Taking another look at LoneStar, So, you think you got away... Options

[Lady Door]

I was reading about this on CNN and it got me thinking. According to the article the raid was planned as a message to other gang members about what happens when police officers get killed. (I could be wrong but that's the gist of the article that I got). My question is this: would this ever happen in your campaign setting? How retaliatory is Lonestar (or whatever security firm/actual police force you use) in your game? What other forces do you bring to bear on players who get a little too forgetful of those on the other side of the law? Any examples would be greatly appreciated as I'm looking for something to subtly (or not so subtly) nudge a few characters back into watching their backs a little bit more.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, ya'll.

[Kagetenshi]

The thing to do here is to show them that if they mess with you, they are going to pay. Explosives under squad vehicles, snipers near the precinct building, gunmen following cops home and wiping the entire family. You need to show them that this sort of behavior won't be tolerated, or they'll just be encouraged to do it again.

~J

[toturi]

That raid is really stupid if it was meant to be retaliatory. I mean the officers that were killed in 1988 and 2003. The last killing was 2 years ago. Given the fluid nature of some of the gangs in SR, and considering that most of the worst gangs are based in the Barrens, I doubt LS will retaliate with no less than the whole city's complement of FRTs and SWAT almost immediately.

[FrostyNSO]

Hehe, in one of my games, Lonestar was getting hurt in a big gang war that had spread through payallup. With the media breathing down their necks, and having lost quite a few officers in the violence, they sent in practically a brigade and threw the smack down. They even traced some of the weapons being used to the crime mall and levelled it.

My PC's practically shit themselves when they learned they couldn't go to the crime mall over the next 5 sessions.

edit: Honestly, I love when law enforcment does this. I hate that mickey-mouse gangbanger shit.

[Kagetenshi]

I doubt they'll even enter the Barrens. They might shell and/or bomb the place (shelling is safer, though you still run afoul of the Red Hot Nukes lobbing shells right back), but it will take quite a bit to get them to reenter completely abandoned turf.

~J

[FrostyNSO]

New Seattle says they'll go in if you really peeve them, but they'll go in force. I figured a few dead cops and the media breathing down their necks about a huge gang war could get 'em into action.

[fistandantilus4....]

I would love t osee my players face when they see a dozen City masters, followd by SWAT vans rolling down past their doss, and unloading a couple of blocks away!

[FrostyNSO]

[Kagetenshi]

But they're in the neighborhood. That makes them meat.

Neighborhoods don't become Z-zones by themselves, you know. You have to work to make one, and work every day to keep it.

~J

[FrostyNSO]

Good point. :smokin:

[ShadowDragon8685]

I guess it depends on the Corp to Cop ratio of Lone Star.

It's not profitable to start a war in an abandoned district to get vengeance for a few dead cops. It is, however, what cops would do.

So if the Star is more cop than corp, yes. If not... Then no. Most they might do is scream overhead with a few strike fighters and blow the unholy mother of lead out of a few suspected gang hideouts and call it even.


Seriously. Trying to take down a Shadowrun gang, which seems to me to be the match of most paramilitary groups today, if not better....


Well, short of eradicating the Barrens by shelling or bombing, their only option is to go in. And that would be nothing short of a land war, reminiscant of the battles in Stalingrad and Berlin. And pissing off that many Shadowrunners, not to mention the gangs and organized crime, would definately not be healthy for Lone Star.


As Kagentoshi said, they'd start finding snipers outside precint buildings, entire cops' families wiped out, bombs in squad cars. Depending on just how deep the pockets of the people they peeve off, you'll start finding exploding precint buildings, and anti-aircraft weapons waiting near all their landing pads.


Simply put, it's not cost effective. They don't need or want to add Seattle to the list of cities totally devestated by a land war within it. It would be bad for bisuness.

[Grinder]

Some LS officers would likely start their own little war after one of their partners/friends/co-workers got geeked or one of their not-so-legal sources of income was broken down (the Star doesn't pay too good, after all).
Most cops are neither black nor white, they're gray. And sometimes they take the one step and go on the criminal side to fullfill their goals and motivations.

[Critias]

I'd amend that with "it's not normally cost effective." There are times when the loss of face (which isn't just a pride thing, it's a stock thing, a market thing, a commercial thing, a loss-of-contract thing) that would come from several deads cops (as a for instance) could be enough for them to go in. I don't think they'd rush a Z Zone every time something went down, or even every time they tracked a cop killer there... but one in five? One time in ten?

If they get enough fingers pointing at a certain gang/group that's responsible, and especially if those fingers are pointing publically (so that other cops, the dead cops' families, the stockholders, the media, the public, all know that LS knows and is doing nothing)...? Then I can see the poop hittin' the fan.

And I see Lone Star going in like Rangers and D-Boys in Blackhawk Down (almost exactly like that, in fact). Heavily equipped beat cops and either SWAT or FRT teams securing a violent perimeter around a target block or whatever, and then either SWAT or FRT nailing the target building itself (from several directions, after appropriate astral recon, etc, etc, etc). SWAT goes in if they're out to arrest the targets, FRT if they're just out for a body count and a structure fire, and whichever of the two "elite" groups isn't hitting the building itself is spread out to help enforce the perimeter-team.

I mean, they can do that sort of crap if they want to, and if they're provoked seriously enough. Do they do it often? Do they do it lightly? Do they do it with no concern for the attention it draws? No. No, of course not.

