A player in my group has had to abandon his Suzuki Mirage after a tail turned into a sextuple homicide in the middle of downtown Seattle (one of the tires took a hit). I felt it was over quickly enough that he deserved to have a chance of making a get away before any drones or Lone Star officers made it to the scene.

Now that the run the group was on has been completed, there is talk of breaking into the impound lot where the bike was taken to by Lone Star. I've had the great fortune of never having had to go to one of these places (yet) so I was wondering if I could pick some brains on what I should plan out.

From what I've seen from television and movies they seem to be a large asphalt parking lot blocked off by a chain-link fence and a gate, with a building for the clerical workers outside of the fenced off lot.

I was wondering if this is mostly accurate, and what kind of security features would be included. I had in mind cameras positioned around the lot and maybe a patrolling drone for security. This might be a little light on security, but I figured the biggest problem he's going to have is getting it back from the lot to his garage without being spotted by zillions of cameras throughout the city.

And yes, I've told the players this may not be the best idea ever.

Assuming it didn't got a private impound lot-a number of small cities subcontract to local towing services-basically an impound lot is basically just that. Some do have pole barns that they store higher value stuff-cars, electronics, etc... In the world of Shadowrun I'd imagine it'd be pretty close to the same thing-maybe with some automated security, and some equipment to keep people from remotely accessing their ride.

I might be imagining it, but it seems like the day of the giant municipal impound lot may have passed. What you seem most often now is that the city subcontracts with private towing companies, who tow the vehicles and then get per diem to store them. These private lots, then, end up with lower security than you'd find in a single giant lot, but that security is also less dispersed. Cameras have replaced dogs for security.

In terms of modern-day equivalents, for middle-of-the-road facilities, Hadlock's is a good small-to-average local private lot. it ain't much, but that's what "impound lots" often are in 2012.

Drones have probably replaced cameras for security at those places, with big searchlights and a SMG/AR with Gel Rounds, so as to not dent/damage the merchandise.

The thing is how much sercuirty? What are they guarding against? Most towed cars would be corpers or common citizens who are going to be indimidated by a large ork or a troll, most are not ready to deal with runners who can take on corp security systems BUT personally I'd consider the bike a right off. Think it through, the bike was used in a crime. They have no idea who did it but they got the bike. a good runner has removed all traces from it so it's a blank lead until the momment someone tries to get it back and them LS pounces. Actually that seems like a good run- you're hired to recover a particular car from impound and deliver it to X, not knowing they police are looking for someone dumb enough to move on it.

Illegally parked cars. Especially in places that have snowplows.

While the chain-link fence that many posters are suggesting would be atmospheric, I think that the impound lot of the 2070's would be more of a warehouse coated in wi-fi inhibiting paint to prevent the problem of folk remotely accessing their rides, that or a wi-fi inhibiting gizmo attached to each vehicle.

I would agree with the drone patrol/security camera scenario, probably with a spider overwatching security and monitering for illegal signals (people trying to remotely access/hack vehicles) and few redneck types to collect the vehicles for people who pay the fines to get their vehicles back (this fine thing would be for vehicles that have been towed, not those found at the scene of a homicide as per your runner's case).

I would also expect a few stealth RFID tags hidden away around/inside the vehicle, all calibrated to sound the alarm once a day at specific times, and dormant (and therefore undetectable) outside those times.

Hope the run goes well, and hope you and your players enjoy any complications that arise as a result of stealing back their ride ...

Damn, now I want to see what a 2070s Police Auction would look like...

I doubt there would be a lot of these impound lots. No one goes over the meter as you can wirelessly send the nuyen needed to pay for however much time you need. If you get close to running low, the meter sends you a txt saying to please deposit more money or it'll auto-debit your account. Also, if a vehicle does get left, the towing company will scan it to all hell looking for RFID's & who's the owner. If no ownership data can be found, then the car doesn't belong to anyone & get's absorbed by the towing company. I would say 95% of the legal vehicles on the road have some ID or way to make sure they don't get impounded & causing the owner a headache. Illegally parked vehicles can get towed, or simply have the cop/tow guy send an override message to the onboard auto-pilot to move/drive itself to the nearest impound lot.

