I'll break the rule of dumpshock and repeat myself. Are you asking the people you do and don't think have been in combat if they have or not or are you just convincing yourself? As an example, have you ever gone to a gathering of 100 random strangers, written down who was and who wasn't and then asked them to verify your answers?

Have you ever found out with large sample of random strangers how accurate you really are?

That would be... interesting. I'd also place bets that the guys most likely to say "yes", are the guys you'd least expect, depending how wide an idea of "combat" you are using. I have never been in military or gang warfare-range of combat, but I have been on the recieving end of several "fights" involving getting my ass beat into the ground, as well as learning to fight with melee weapons in friendly, competitive combat, which has caused some blood to spill non-lethally.

I defiantly think the beat the cop walks will affect their skills, as will how experienced they are. As for active skills, as I mentioned above, the skills I think a beat cop would have at 3(professional) level are perception(cops need to be alert and able to notice concealed weapons/contraband), intimidate(to resolve situations non-violently), and leadership(to get random people to comply with orders).

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Damnit, where's Keith Richards when you need an enforcement of the rules?

All right, have I done so scientifically (Which, in a nutshell, you're asking)? No. I haven't.

Am I trying to convince myself? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't live in a lifestyle where being able to conclusively ID a plainclothes or off-duty policeman is a required skill, so the point is moot.

But the skill is there. How to recognize someone from the way they react and move? Very much exists.

So far as I know, cops get the First Responder course in training. Which, when I took it, was a 40 hour course. Which sounds to me like First Aid:1.
I'm also guessing that there is less paperwork and political BS in a private police force. Fewer paper pushers and less time filling out reports means more profit.

Or a lot more of it at drekkier pay.

I'd toss in an area knowledge for whatever city they serve in.

Haven't worked police. Have worked prison, got told the training is similar. Understand this is State of Colorado and I /know/ it varies from state to state and municipal to municipal. It'll still give some basis.

1/3 of it was paperwork. Laws, regs, and policies, and what paperwork has to be done when and what the standards are supposed to be so appropriate action can be taken. Court and hearing procedures took a bit. Weapons familiarization was very short; I'd be hesitant to give more than a 1.

Got a 1, maybe a 2 in unarmed combat: subdual. We got a surprisingly (it seemed at the time) large amount of training on social skills for defusing situations: approaches, speech (patterns, tones, pacing) and stance both as primary and as backup. Add another huge block of recognizing situations -- call it defensive con and perception training.

Most things at 1 or at most 2; not enough to have to rely on default but far from expert. The vast majority on the "boring" parts of the job; the parts you do 80 to 95% of the time (more if you're lucky).

To repeat myself, it was training for a category II law enforcement officer: correctional officer. The police I worked with in Colorado Springs said the training was pretty much the same for them except they got more street and less facility situation training.

I know quite a few cops, and I was loaned out to military police so here are my observations.

Firearms Group: Good, a cop will need knowledge of a wide variety of firewarms, primarily pistols and long arms, but in Shadowrun automatics might come up enough to make it usefull.
Unarmed Combat (grapple) cops in my experience spend a disturbing amount of time trying to physically wrestle someone to the ground in order to get the cuffs on them.
Batons - Beating the crap out of people is a good way to get compliance, you can use this for softening before the above subdue.
Influence Group - Cops spend most of their time dealing wit the public, this is a large part of making sure they can do it effectively, and as others have said this is also used to tell if someones lying to you.
First Aid - Knowing basic CPR and trauma care.
Perception - Natch
Athletics group - The physical requirement to get to be a cop are actually fairly high, and most places due require a sliding scale of upkeep to stay a cop. Bad diet, odd hours, and other factors erode this but realisticly most cops are in better shape then the population norm.
Intimidate- Most cops will have a smattering of this, but a lot of the time they lean on their situational modifiers.

Now personally i found the cyberware package given to the police in the book a joke and more symptomatic of the cyber-hate that fourth seems to have qutie a bit on. Most cops are going to be wared, likely as soon as they get through the academy and own their ware after five years on the force. This ware will include: eyes, ears, internal comlink, light bone lacing. Most municipalities will likely spring for wired reflexes one, others will use jazz and autoinjectors.. The point of this ware isn't to make the beat cop able to deal with shadowrunners it's to help him deal with the public day in and day out reducing the chances of being injured or killed and missing work. In short it's to get the best return on investment. The other stuff is to make anything he sees or hears admissible in a court of law (at least against a public defender or a perp without a hacker).