But every now and then, I bet they get a kick out of kicking back, and reminding the street scum who has the bigger budget in a very quick, overwhelmingly decisive, in-and-out raid.

With appropriate (and appropriately edited) media coverage.

[lollerskates]

[Edward]

The difficulty with a strike of that type is that your going to leave somebody alive, and offended. Evon if you just flatten the entire aria somebody was out that day,
Cops have to be visible (I know there is under cover work but as an organisation they must be seen), criminals have a lot of practise at hiding every aspect of there operation.

If the cops got the crims riled into a war it would be a guriler war in suburbia, cops would risk being attacked even in A zones, calls for burglary follow up would be traps for the cops. The measures necessary to get the number of cops dying down to a number that leaves cops in the city at the end of the month would stop all criminal investigation, seeing this a secondary crime wave would follow. The war would stop when the national guard was called in to put 2 men on every street corner and roving patrols of 10-30 men and loan star lost its contract. In 3 months things would get back to normal, hopefully.

Obviously the gangs don’t want this any more than the cops, its not good for business and many gang members would die so it would take a truly grave insult to spark this kind of reaction, but there likely to take a mass invasion of the barons in much the same way as a small country would. (you will note the similarity between my scenario and some of the brushfire wars of the last few decades)

Edward

[ShadowDragon8685]

So noted. This is a Mogadishu scenario waiting to happen. And it can only escalate from Mogadishu to Stalingrad.


This is the kind of thing best left undone. Lone Star will lose a lot less face by letting someone who killed ten cops go free than they will by turning Seattle into an all-out warzone.

[Jrayjoker]

Both scenarios (all out strike, and just get the one responsible) are perfectly legitimate responses, depending on you play style.

Just like raising children and training puppies, though, you have to be absolutely consistent when stopping bad behavior. Otherwise the fact that you got away with it once is enough reward to keep doing the bad behavior. I mean, just look at shadowrunners.

[Kagetenshi]

[Sicarius]

Even if it is a corps, its a para-military organization. I think you would certainly see a reaction, whether entirely sanctioned or not, because they are going to foster a spirit of team spirit, support for fellow officers, etc. Cause otherwise you can't perform the services.

While they may have the artillery, I think the mentality of a street gang would be against taking the war to the cops. Even today, plenty of gangs outgun the police, with Aks, Uzis, even RPGs. (or access to them.) But you do not routinely, see major stand offs, or anything approximating a "Stalingrad" or "Mogadishu". Gangs are about turf, but they are also about funds. So while a gang might get into a shoot out to defend its people from arrest/getting geeked during an "arrest" attempt, I don't see the whole barrens rising up against Lone Star. After all, if the Gang next door gets wiped out, well, hell, that's more territory for my gang.

Now if Lone Star was doing more than just a puntative raid or series of arrests, and actually trying to reverse a Z zone (restore permanent order) you might see something more like the kind of street warfare people are taking about, since that would effect EVERY ganger in the sprawl.

[Kagetenshi]

Any case of a cop going into a Z-zone is a threat to that Z-zone.

~J

[Cynic project]

The way i see lonestart is this, the enforce teh law, when and where they are paid to do so. This doesn't mean the are bad guys, it jsut means they are just doing there jobs, nothing mor nothing less.

Now here is a strange idea, what if they want big gangs? I mean, really the bigger the gang is the more reasonable they are going to be. Look at how the cutters were,yes they were a gang, yes they did bad things. They also had enough mojo that the number of open gang wars went down. what I am trying to get at is the big dog threory. If you leave a big dog alone they are most likely going to leave you alone. They got nothing to prove. Now small dogs, those things will try to get you, because they have something to prove.

[Qillin]

yeah Frosty really stunned us good the gang war. we were like ok it would be a little dangorous to go to that part up town but it's that way most of the time anyway and i live in that part of town. then lonestar started blocking off that part of the city to try and contain the war. we were like ok just cut off 2 cities that we can't go to anymore, then we had a mission where we needed to get some new guns and what not and were like "i'm heading down to the crime mall" then he said so how are you getting there? and the guy say by cab ofcourse and he said the cap driver isn't crazy enough to go to that part of town even if he could get past the road blocks. then it kind of set in that damn this thing is really starting to mess with your characters and without a crime mall what the F&^* are we going to do. then like the next run the mayor or someone thought that LS wasn't doing that great of a job so she called in military back up, and LS didn't like them taking over so the military and LS kind of got in a pissing match and tried to stop the gang war. Thats when the crime mall was no longer, they leveled it. this whole thing started happening about 5 or so runs into the campaign and lasted like 7 runs. it really showed us what LS could do and not to mess with them. and this was all just story line and didn't really have much to do with the pc characters and what they had don't in there run's it wasn't like the gm was telling us to stop doing something it was just to make everything just a little harder to do. contacts, houses, day jobs were just a few of the things we lost from the gang war during those runs

[mmu1]

[ShadowDragon8685]

The way I see it, the Barrens are like Mogadishu and Fallugah. If you wanted to tame them, you'd be looking at a land war. And not with just insurgents. With every single resident who's home you're invading and leveling. It would be more like Mogadishu, except that the criminals are more heavily armed than the warlords. So you'd be in a real land war.

[Jrayjoker]

Nah, you'd be in for a long term infestation/insurgency problem. And maybe find a couple hives...