I see the impound lot facility as a large parking lot with a garage & office building. High fence. Cameras. Drones. Most important, every vehicle inside has their wireless disabled so they can't be remote driven off the lot without paying the impound lot fees. For those vehicles without wireless, maybe they might have a "boot" attachment. Or within the impound lot, there's no wireless signal due to huge jamming & all impound lot electronic devices are hardwired/hard-lined.

Some impound lots can be totally automated and open 24 hours. Customer comes in, gives their SIN & vehicle ID/RFID #, pays whatever fine, & a drone removes whatever safeguards that keep the vehicle within the lot & the vehicle can be driven off by the owner.

Just be aware, the owner's SIN & other credentials will be checked & the vehicle is essentially now tagged with some sort of RFID. So once you get it back, you'll have to erase those tags again.

If the vehicle was found at a crime scene and was taken as evidence... write the thing off. Unless you want to try to break into the evidence lockers/area of whatever LEO has the vehicle.

One thing I imagine will be fairly prominent in impound lots, as well as many other SR parking areas in dense urban situations is automated car lifts like this.

As for wifi inhibition, wouldn't area jammers be enough?

I think this sounds terribly too high tech. Most of this stuff is great for corp high level sec but we're talking minimum level stuff that is generally NOT designed to stop hardneed criminals, I mean shadowrunners. The occassional punk might pull out a gun and intimidation would stop most of that. I do like the idea of deactivating the wireless controls

Actually the guy at the impound might be a good contact. "Bob i need a car for the next 3 hours, what can you lend me?"

"Depends Snow Fox, will I get it back this time?"

I think security could be huge in 2072. While its true the average guy isn't going to come steal a car, but your average shadowrunner, especially if he is a rigger could walk in, set the cars to go to his garage and steal the whole lot. Why go on a run against a corporation for 5,000 nuyen each when you can steal ten cars and sell them for 2,000 nuyen each? There are also a lot of gangs that could constantly go to impound lots and steal the bikes. I'd say security should be good enough to keep the average gang members away, and if you are storing cars from crimes, all the better to have security.

Of course you could always have an impound lot adjacent to a lonestar building and provide security that way. Or maybe the owner subcontracts security to the local gang who keeps an eye on the place during the night. So I think there could be a reasonable security presence, and since your player wants to do this I would say make it a challege.

Also, be aware that too less security and the people that I play with would take one additional car per person. (No security or relaxed security, and they really would start doing shadowruns against the car impound lot once a week and go into the car business)

The way you describe it, stealing a car from the impound lot would still be more difficult than robbing an unsecured standard parking lot altogether.
I'd imagine thick, high fences, a few guards and/or drones (maybe even dogs) and one of these barriers that will kill your tires if it's not lowered before. Throw in a decent jammer or two and you've got a cheap solution for most standard guys who just parked in the wrong place.
A vehicle involved in a mayor homicide is a whole different matter, though. Probability is high that somebody will want to make it disappear. Maybe a segregated part of the underground parking lot right under the Lone Star headquarters

And the idea of a contact is so great I will try to fabricate something in the game I'm in... Heck, always access to some (probably tuned) cars nobody will miss anytime soon I'll need a decent hacker, some face qualities, some cash... already planning.

To stop cars from being driven out, just have wheel spikes on a manual lever blocking the door. Between that and a reinforced gate and disabling the wireless options you just needa couple of big guys and maybe a few mean dogs roaming inside the chain link.

Remember these are for propfit places that want the bare minimum in outlay, not a high tech utlra violet sec hq. It's less Base 325 than is it Abe and Ziggy in the shed.

