Lone Star Security Services Here We Come, This is a scary, scary article. Options

[X-Kalibur]

I've actually been wanting to design a really satirical/subversive storygame/RPG in the vein of Vincent Baker's Kill Puppies For Satan, where basically you are these tooled up paramilitary cops with an arsenal of milspec gear and awesome body armor and you get sent on these hilarious asymmetrical/one-sided missions to take down targets "with extreme prejudice": targets like a small dog, or an unarmed minority child. It should probably be set in Miami.

(Full disclosure: I am an American.)



Cops pretty much just shoot dogs actually, with guns, at the slightest provocation, according to a lot of really tragic articles I've read lately.



There's a lot of other articles I"ve read lately about the police shooting people's dogs for like no reason. It's really horrible.

True fax: I am an animal lover big time, didn't used to be, but my girlfriend changed me. But the one exception is police dogs, actually, because I anthropomorphize them too: I think of them as cops, not cute doggies.

AHEM: Re: Shadowrun.

Does anyone here know about the practice of SWATTING people? Basically it's a vicious "prank", something that pissed-off hackers do where they make a call to 911 originate from your house, and report that there is a terrifying/violent crime in progress with armed assailants. Often, this has exactly the desired effect, and the police show up to your house with excessive force, and there's a very real chance of you getting killed over a "misunderstanding" like the ones described in this article.

Upon hearing of this practice, I immediately wondered if this tactic would be effective in Shadowrun.

I would think a decent enough Decker could "Star" someone. It would be fairly similar in nature.

[Aberrant]

The payment and budget issues really depend on how the corp contract is. If they charge everything to the Municipality, they may spend more. But then they will also be more likely to lose their contract to a corp willing to do the policing for a lower rate.

Really, for any MegaCorp, the bottom line is always (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

[Mäx]

Except they can just charge that shit as line-items to the municipality that hired them (hello city of Seattle); and inflate it as much as they want. I.e. $10,000 toilet seats, $90 aspirin, and so on.

Even if your assumption that they get to charge stuff like that to the city instead of it being a flat rate contract, if they charge too much they lose the contract.
Either way, wasting money is bad.

[White Buffalo]

All of that is ballanced by meeting certain metrics, i.e. quotas. Lone Star has to get X number of traffic ticets sue but they also hoave to get Y number of felonies and mistermeners. a swat raid can net their needed 34 licancing violations. Also remeber taht these raids pay for themselves if done right. Each violation can range drom a 50 to 1000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) fine. mutiply it out and these raids will turn a profit. They are corps after all.

[FuelDrop]

Well, gridguide would auto-ping any speeding or parking violations within its limits. What other minor charges could be rigorously but easily enforced as revenue raising?

[Temperance]

At the risk of straying off the rails, I particularly like the part in the first story where Det. Baucum encouraged Culosi to bet more money so that he (Baucum) could charge him (Culosi) with a greater crime; and the part in the second story where the only drugs, and indeed the only evidence of any sort of crime, found in Calvo's house was the package of weed delivered by the detectives themselves. Someone please explain to me how either one of them isn't entrapment.

IANAL! But, this is my understanding of the situations. And further disclaimer: Not siding with the Lone Star side of this, just calling it as I see it.

From Wikipedia:
"In criminal law, entrapment is conduct by a law enforcement agent inducing a person to commit an offense that the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit.[1] In many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible defense against criminal liability."

Citation 1: Sloane (1990) 49 A Crim R 270. See also agent provocateur

In Culosi's case, he had a history of making bets, such as it was. If an undercover cop convinces him to make a bet, it isn't out of ordinary. Thus, no entrapment.

In Calvo's case, the family wasn't convinced to commit a crime. Can't claim entrapment if the Mayor's wife wasn't convinced to commit a crime. The police, on the other hand, could probably get in trouble for planting evidence. (I say probably because they obviously didn't. And it was a known drug trafficking issue, as related later in the article. So in theory, the recipients would never have anything to do with it.) I can see the argument that possession of the drugs is the crime of which they were "convinced" since she accepted the package, but I am not sure how that would hold up in court if it were an unsolicited package and the receiver had no idea what was in it. I mean, it'd be like someone receiving a pipe bomb in the mail and being charged with possession of illegal explosives. It's ridiculous on the face of it. Not only that, but if they had been arrested and sent to court, it'd be an easy defense to say, "I didn't know what was in the package, but had I known, I'd have called 911 to report it." With a clean record and no other supporting evidence, it would go away. But I digress.


Now, in SR: In the first case, I could see Lone Star retrieving the victims' weapon(s) from his house and planting it(them) with the defense of "he was going to shoot us." And of course the victim had a weapon, this is SR where even the grannies are probably armed. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) If it was a family member of a PC or if they were hired by the victim's family member, the run could be for evidence that Lone Star actually messed up and faked the "he was coming right at me". Maybe the victim had a security camera and LS didn't erase the video.

In the second case, I could see a similar scenario, but the Deputy Mayor set it all up. It was supposed to be spun that the Mayor was running a drug ring by sending packages filled with drugs to random people and having them intercepted by designated couriers that he was blackmailing into doing his dirty work. The family would be arrested, the correct judges bought off, and the Mayor convicted. End result: Deputy Mayor becomes Mayor. But since this is Shadowrun, Lone Star got a bit trigger happy and shot the place up. "Obviously", the Mayor decided to "resist arrest".

The run:
Wishing to discredit the Deputy Mayor, and possibly advance their own political career (or avenge his family), Mr Johnson hires the runners to retrieve the evidence.

• OR that's what the runners are told, but in reality Mr. Johnson is a KE exec that set up the assassination of the Mayor to discredit Lone Star and have the Deputy Mayor take the fall.
• OR it was all a tragic accident, but Mr. Johnson (of unknown providence) wants the evidence retrieved so it can be doctored into incriminating evidence.
• OR the evidence is already doctored and Mr. Johnson wants it to fall into the "right hands" without dirtying his own.
• OR the drug ring existed and the Deputy Mayor was part of it. The Mayor was offed either because he knew too much or was going to be the patsy. Mr. Johnson wants this confirmed/denied.
• OR the drug ring existed, the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor was a part of it. Lone Star had incontrovertible evidence regarding the Mayor. LS wasn't aware of the Deputy Mayor's involvement. The Deputy Mayor had his LS stooges kill off the Mayor so the Deputy Mayor could remain "innocent" while LS had plausible deniability. Mr. Johnson's motive in retrieving the evidence is unclear.

Yeah, sometimes you don't need to make up stuff out of whole cloth. There's too many real life problems to build upon and exaggerate.

-Temperance