SAPR should change to SAHP. Here are some reasons why.

[Invictus]

i find it funny how current hardcore leo players are saying "nope we dont need 3rd agency" while everyone else that's not leo says "we do need more leo factions". aren't these the same people who find "WE ARE THE LAPD WE ARE LASD" memes funny? im still waiting for the day when this bullshit inter-agency fights will stop lol.

 

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On 3/22/2023 at 4:15 PM, liq said:

Don't need a third police faction with a primary function such as that. 

Join the LSSD or the LSPD if you're unhappy with Parks and the niche they serve.

 

lssd was supposed to be jail only and county but both are extremely neglected. before anyone tries to prove me otherwise I still have the original document sent to LFM. most of their activity is happening at davis station as recently ive seen the most chased roleplay is the gang enforcement unit/detectives. lspd doesn't make sense to be present in the county and they've never been there unless something really major that requires their presence as backup. and the alternative... sapr is weird to be the only one in the county.

 

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server got to a point where multiple leo factions are required, maybe even federal ones. with so many organized crime factions it's still KEK that we don't have rico cases or idk major investigations on them. i'd even go as far as saying that blaine county needs its own leo faction with its own courts and its own local gov. is it a pain in the ass? maybe. will it be immersive? we dont know till we try.

[eTaylor]

46 minutes ago, BjornV said:

Sorry what?

And looking at other comments here. Did people actually go through the entire ruling of that case or did they read 5 words and assume that the entirety of HAPA has been suspended? Because if that is what anyone believes, they should read through the ruling again.

The entirety of HAPA has been suspended, and probably still is. Until the last day I was in the faction enforcement of the HAPA act was punishable by immediate faction removal. But HAPA is a small issue compared to, and I’m going to burn bridges saying this publicly, the rotten core the faction has been festering since the start. Since the first academy the faction has been harboring a polarized member base. On one side you had those interested in the parks, on the other those who focused entirely on the law enforcement aspect. Those who came for the badge outnumbered those who came for the park. There was a total lack of direction, image and guidance from the top. It meant people were free to cultivate their own culture based on majority rule. And so an early image of the militarized park ranger quickly became standard, the “badass super trooper” donning visible double sleeve tattoos, bloused pants, combat boots, a plate carrier, ranger hat and aviators became the forward image. An image that attracted even more, reinforcing the practice. 
 

Most focus went directly to the law enforcement aspect. It attracted the most members. Facilitating park activities became the focus for PR, and made irrelevant for the common ranger. Civilian positions were not made attractive and without support PR died. Those interested in park activities were always free to do so, but those who did often faced internal ridicule and were treated like ass. People boasted about how many arrests they’ve made, and if you didn’t arrest people and confiscated guns or drugs you were considered as “not doing your job” and being a waste of space. You’d be lambasted for driving a utility pickup instead of a Scout because utility vehicles “can’t catch criminals because they can’t keep up”. You could be on Cassidy Creek clearing a cadaver a hiker called in and be blasted by supervisors if you didn’t respond to backup call #347 because another ranger decided to fuck with a local MC or stop a gunboat by himself.  Elements within the faction did everything they could not to be in the parks. 
 

From the start nobody developed the state parks, there is no focus on supporting the parks and no infrastructure beyond police roleplay. New members learn nothing but the LEO side, being handed a series of guides made by forgotten and neglected pioneers of park roleplay. I don’t wanna say it’s malicious, but the foundation already set the faction on a course to become militarized department #3. 

[waterwings]

19 minutes ago, eTaylor said:

The entirety of HAPA has been suspended, and probably still is.

Then this is something that has been enforced by SAPR leadership, not by the courts or the government. 

 

HAPA is still active. What isn't? A few subsections around fishing.
All the hunting parts are still in place- Except for the ability to levy a fee for the issuance of a hunting license. This also wasn't in the law, so can't be done. Meaning it must be a free process. Only fishing licenses could be charged for, but fishing laws can't be enforced anyhow so that doesn't matter.

 

If you want to doubt my words? Read the verdict, though I believe that I know what's in there rather well given that I'm the one who delivered it.

 

Edit: P.S. 

Not enforcing criminal law is something that generally speaking only the district attorney or attorney general as a prosecutor is able to do. While SAPR could use officer discretion to choose not to arrest for a misdemeanor offense, this can't be done as a blanket rule as it might lead to a deterioration of public safety and lead to lawsuit against SAPR.