"Rex got us some new playtoys." "Good! The last one's wore out badly." "Oh, and cousin Bubba just sent us another letter from prison!"

I would think surveillance cameras would be cheap in 207X. A bunch of cameras on top of a cheap chain fence. As stated before, a lot filled with cars (each with their wireless disabled), an attendant/mechanic, & maybe a sec guard or panic button for the attendant/mechanic.

An impound lot mechanic/attendant would make a great contact. Breaking into a lot should be slightly harder than a public parking lot.

And obviously anything connected an ongoing investigation, or a known violent felon can be stored elsewhere. Someplace less accessible, or with more security.

This seemed to be appropriate.



-k

CSI garage waiting to be investigated?Very appropriate! Also shows how a face can work sometimes.

I'll pass on the Volvo however.

The city I live in has a small, unmarked building that houses several Special Weapons and Tactics vehicles, as well as what I assume is unmarked vehicles. I've never been in there-it's not my department and I can't think of reasonable excuse to get invited in...but yeah CSI labs, undercover task forces, the list goes on.

Actually, IIRC, impounded vehicles after the court case is how Vice gets their vehicles, as the vehicles in question were "Accomplices" to the crime or something...

Alas, the player has decided to write off the bike. Too bad too, because I had a good chunk of the Lone Star Securities Pyramid sub-basements mapped out (including an AR enhanced diorama of the 1999 WTO riots in the law enforcement museum).

It all kind of winded down when the rest of the players all requested payment from the bike owner equivalent to a run against Lone Star. He decided it would be much cheaper and safer to just buy it back if and when it goes up for auction.

Some chummers they are not going to help a fellow out to get his favorite bike back.

Just as an aside: given that all cars in ShadowRun are electric, wouldn't it be prudent to drain the batteries to help guard against possible theft? If the impound needs to move a car, they can juice it up first.

(I was thinking along the lines of modern cars: pop the battery out. If a car needs to be moved, drop a battery in, move it, pop it back out. When someone reclaims their car, the impound employee gets the battery that got taken out, drops it in, drives the car up to the gate, and hands it over to the owner)

Just strap in an inhibitor to keep the battery from running. Or just unplug a wire, & the car won't run.

Well, they're Shadowrunners, not Go-Gangers. That'd be much different.

A 1%er who had his bike "Stolen" by the po-po? The rest of the gang wouldn't stand for that!Unless it's Multifuel, Distributor Cap. Easiest thing to remove that kills a car. Popping the cable off of it will give you a few moments, removing it completely? Gotta find a replacement. Works for any automobile that still uses petrol or petrochem or whatever they're calling it. The electric motor of hybrids will still work, but I doubt that diagnostics will allow the car to move without the other engine working.

That's why I think there's a mechanic or some smart drone at the lot who performs some sort of mechanical/electrical operation that makes the vehicle unable to be driven off remotely or completely. Disable the wifi (aka Signal), remove the distributor cap, or dismantles the ignition wires. Who knows how many cars in 207X still use some sort of ignition system?

So the basic questions:
1)Open air or Warehouse?
I guess it depends on what this acutally costs to maintain and to build.
If it is dirt cheap to build a 3 level parking garage the amount of space saved will probably be enough reason to do it. (And it takes much less time to get the cars in and out, around half)
If you have that, it is probably not that big of a problem to cover the walls in wifi inhibiting paint.
2) How is security?
Really depends on what kind of cars you have stored there. And if there is an awakend version of the marten.(This will make a hall of some sort verly likly and the entrance will be covered with a ward...)
But I guess drones will be enough and a spider to monitor if everything is alright. (Not just security but also paperwork ...)
Maybe one or two guys for customers relations and if drones do not work. So to fix a car or just push it outside.

One interesting point made was, that they are great targets to steal a lot of cars in a short time. This I would translate in a hefty security response, if stealing is spotted. Just to prevent the fact, that people start robbing it blind every freaking week.