Can't find it at the moment, but the picture of the riot cops from Transmetropolitan washing the blood off their shields came to mind when you talked about the baton usage.

EDIT: Cops also get a bonus to their intimidate when dealing with the general public. They are "The Man", of course, and everyone knows they can be nailed on something... Anything.

I agree with most of this, but I doubt some of the ware would be available to even peace officers. Bone lacing, for instance, is a forbidden, and I'm willing to bet only military would spend that much on it. However, the rest I agree. Especially for the recording. Hell's, just today I was thinking that it would be stupid for officers to not share information, in a tacnet-like way, if not an actual tacnet, for the purpose of having someone able to verify accounts, and having someone able to react to the tense situation from outside.

Well the swat setup in augmentation already has bone lacing, I just felt that what they see as a swat setup should actualyl be standard issue for many officers. The other caveat is many toys that officers get are forbidden to the public, i do think a tacnet or other central data collection makes a lot of sense, I just didn't want to explicitly add it.

When running a Lone Star hack for my group, I informed them that Lone Star either had Biomonitors installed in the officers themselves, or in their uniforms. If one of them goes unconscious or dies, the link-up from the squad car to the HQ (Which was how they were back-dooring to get the paydata) disconnects. Just made sense to me. Also sets off a screamer to DocWagon.

Good news, getting the hacker into the back seat of the squad car worked great! Bad news, yeah, critically failing your "Gangs" Knowledge roll and getting the Halloweeners to be a distraction wasn't so drek-hot an idea...

Also scared the hell out of the Heavy Weapons Troll in the group with the Ruger Thunderhawk by my description of it's functioning. "SONOFACRAP! What the HELL was that?" was his question, followed by, "I want one!"

Speaking of US cops here, not german ones. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Now you have to elaborate, are there lots of fat German cops? Or are they in way better then the population norm?

German cops don't have to re-do the initial sports/ physical tests once they're accepted into service. That means that most cops don't stay in good shape after they've finished their training (which is 2-3 years long iirc).

Ah, American cops do have to re-qualify in most places (there is a lot of variation from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) but traditionally the standards get more lax as they get older so there is a certain grain of truth to the overweight detective one sees on American TV.

Tacnets should be used by any and every semi-professional team, from law enforcement, security, the fire brigade, and DocWagon to American Football teams and rally drivers.

I mostly agree, but I'm not sure average cops should have Negotiation.

Intimidate, I agree not all modern police officers would have it, but Dark Eighties Future cops should probably all have it as one of their higher skills.

Now all the above said, I've got this picture for how Lone Star and KE and all them work "these days".

The first layer is cameras (and other sensors) everywhere. There are too many to watch, actually. Their use is twofold: first, the fact they're known to be watching is a bit of a deterrent. Second, they're good for seeing what happened so appropriate actions against the right people can be taken. Well, mostly, provided the angle isn't bad or something like that. But still, they help a lot.

The next layer is good old officer presence. An officer riding around in a squad car. There are two tiers here: the good parts of town and the bad parts. The good part first. An officer in a reinforced sedan that has a drone pad which is carrying a doberman. The doberman goes everywhere the officer goes. In addition to officer command there are some automatic events that'll have the doberman signal the rigger back at base that officer attention is needed. Not necessarily a jump-in, but more than the automatics.

The doberman's sensors are always recording. It's got an over-under weapon mount, with a grenade launcher and an automatic weapon. Both have several types of ammo in their bins, and the smartgun ammo selector picks what's needed.

Speaking of ammo, the doberman's got one fairly simple deterrents against spoofing in addition to the standards. Not perfect, mind you, but workable. The standards are decent firewall and system, and both signal and node are encrypted, some commands authorized at security (from officer) and others requiring admin (from rigger). The bonus is that the weapons are unloaded. The first action to use them MUST be "load weapon". As you might guess, this is one of the auto-calls for riggers. If the dobie is loading either things are going down or it's being spoofed/hacked.