Edited March 26, 2023 by BjornV

[PeopleKind]

2 hours ago, BjornV said:

Sorry what?

And looking at other comments here. Did people actually go through the entire ruling of that case or did they read 5 words and assume that the entirety of HAPA has been suspended? Because if that is what anyone believes, they should read through the ruling again.

 

1 hour ago, BjornV said:

Then this is something that has been enforced by SAPR leadership, not by the courts or the government. 

 

HAPA is still active. What isn't? A few subsections around fishing.
All the hunting parts are still in place- Except for the ability to levy a fee for the issuance of a hunting license. This also wasn't in the law, so can't be done. Meaning it must be a free process. Only fishing licenses could be charged for, but fishing laws can't be enforced anyhow so that doesn't matter.

 

If you want to doubt my words? Read the verdict, though I believe that I know what's in there rather well given that I'm the one who delivered it.

 

Edit: P.S. 

Not enforcing criminal law is something that generally speaking only the district attorney or attorney general as a prosecutor is able to do. While SAPR could use officer discretion to choose not to arrest for a misdemeanor offense, this can't be done as a blanket rule as it might lead to a deterioration of public safety and lead to lawsuit against SAPR.

 

 

Before I begin, I want to say I know I'm more than likely removing any chance of my return to SAPR if I ever return to GTAW & RP to begin with, probably going to receive a lifetime faction ban as well, but y'know what? I don't care. I'm sick of having to stay silent in fear of being punished for speaking out.

 

To answer your questions; Yes. I literally spent 3 weeks trying to inform them that it was ONLY the fishing section that was suspended, NOTHING else. I provided multiple forms of proof contradicting their statements of it being suspended fully, sent them the EXACT ruling of the case, and even when seeing the evidence right infront of them, we were told we were not to enforce ANY part of HAPA, or we'd face IC AND OOC punishments.

 

You're 100% correct that they read 5 words and assumed. Despite the proof being shoved in their faces that they were wrong, they still decided to act like the entirety of HAPA was suspended. How do you expect us to do our jobs as Park Rangers, when the very thing our jobs revolve around (HAPA) is not allowed to be enforced in any aspect what-so-ever? Without HAPA, we're essentially just a generic police agency.

 

It's been almost a year since HAPA was shut down & not allowed to be enforced in any aspect. Looking through my Discord, it's been like this since June of 2022, probably even longer than that. Every time we've asked if it's being done, we've been met with the classic "We're working on it, be patient". As far as I'm aware, it's STILL "shut down" and "being re-written" despite ONLY the fishing section having any flaws.

 

This is the exact reason so many of us left, we lost faith. It became clear that specific high ranking members of the faction did not truly care about the faction & simply held positions of power to have positions of power. Nothing more, nothing less. Despite countless efforts from dedicated members such as myself to show them the errors of their ways & try to help fix the issues, we were simply told "Be quiet or you'll be punished", which, as mentioned previously, happened to me. I was a Sergeant, and was forcefully OOCly removed from my position & had to go through the entire process of going from Senior Ranger all the way back through the Corporal & supervisory training process to even hope to get my supervisory position back. All because I did not stay silent about issues, instead, I spoke out about them, hoping to get them fixed. But no, god forbid you don't want to stay silent about crucial OOC issues that put the faction in a bad light.

 

Yes, OOC actions resulted in my removal from an entirely IC position, which I had zero IC punishments to even make it make sense. My character had no IC issues that led to her demotion, I was essentially forced to either make a new character or just figure it out. Ultimately, I chose to leave instead a few months later. Forced two week LOA & forced demotion all because I refused to keep silent about the OOC & LFM related issues that was affecting the faction. 

 

To be clear, the majority of SAPR & its members are great, they've made great improvements in recent months, I love them, they're like a second family to me, but OOC factors, attitudes, & power hungry motives have been ruining the enjoyment of it for far too long now. Enough is enough.

 

Ban me, faction ban me, do whatever, frankly, I don't care. I refuse to stay silent any longer.

Edited March 26, 2023 by PeopleKind

[mhrhan]

3 hours ago, Invictus said:

aren't these the same people who find "WE ARE THE LAPD WE ARE LASD" memes funny? im still waiting for the day when this bullshit inter-agency fights will stop lol.

 

It's never gonna stop.