Here's the thing with crime: you have to weigh the value of the possible loss against the expense of protecting it. Now, an impound lot is a funny place: there's lots of expensive stuff there, but most lots aren't liable for what gets stolen, and insurance covers it if they are, so they don't have a huge reason to invest heavily in security. So a system like this, that would cost money on discharges and recharges [which aren't 100 percent efficient] and which would delay processing vehicles [charging presumably taking a non-zero length of time in Shadowrun], isn't really ideal for an impound lot. Something like a fence - which will stop casual criminals, but doesn't have a large or ongoing cost - is heavily favored, while guards, animals [which are liabilities], and electronics are typically eschewed.

There's not a lot you can do about determined criminals. You probably lock your house doors, but it'd take me five or ten seconds to break into your front door. If you've got a deadbolt and I don't want to spend a couple minutes with it, I can just go in through a window. You can bar the windows, but I'm just going to go in through the well, then, or come up to you with a pistol and demand your keys. The determined criminal will bring a hot pack to power the electric car at least a couple blocks, and then all that discharging and recharging is for nothing.


You typically can't do this at an impound lot, because the employees don't have ready access to the battery [my car notwithstanding], because they don't typically have the keys. So they're not driving the car anywhere; it gets towed from place to place. And again, a hot pack will prevent this tactic from stopping the determined criminal, anyway. [That and the fact that you don't necessarily need a battery to start or run a car, of course.]

I'm not saying your idea wouldn't work - particularly if, in Shadowrun, tow companies are given free reign to access your property - just that the considerations for preventing crime economically would likely make them more trouble than they're worth, which is why you don't see crews of security guards at impound lots, and why people don't just pour foot-thick concrete walls to keep me out of their houses. [Which, no, also wouldn't stop me.]

What is this, 1995? Most cars haven't had distributors for a while now.

Well, the last time I worked on a car, that was the year it was from.

Other than that, I worked on a motor that was from the early-1970s.

Oh sure, IRL it's not the best of plans, but I was thinking more "I know how modern cars work" and the "flavor of ShadowRun" where it's highly likely that if Lone Star impounds your car, they're probably going to resell it (they are, afterall, a for-profit business), so they do have an interest in keeping their lots theft-free.

In any case, popping out the battery isn't terribly high-cost, but it would be rather effective at keeping an electric vehicle from moving (a gas vehicle would only need a jumper/hot pack, of course).

My car was impounded by the police after an accident. I imagine they had to keep it clear for insurance investigations, but nothing criminal. A vehicle impounded as part of a sextuple homicide probably will get better protection than my broken-down oldsmobile did.

The location was out of the way. Real grungy part of town, at the end of a one-lane alley, snuggled between the railroad tracks and some old warehouses or something. There was light woods on three sides. The lot itself was protected by an eight-foot chain-link fence and concierta wire. They did their business in a double-wide. I didn't see any cameras, but I suspect they had a dog. The whole place was real run down. A chunky, ugly lady behind the desk was rude at me, until a chunky, ugly tow truck driver could take me out to my car about twenty minutes later. They had to move two other cars for me to get access to it. The driver came out with me. I couldn't take pictures of it without paying off my fines. I couldn't take anything out without paying off my fines. Fines were something like $80 a day for storage, plus $300 for towing. They did not tell me this when they took the car. They did not bother informing me that my car could be reclaimed even after the second and third day I left it 'in police custody'. Terrible people, and I love stealing all of their cars in my Shadowrun games. However, on the good side, the most security they had was that the cars were all boxed in, and a heavy-gauge chain on the fence.

That's exactly it. Push that into Shadowrun, and that's what you're looking at. These are not polite middle-class operations where a guy in overalls takes a set of keys and goes and gets your car from a well-lit lot out back; it's not a car dealership in suburbia. This is an urban impound lot. If you haven't been in one, or lived in the neighborhoods they're in, Nezumi's description is spot-on.

