Oh I believe you, I heard other Americans tell about dog units being called, just because permission was denied, or how police officers sometimes took denial of search as constituting probable cause. I didn't mention it partially because I don't know how common it is, and partially because however common or uncommon it is in RL, it certainly will be common in SR, because Shadowrun basically sucks (as a world, not as a setting).

Remember, Lone Star are NOT, say again, NOT Police Officers. They are Peace Officers. There is a difference.

Their job is to keep the Peace, not uphold Law and Order. That means they won't bother asking permission to search your car unless you flash you "I'm an important person and you're hoop is mine!" SIN at them. They just will. Because it's in the interests of keeping the Peace. To hell with "Citizen's Rights".

And $Diety help you if you're guilty of the crime of "Driving While Meta". "Excuse me, um, Sir (i think)... Is this your car?" is the best you can hope for.

Where are you getting that? They are contracted police officers.

IIRC, it was in 2XS.

I disagree entirely with the idea that people no longer deal in cash. It just doesn't make sense from a setting point of view. As has been pointed out, all transfers would be traceable, making them very bad for under the table deals.

Look at this way. The book tells us that in normal life people pay for pretty much everything by wireless transfer. Well, yeah. They're not criminals, and they want convenience over untracability. They also tend to deal with big corporate chain stores and the like. When was the last time anyone here used cash rather than just pulling out a credit or debit card? Now imagine if stores didn't have a minimum limit on card spends, and in your regular life you almost never encountered a store that didn't take card. Now imagine you just had to wave your card in the direction of the machine. That's 2070.

And yet, people still pay bribes in cash, because it makes sense. So Shadowrunners, more than any ordinary prole, will carry a lot of cash with them, because they deal with criminals, and criminals deal in cash.

I do believe while on UCAS turf they have to follow UCAS law. (It gets a little fuzzier once you're at their station which technically has externality).

A LS officer can just walk up to your car, pronounce you guilty, and pop a cap in your head Judge Dredd style.

But they don't particularily respect the law either, they respect keeping the peace.

I consider their policy one more of making people play by their rules. Shoot up some corp that didn't pay for on site LS security? They aren't too worried. The populace romaticise shadowrunners, bitches when they get rammed during a car chase, and the corps like that runners exist so they aren't bitching either.

But start boosting cars in a higher zone? Now that's going to end up in crime statistics and will start making the Star look bad. So on and so forth.



Oh and a more relevant thing. Sometimes it isn't clear how a situation should go down. But that's what the ettiquit skill is for. The player says what they'd like to do, and rolls it up as per the skill description. If in your world a threat works, they know they can use that, if it doesn't you can suggest what might.

A knowledge skill might also be usable this way.

Someone correct if they can prove I'm wrong here, but as I understand it the legal definition of a search includes any form of unauthorised prying. That means chem sniffers. The moment you have refused to be searched, it doesn't matter if they fire up the chem-sniffer and find 40 kilos of finest columbian powder, 10kg of C12, and a stack of loaded AK's in your trunk, because they will have just invalidated all of that evidence.

The bigger problem here is if they decide to push the issue anyway, because once they find out that you're SINless, your rights go out the window, and so does that the fact that they brought you in on bad procedure. That's a hefty risk to take however, when they could lose their job over a screw up.

Well, according to RL law, a sniff by a dog was ruled as not constituting a search by the U.S. Supreme Court. Apply as you see fit in-game.

Come to think of it, anybody see a market for Lone Star agents with cybernoses?

In the US, use of drug dogs is not "unauthorised prying." If a dog sniffs around your car and signals to it's handler that there is somethign of interest within, the police have "probable cause" to search, no matter how much you cry foul. It will hold up in court. A chemsniffer would be jsut as valid. But, in reality, that's only if hte cops really want to abide by the rules. Typically it goes down like this:

"Mr Vladski, you have a headlight out." This is called reasonable suspicion. They could have jsut as easily claimed you crossed the center line, were driving suspiciously slow, too fast, or looked at them the wrong way. It gives them the right to pull you over.
"I'm sorry officer, I didn't realize that. I'll be sure to take care of it first thing in the morning."
"Mr. Vladski, your eyes appear a bit red. Are you under the influence of anything?" This is more reasonable suspicion that facilitates wanting to search your vehicle. Doesn't matter if it's 2am and they are red because you wear contacts and have been up for 20 hours.
"No, officer."
"Would you please step out of the vehicle."
"Yes, sir." Complies
Officer pokes head into vehicle and shines light around while his partner stands to the rear and covers your every move. "Do you have any illegal drugs or weapons in the vehicle?"
"No, officer."
"Would you care if I search the vehicle?" He is already rummaging around, opening hatches and cubbies and feeling under the seats.
"No, I would prefer you didn't."
"You don't want me to search? Are you afraid I will find something?" Pulls sealed opaque leather bag from under passenger seat.
"No sir. I do not want you searching my vehicle."
"How about this bag, Mr. Vladski?" As he unzips it.
"No, there will be no search."
"Hmmm, what is in this clear plastic baggie, Mr. Vladski? It appears to be marijuana"
"I have no idea, officer."
"Mr. Vladski, you are under arrest for possession of marijuana. Officer Roberts, please do a field test on this green leafy matter while I read him his rights."

Their case will stand up in court. The two officers will claim that you complied with the search. That is what their "independent" reports will both say. The judge will take their word for it no matter how much you protest or deny. You are not given a jury trial because it's not a felony charge. It's soley a judge's discretion at that point.

Vlad

Vlad's pretty much summed it up in a nutshell.

It's that way in Canada, as well. And other places too, I bet.