The officer... Cyber implants aren't standard, though many choose to get some. The commlink and other sensors are always recording. The comm is running face identification, maybe gait id, and lie detector software. There's a knowsoft with laws and regs loaded as well. The AR is tied into the copnet - a net that checks location, checks nearby RFIDs, and highlights everything that has a file in the records. That guy walking along with a yellow highlight? Tagged as possible suspect in a couple of cases. That lady over there? a slew of traffic tickets - paid, but they still exist. That doorway over there with the flags? Marks a crime site - actually a place where several crimes have occurred over the past month. And on, and on. Officers adjust the flag level, especially as pretty much everyone has some sort of record. Oh, don't forget: black flags around people with no record. Whether it's because their ID is falsified or they've somehow removed every RFID or they're just running everything in hidden, the absence is a warning all itself.

Some armor, a handgun with SnS and smartgun, a couple of handcuffs (one for mages), extra armor and a heavier weapon in the vehicle. It's also got a decent first aid/medical kit, a range of ammo, RFID and other tags, and so forth.

Oh, and the cage in the vehicle is heavily reinforced. It won't hold a heavily cybered troll, but it'll manage the normal street troll, drugs or no drugs.

Bad neighborhood? Fewer per area, riding small vans or trucks instead of sedans, more heavily armored, and the officers and their dogs travel in pairs.

Just my picture, of course.

I have a hard time thinking there's a single style of enforcement. When I was writing up the local area (as a distraction) I found that I has very different forms of law enforcement depending on the area.

1) Multi-company military/research town. The goal of the police isn't to enforce the law, it's to enforce the peace. There's a lot of military, ex-military, high end security, and consultants walking around with everything from forbidden ware to magic skills best ignored. It became the town where you could retire and no one would look at you funny for carrying obsolete, but incredibly deadly, cyberware. In that setting I decided the police cared about keeping things peaceful. Instead of making sure all the cogs were in the right place, their job was to make sure the machine was well greased.

2) State capitol filled with refugees and academics. Here, we have the flip side. These police are about as fun to be around as the TSA. They know what rights you have and they know how to abuse them. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PDhjNF9eUQ ). The resulting situation is just a mess.

3) Gang filled remnants of what was once a city. Here, enforcement is block by block by whomever controls the block with treaties, alliances, and an understanding that one does NOT mess with the mafia copters or ground cars because they will erase your block from the map and let the next group move in to what used to be your territory.

4) A private town/enclave. Once you're inside the wall, you're either a citizen for life or you're watched 24/7. This is a peaceful place and there isn't a lot of need for an active police presence.

In all 4 cases, the presence, abilities, and load-outs of the police are likely to be different despite these towns all being connected to varying degrees.

I don't think it should be part of a somewhat mandatory package for a guy just fresh out of the academy, as the recording/perception enhancement function of those can be done by worn equipment that is cheaper to buy, has no implantation cost and is easier to upgrade/alter/modify or recycle to a new user if for whatever reason someone quits.

Whatever other skills a cop has, he needs to be able to twirl his pistol like TJ Lazer before holstering it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I will say about the physical fitness of cops - most younger detectives I see around the local station house seem to be pretty fit. I am thinking the difficulty of making detective tends to favor the more aggressive and disciplined street cops, who also are probably more likely to keep themselves in shape.

Those street cops you see with the gut hanging over their belts? Probably are gonna stay street cops for the rest of their career.

I do see older detectives that let themselves go, too, though. I suppose after you make detective the years of endless work hours, stress, coffee and donuts, no time to exercise, etc takes it's toll.



-k

I'd say you're standard street cop in SR would have above average physical attributes(especially if we're talking Knight Errant public security), but wouldn't have 'ware as part of their standard package. I'm sure after a few years of service they can totally get a company discount on 'ware and a payment plan, but no way Ares is going to shell out to augment street cops when most of them spend more time writing parking tickets than fighting.

Now detectives are going to likely have some augmentation, and SWAT definatly will(most SWAT is ex-military).

I disagree heartily, augmenting it's officers save KE and other law enforcement company money, especially when you factor in economies of scale. Frankly i'm so sick of this ware is too expensive or inconvenient mindset, because frankly compared to the other expenses incurred to feed, house, train, and medicate a police officer up to readiness for duty a ware package is pretty trivial.