 

3 hours ago, Invictus said:

server got to a point where multiple leo factions are required

 

But some people -for god knows why- assumes that their Davis hood will be swarmed by 1000000+ feds as soon as they decide to shoot at Davis (M) #69420. No. This is not going to be the case, it is actually going to spread the LEO RPers evenly into different factions, rather than LSPD and LSSD having a monopoly over the entirety of the map. Having more alternatives might even force LSPD and LSSD to get their roleplay standards up, there's no harm on implementing an agency solely created for the purpose of statewide law enforcement instead of asking someone else to do it. 

Edited March 26, 2023 by mhrhan

[Irrtadum]

3 hours ago, eTaylor said:

The entirety of HAPA has been suspended, and probably still is. Until the last day I was in the faction enforcement of the HAPA act was punishable by immediate faction removal. But HAPA is a small issue compared to, and I’m going to burn bridges saying this publicly, the rotten core the faction has been festering since the start. Since the first academy the faction has been harboring a polarized member base. On one side you had those interested in the parks, on the other those who focused entirely on the law enforcement aspect. Those who came for the badge outnumbered those who came for the park. There was a total lack of direction, image and guidance from the top. It meant people were free to cultivate their own culture based on majority rule. And so an early image of the militarized park ranger quickly became standard, the “badass super trooper” donning visible double sleeve tattoos, bloused pants, combat boots, a plate carrier, ranger hat and aviators became the forward image. An image that attracted even more, reinforcing the practice. 
 

Most focus went directly to the law enforcement aspect. It attracted the most members. Facilitating park activities became the focus for PR, and made irrelevant for the common ranger. Civilian positions were not made attractive and without support PR died. Those interested in park activities were always free to do so, but those who did often faced internal ridicule and were treated like ass. People boasted about how many arrests they’ve made, and if you didn’t arrest people and confiscated guns or drugs you were considered as “not doing your job” and being a waste of space. You’d be lambasted for driving a utility pickup instead of a Scout because utility vehicles “can’t catch criminals because they can’t keep up”. You could be on Cassidy Creek clearing a cadaver a hiker called in and be blasted by supervisors if you didn’t respond to backup call #347 because another ranger decided to fuck with a local MC or stop a gunboat by himself.  Elements within the faction did everything they could not to be in the parks. 
 

From the start nobody developed the state parks, there is no focus on supporting the parks and no infrastructure beyond police roleplay. New members learn nothing but the LEO side, being handed a series of guides made by forgotten and neglected pioneers of park roleplay. I don’t wanna say it’s malicious, but the foundation already set the faction on a course to become militarized department #3. 

Damn... almost like you took the two braincells I had and put them together into a coherent opinion which I fully agree with. (Been a Ranger since day 1 of Rangers being a thing.) It's always been an issue, I tried to change it but it always ends up the same, sadly.

[Keane]

The original goal of the faction was to be a small group of individuals who created roleplay around the state parks and serve as an addition to the active county RP going on at the time. This was only supposed to be at max a 20 person faction who only had law enforcement powers so the hunting act could be properly enforced in the same way that the fire marshals have law enforcement powers to conduct arson investigations. SAPR was supposed to be a casual faction where you could jump in, RP in the parks, occasionally check in on a hunter and then go do something else.

 

The difference is, there's always plenty of arson to go around but both the hunting script and county RP died so we were left with a faction that was just driving around empty parks. This resulted in people being bored and "randomly stumbling across" crime when "going from one park to another". This caused controversy at the time because you had the LSSD in the county with the Sandy Shores Station and later the Paleto Bay station as a large law enforcement faction who at the time pushed for the highest standards they could and a more casual faction that was aimed at just RPing in the parks with nowhere near as much experience and training to deal with crime. This isn't a shot at SAPR, the idea of a relaxed faction that wasn't going call to call and instead focused on creating RP was a good one. It was a niche that many wished to partake in. So you had, at the time, people in the LSSD with multiple years of LEO RP (and sometimes even IRL) experience who take the game pretty seriously clashing with players with a lot less experience and training who wanted to play casually. This is where the animosity started and why LFM at the time pushed SAPR right back into the parks. I was the head of the overall patrol and detective section of the LSSD at the time and the character I played the most on helped run the 10-15 player unit that was specifically aimed at patrolling in the county so I've got a lot of firsthand experience there.

County RP ended up dying off and at around the same time, the original SAPR leaders left and the new leaders took over. This is around the time that we saw the highway patrol jokes popping up because you'd find rangers doing nothing but running radar. The activity of the county used to come in waves but due to a variety of factors, it has never come back to anywhere near how active the county was when SAPR first launched. I used to be able to spend hours at a time visiting open businesses as a deputy and checking in on them. There was always robbery crews roaming because at times there was more county activity than the city. Active county home owners made their houses desirable targets for guns so house alarms were going off in the county often. There was several illegal factions operating actively and plenty of RP to be had as a result of that.