Isn't the example essentially invalidated by dashboard cameras and mics, though? I would like to think it would be a little more difficult to have those "disappeared".

Not really. Very easy to have those items "Be down for maintence" at the time of the bust.

Just the mic. The video feed isn't good enough to lipread, so you can't tell the guy is saying "No" or "Yes".

Head shake, maybe, but the cops could argue that the guy was just shaking because he was on drugs.

So what would happen if you told the officers that they may not search your car, and after they do so anyway, there's actually absolutely nothing incriminating inside? Would they just go away then, or would they, like, Rodney King you?

Second question: what if they search your car, but you tell them they're not allowed to do so, and there's absolutely nothing incriminating inside, so you decide to sue them afterwards? Wouldn't the fact you told them not to search be recorded on their patrol car camera?

Well, if the cop is legit, he'd stop the search there most likely, or come up with some legit reason. There's enough of them that are easy enough to come up with. Search the car, apologise, and that's it. Try to sue him, and the Blue Wall will come up...

If the cop is not legit (And, frankly, if he's searching your car despite your very legal request not to, the chances are slim), then he'll just have a nice little something up his sleve to drop under your passenger seat. There you go, instant bust. Oh? No fingerprints on it? Must have worn gloves when putting it in, because the cop certianly is.

That's precisely right. And the detention, search and arrest are not going to be invalidated because of faulty euipment. The cops do not HAVE to be running htose items. They are there, in fact, for THEIR protection, not the suspects.

Vlad

Q1: No, they would most likely not Rodney King you. *L* If they didn't find anything, they would jsut thank you for your cooperation and let you move along. If they have it out for you for some reason, then they might find something anyway. Probably try to hand it to you to get fingerprints on it, and if you refused to handle it, it still wouldn't matter. Absence of prints does not mean "didn't possess." Under most state laws, anything found in a car is considered to immediately be the possession of the driver/owner unless it is otherwise claimed by someone else or obviously on another's person.


Q2: Suing the police is a VERY BAD IDEA. Especially in a smaller city. Odds are, you won't win. IF you do win, see above. Another couple cops WILL find somethign on your person in a short period of time.

Vlad

Well, smaller cities and/or towns are in general pretty scary. Because they have a sense of community and outsiders-versus-insiders, and possibly local cultural norms/expectations, you really have to watch out. I suppose in a rural enough place the locals could just decide to kill you and hide your body and that would be the end of the story, period. I feel safest in big cities, because at least should the cops, say, Rodney King you, there's at least the possibility of some fallout.

The set of peace officers is a superset of police officers. It is the set of all persons who are commissioned by the government to perform tasks related to the administration or enforcement of the law. Included in the set of peace officers are a number of subsets, including police officers, justices of the peace, sheriffs, deputies, parole officers, and court clerks. In Canada it also includes aircraft pilots.


Different sorts of peace officers have different powers. A court clerk can't arrest you and doesn't usually carry a gun but he can file official court paperwork.




It is quite simple. A person does not have a right to privacy in regards to the air outside of their possessions. If the smell is plainly in plain sniff in a publicly accessible area then the search is not unlawful. However, having the dog get into the car would be unless there was probable cause.


At any rate, the safest option is to not pull over at but but instead to press the button that fires anti-vehicle rockets from your rear turret.

So, a Corporation hired to do "Police Work" would, indeed, be Peace Officers. Thus don't have the oversight that Police Officers would.

Like Mercenaries hired for Military actions. They'd have guidelines, but that's about it.

It includes Aircraft Pilots? Really? Weird.

One note in SR4 the presence of cameras/imaging devices etc is far more wide spread than today.

From Arsenal each vehicle is equipped with 2 cameras stock. Also technically each vehicle is "wired" into Grid Guide. etc.

So each vehicle has on board diagnostics, and one part of said diagnostic system could detect the operation status of all lights.

So if a LEO/LS is going to pull your vehicle out of Grind Guide, if the LEO/LS states he is pulling the vehicle over due to tail light out or crossing the center line, illegal lane change etc, the Grid Guide can verify such details etc. The on board diagnostics will detect/report any non operational basic safety items ie lights to Grid Guide.

Also if the pulled over vehicle is equipped with a microphone sensor, there will be a record of any conversations between the LEO/LS. Also a record of camera footage. Also if the vehicle is equipped with interior cameras, a visual record of any LEO/LS actions in the vehicle.

Also if the character or characters have cybereyes/cyberears, recordings from those is available. In the wireless world can be off loaded in the blink of an eye to a off location for later use.

So what does this mean, a causal pull over for reasons to screw with a character will be minimized due the vast trail of visual and possible audio records to be dealt with.

Now an intentional pull over to set up the character, will/should have the needed Hacker type somewhere, to deal with the data/visual/audio evidence trail.

WMS

No, a corporation hired to do police work would employ police officers. Being agents of the state they would be required to follow the same rules of conduct that any other police officer follows.

Must be misremembering.

Sorry folks.

That clearly wasn't true of Lone Star. It's kind of hard to put them through the state required 30 weeks of training by certified trainers before getting police powers in the way they were used as strikebreakers.

Well, it appears that the role they take depends on the contract they make with the City.

In Seattle, they might BE Police Officers, whereas in other places, Peace Officers. And, in yet others, just Security Guards.

And, in some cities, all they do is run parkades.

Personally I haven't had much dealing with the police. Except that night where I got stopped 3-4 times in a couple of hours because I was carrying around a ladder in the middle of the night, which granted does look suspicious. However I'm pretty sure that the Danish police does not conduct routine searches of people's vehicles, permission or no permission.