That is what I was thinking, with the emphisis on the rude people. The Philadelphia impound people are imfamous for being rude. They are petty little people who weild what power they can over the people who come to them.

Bureaucrats. They're almost all like that. Some groups worse than others.

In my area they're not bureaucrats. They pay city hall a fee to handle car impounds. Then they charge whatever they want for you to get the car back. $300 for a tow + $80 a day in storage is pretty standard (compare to first class airport parking, which is $20 a day). No refunds. No negotiations. A few months ago some cops were busted for actually arranging for legally parked cars to be towed, and getting a payoff from the towing company. It's a huge rip-off scam. Some day I'm going to load a dead car with lead paint, dead batteries, pesticides, and leaking oil, leave it to get towed, and let the towing company deal with the clean-up costs, JUST BECAUSE.

Ah, the joys of the 'free' market.

But in SR, the 'impound lot' for the vehicles of violent shadowrunners might well rate a more tightly-controlled situation? After all, the cops already *are* the free market subcontractors, and we're not talking about parking violations.

Again, why is the vehicle being locked down? Vehicles that are paid for with illegal money are oftentimes auctioned by the police department, so will be much better kept. Vehicles seized as evidence in a crime are also likely to be better kept (depending on the importance of that trial). Police impound is a different creature than civilian impound. However, vehicles being held for a traffic violation can't be auctioned off until they reach a few thousand in fines.

(I don't know what happens to a legally-owned vehicle when the owner is convicted of a crime and sent to prison, though.)

Another interesting story I heard about here in DeeCee. A woman was injured and put into a coma, and put into the hospital. Meanwhile, her car was ticketed every day, towed, then ticketed again for not being picked up. The city sold her lexus for $4,000, in order to cover $8,000 in traffic tickets.

A little off-tangent, I know, but I feel it adds a nice cyberpunk touch.

While everything mentioned is well & good, don't forget it's 207X. On-board computers can auto-pay fines, auto-drive/pilot themselves to new spots in case the current parking space is now unavailable. The amount of impound lots that handle vehicles for minor traffic/parking offenses have to be small & not many. Only time I see a vehicle getting impounded by anyone is that it was used in a major crime (and therefore seized as evidence), & needs to be processed/tested by CSI like people for clues. Those lots are restricted, guarded, & will be problematic for average people (& a few runners maybe) to get in.

This is an excellent point. There's a tendency, when projecting an existing thing forward, to take what we have, and hang the window-dressing of the future on it, and call it science fiction. Shadowrun does a lot of this. That said, there will still be, for the foreseeable future, a lot of cars in Seattle that don't have Pilots, or that don't have wireless control, or whose wireless or Pilot systems are damaged, or which were parked in dead zones, that private wrecker services will still need to come and physically remove a car that's been parked illegally,* and put it somewhere else until the owner can come get it. So while I think the demand might be lessened, as long as there are older cars on the road, it'll still exist.

*Not just parked illegally, but parked in such a way and in such a place that the vehicle must be moved, not just like you ran out the meter or whatever.

That's actually happening more frequently now a days. Forgot to make a few car payments? the good people at GMAC simply disable your car remotely until it's paid up.

This also assumes you have a parking meter and a fine system which is willing to interact with the car. While my city is happy to make it easier for me to pay for things (now accepting all major credit cards) they do NOT make it easier to avoid future fines.

Mine got that tech as well, and allows payment by cell phone as well.

Too bad none of the meters tell the right time, and fail as soon as it hits -40C with the wind chill. Seeing as this is Winnipeg, that's about 2/3rds of a typical winter. Seems some idiots in city hall believed the company when they told them that "Wind chill doesn't affect machines."

That said, I've heard of parking meters with a "free" button on it. As long as there's no time on the meter you can punch it and get a free 15 minutes.