 

Those factions started dying off, as did the businesses in the county. Like many GTA World features, and more specifically features that launched to support a faction, there was no development support after it launched. DMEC faced this issue with the coroner script which even recently has bugs being fixed that have existed since it launched. The LSSD faced this issue with the jail too. Many features that the jail needed were only added years after the faction launched, and that was with the entire leadership team pushing for them constantly. Then we have the hunting script getting no love and as a result of that and the county dying off, we had a faction with nothing to do in the parks. Can you blame them for wanting to do more?

I'd say yes and no. The original goal of a casual faction to create RP in the parks vanished. If the entire faction focused on this rather than just delegating it to the tiny PR section, we would have a very different faction today. Instead, the faction pushed for gun and drug K9s, unmarked patrol cars and air support units for pursuits. These attracted the type of players that want action rather than the creation of RP. So rather than having a 20 person faction aimed at the creation of RP in the county, you had maybe 5 people in PR that wanted that and an expanded 30 to 40 members who wanted to rid the county of any sort of crime and used their new unmarked cars, K9s and helicopters to do just that. I'm not saying this was the direct cause of factions leaving the county, but it happened around the same time. 

So what we have here is a faction that was created with a very specific purpose and one that would have absolutely worked should the people in charge stuck with the concept AND the right support from the staff team was provided. I for one really enjoyed RPing in the county and have always tried to RP out there since I started playing here five years ago. It's a shame that RP in the county has declined to the point where such an interesting faction has to expand and completely ignore its original purpose to survive. Concepts like the Paleto Bay Sawmill are a great start in getting things going again, but the hunting script needs to be updated and SAPR needs to follow up by going back to the creation of RP, rather than the smothering of it by overpolicing every minor detail.

 

The potential is absolutely there for the faction to provide RP in the parks again like it was originally intended to do. But for that to happen there needs to be leaders that don't use any excuse possible to not enforce the one piece of the law the faction was brought into existence to support. The faction blaming the lack of activity in the parks and then, at least publicly, doing absolutely nothing to get the parks active again outside of a few people in public relations is a cycle that will continue. Push LFM and the dev team to give incentives for players to get to the parks again. Use the entirety of SAPR instead of one tenth of the faction to create RP in the parks. Then we will see some real activity in the county again instead of an agency that's going to sound great until everyone can't get to the county to RP because there's a highway patrol car every half mile. 
 

[eTaylor]

37 minutes ago, Irrtadum said:

It's always been an issue, I tried to change it but it always ends up the same, sadly.

That’s the thing that makes it so frustrating. Yes it’s a game, and it’s not that deep. But this is our hobby, and we dump a lot of our free time into it. SAPR is one of those little nerdy passion pieces where they have a trickle stream of incredibly dedicated and motivated players that come to contribute. Hit a giant wall, get burnt out and leave. These issues have been consistent, raised over and over again. On discord, on the forums, even in game in faction chat. Over teamspeak and everywhere you can imagine. And they do absolutely nothing with it. Empty promises. Even when leadership shifts. Give the troopers SAHP so the rangers can have SAPR. 

[Irrtadum]

12 minutes ago, eTaylor said:

That’s the thing that makes it so frustrating. Yes it’s a game, and it’s not that deep. But this is our hobby, and we dump a lot of our free time into it. SAPR is one of those little nerdy passion pieces where they have a trickle stream of incredibly dedicated and motivated players that come to contribute. Hit a giant wall, get burnt out and leave. These issues have been consistent, raised over and over again. On discord, on the forums, even in game in faction chat. Over teamspeak and everywhere you can imagine. And they do absolutely nothing with it. Empty promises. Even when leadership shifts. Give the troopers SAHP so the rangers can have SAPR. 

Waiting on the day when I can fulfill my dreams with like-minded people that wish to do Rangering first, policing second. Not gonna happen anytime soon, evident by the past... but one can hope!

[eTaylor]

Just now, Irrtadum said:

Waiting on the day when I can fulfill my dreams with like-minded people that wish to do Rangering first, policing second. Not gonna happen anytime soon, evident by the past... but one can hope!

Compare this thread to the thread above. We’re just going in a perpetual cycle that, like @Keane perfectly laid out, is going to keep going until someone breaks it.