IRL.

 

Unless I am mistaken and this is something a roleplayer could apply for separately?

AFAIK the devices are limited and merged with the weapon supplier role rather lazily.

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2 hours ago, Bospy said:

 

Everything you have said here, I have zero disagreement with. It's spot on. My messages weren't so much directed generally, but more so at specific criticism which I was focused on addressing.  My comments of "peace," were completely only in response to the idea that somehow a third faction if one were to exist, would disrupt the peace between PD/SD. Only reason that portion came up. 

Edited by Brett
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53 minutes ago, HaveADream said:

A third LEO/investigative faction isn't happening. I suggest you direct queries and suggestions to the leaders of PD and SD respectively if you wish to push for further and more in-depth investigations. 🙂

Sad to hear considering most people here are in support or not opposed to a third LEO faction designated to investigations or an extension to JSA to include DA investigators.

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Department of Justice, San Andreas Bureau of Investigation 👀 @MickeyO

 

OT: I'd like to respond to a really valid question, that was brought up by the member of staff. I'm aware that another admin stated that the third agency of this type is not something the LFM would like to go forward w/ at this time, however, just wanted to share a tip or two if they do change their mind down the line and someone does decide to open such a faction.

 

" The critical issue with a purely investigative faction is to what degree it becomes involved in investigations under the jurisdiction of other agencies. Can it involve itself? "

 

As someone who spent the better part of the last year (co)leading such a faction on another server, the key in making it happen is having a set of things that they can do and that they simply cannot do. We agreed to dropping gangs, regular investigations (murder, robbery, stolen cars and similar) and focused only on public corruption, white collar crime and organized criminal enterprises and similar, with other LEO factions helping out when needed and absolutely neccessary, and it works pretty well. Granted, the server I'm talking about is on SAMP and has a ~100 members daily playerbase, but I'm more than sure that with more player, comes more possibilities and this wouldn't be as big of an issue as it is. Another key thing in running such factions is having them limited. You don't want to have 75 agents running around investigating every single crime under the sun, that's pretty stupid and throws the server balance out of the equation.

 

How we overcame this problem in the past few months is by doing what I said, limiting what the faction involves itself in so it doesn't become a mess. Lastly, if the LFM is actually willing to consider allowing such a faction further down the line, it's more than important that someone who knows what they're doing is assigned to run it. Factions of that type can't have your average person running them or they'll get outta hand or turn into a huge mess really soon. 

Edited by Brian
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23 hours ago, HaveADream said:

A third LEO/investigative faction isn't happening. I suggest you direct queries and suggestions to the leaders of PD and SD respectively if you wish to push for further and more in-depth investigations. 🙂

Guess we can lock this topic, it was fun conversatin' with you folks. 😄

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