I almost hesitate to post this, because the admins have been taking so much heat lately and sometimes topics brought up for discussion can seem like criticism. I should say here and now that I think CD is probably the best RP sims I know of at the current time, and if I never am able to help improve them further they still remain the best, so take anything I have to say in that context please.

In the game I used to play there was no physical way to seperate RPers from other players, and so those who RP'd formed a community and set up what they felt were ways to establish some fundamentals about what is good RP and what isn't. Interestingly enough, post length had nothing at all to do with it, in part because you were limited to about 80 characters per emote anyway.

There were only three major rules actually, and one of the three was that to all things there should be consequences. This was considered fundamental because early experience proved that consequenceless RP was, in a nutshell, stupid. People would do things they knew they shouldn't, to others who took their characters and RP more seriously, but then would not be willing to accept serious consequences to their own actions, sometimes not even willing to accept any at all.

I am new to the CD, and perhaps am jumping the gun in posting anything at all, but this is in part due to reading Rabid's post about children avis and noting his talk about baby barbeques and other insane stuff going on in CD by adults. While I understand and WANT the HPD to be corrupt as can be, there are limits I think that should be observed. After all, Hathian is still an American city, and Louisiana is not at all a very tolerant state when it comes to things like baby killers, murderers, gangs, etc.

I do not know how well this baby killer person(or persons) is cloaked, but if the HPD know about the killing, much less the barbequing, they should be all over this case and trying to find who did it, and finding (or making) the evidence to put that person(s) into jail and keep them there only for as long as it takes to see them sent to the state prison to await lethal injection. If the person that did this hid his tracks well and there simply are absolutely no leads to him, good. Then he should still be walking free, there are unsolved cases after all everywhere. But if there is even rumor about who did it on the streets, then the HPD should be sniffing this out and making it priority one to ensure this person is taken off the streets for good. Anything less would be consequenceless RP, and thus bad RP IMO.

This isn't even to say that the person who did this(no, I don't know who it is) is trying to do consequenceless RP, but if the police, who act as the consequences arm of the law, refuse to do anything about it, that person isn't even the one at fault for the consequenceless nature of the RP.

This isn't to say that terrible crimes can't go 'unpunished' in CD. Evidence can be destroyed, witnesses intimidated or even eliminated, bail posted and jumped, etc. The path from crime to conviction is a long and winding road that is frought with opportunity to delay or deny justice, and all of this could lead to some very interesting RP opportunities.

Yet it seems like the HPD often is more just bystanders than activists. I heard that some girl was being beaten up by a gang member on the street right in front of a police officer who did nothing except file a report after it was done. Hello? What kind of insanity is this? You beat up ANYONE in front of a police officer in the middle of a public street and you are going to get arrested, before you even get in a three punches at that. Hathian shouldn't be any different in that regard, and it shouldn't matter if the police officer is even on the take. They may drag the gang member off to jail and let them cool off for a bit then quietly tell them to do their business in a dark alley and not in front of them in broad daylight before letting them go if they're on the take, but just standing there making it painfully clear that they're absolutely neglecting to do their job? Why have a HPD at all if this is what they do? If all they are here for is to chase serial killer plots and not actually stop actual crimes in progress or go after other criminals then honestly, just make a sleuth sim for them to go off and do that on.

When I heard that the HPD was going to 'crack down' on the gang violence I was like "Yay!" When I heard it was a temporary measure and soon they'd be allowed to run roughshod over the sim again, I was disappointed. Gangs should be underground in most of their dealings and violence. And police, when present at any sort of criminal activity, gang related or not, should stop it, particularly if there are others present witnessing it. I can see perhaps if a police officer walks into an alley and finds a gang member who they're getting bribes from beating up a shop keeper, and decides to turn around and go the other way. But if it's happening outside the shopkeeper's shop in the middle of the day on a public and populated street? No, paid off or not, he should stop it and take the criminal in.

Crimes where the victim can identify the criminal should involve sweeps of likely suspects, lineups, and the victim picking someone from it, charges filed, evidence collected, etc. There is plenty of time and plenty of options to allow the criminal to get out of it later on, but these are steps that any police force should do at a minimum. Most crimes won't get reported of course, but those that are, or those that occur right in front of police officers, SHOULD be acted on.

Let me give an example. Aria was viciously attacked by Ace and Lexi about a week or two ago, for no reason whatsoever. Now, Aria didn't report it, for her own reasons, but if she had, I would expect more than just a report to be filed. After all, she saw their faces, she knew what gang they were in, and she had evidence of her assault in her injuries. So the police should round up the Aces they can find, and a few others and put up a lineup to have her pick out the people she claims is responsible. And yes, those picked, if they are not already known by the police to be innocent, should be put in jail. Now, she can't very well pick out the whole gang. So some of them are going to be free to harrass, intimidate, or even show her what a real beating is like, whatever it takes to convince her to drop the charges...likewise assault usually is a bailable offense so Ace with his lawyer could get and post bail...there are innumerable ways that Ace can still get out of it, generating a lot of RP possibility, and having the HPD look like it is at least trying to do it's job.

Let's take another example. Aria's a drug addict, and has on more than one occasion been in the presence of HPD who could have noticed her with her drug paraphinalia(SP?). They could have arrested her for possession, taken the drugs, etc away from her, and depending on what cop had her could have done a variety of things with her, accepted bribes to let her go, tried to recruit her as a snitch/informant for the same deal, etc. The former displays the HPD's corruption without making it a total mockery by just ignoring the fact that they saw her in possession of drugs and such, and the latter is a common enough technique by law enforcement, just watch "The Wire" and note Bubbles.

There are a lot of opportunities to highlight the HPD as both an active and corrupt force within Hathian without making it seem simply completely negligent, apathetic, and useless. I would love to see it more the former than the latter, because the former offers RP ptoential and allows for consequence driven rather than consequenceless RP, and the latter just stands around looking stupid.

This may have come out sounding like I am really going after HPD btw. And to some extent I am. Police officers are special sorts of characters to play. Unlike other characters who can just walk away if they see something they don't want to get involved in it, police officer characters MUST be proactive and get involved in numerous situations. So they are difficult characters to play. They have to do arrests, collect evidence, learn of suspects, bring them in for identification(or use photos for ID purposes), arrest those identified, etc. After arrest it goes to justice system which I realize isn't in place for CD and probably has to be handled off screen. But everything up to that point is the HPD's responsibility and police offers should be neck deep in it day in and day out. Anything from petty crimes to the worst imaginable ones. Like the real job, this is a lot of work for the RPer who wants to play the role, but it also can generate a lot of opportunity for RP, both for the officer and others indirectly. So I do respect those that wish to play the role. I just cringe when I see it played poorly or not played at all really.