In the world of Shadowrun, pretty much everyone agrees that the (corp-sponsored) cops are unilaterally evil paramilitary rent-a-thugs that fap to excessive force and police brutality. You could argue that's because we're seeing the world through the eyes of amoral criminals for hire, and they really hate the bacon. Ordinarily when I find a "real life approaches Shadowrun" article I post it to Dumpshock with a sense of wonder at a cool new technology, a "hey look, we're in the future now". But an article I read today made me feel like we're really on the way there to a Shadowrun type world where the ultra-violent "police" have no concept of reasonable force and are just the scariest and most well-armed gang of all, and that is a scary, scary thought: http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cw...out_of_control/

Discuss.

That..... is just tragic.
Really hate seeing these kinds of things. Sadly, they are becomming more and more common.

This article is terrifying in a lot of ways. I'm a dog owner and the bit about cops shooting dogs bothers the hell out of me. I have to wonder, if the cops respond to my house alarm going off, will they shoot my dogs? My dogs are part of my home defense (dogs scare off criminals better than anything else) but do I have to worry about a cop shooting them while responding? Its a scary thought.

All of the aspects of the article are terrifying though. I only focused on the dog bit because its close to home.


I can see that first story happening in a SR game. A Lone Star detective, off-duty, overhears some loud-mouth runners in a bar. He contacts them as a Johnson, sets up a fake run, and then busts them in the prep stages. Hell, I could see a whole division of cops or feds that do only this, set up fake runs and bust runners.

In real life, you have to wonder, would the "criminals" in these kinds of stings have done the crime if the undercover cop/fed had not approached them and gave them the means to start planning the crime?

America! Freedom! Patriotism! Terrorists! 9/11! Safety! Security! Vigilance! Surveillance! Intelligence! Protection! Enhanced Interrogation! Enemy Combatants! Insurgents! Mission Accomplished!

~Rhetoric

There is some untruth there you should be aware of. Dogs don't scare off criminals. They deter them by being noisy and drawing attention. All in all a dog is rather easy to subdue.

The funny bit about dogs is that if the police shoot your dog, it's not a big deal. If you harm a police dog? Assault on a police officer. Yup, your dog is dehumanized with theirs are anthropomorphized.

I said part of the home defense, not all of it. Scare off was the wrong word choice, deter is better. I don't have attack dogs, just big ones that make a lot of noise. That's their job. Its unfortunate that the trend for cops is to take barking as attacking. Hell, if my mail carrier can deal with them, a cop should be able to without using a firearm.

Mace pretty much handles even the largest and meanest dogs in a fairly humane way. Do police even carry that over tasers these days? Because my understanding is that tasing a dog is rather ineffective.

If that cop pepper-spraying meme shows anything, they have it. Just wish they would use it instead of their guns.

Keep this topic related to Shadowrun, please.

At least this gives me a nice idea for my next run.

The PCs are at a Johnson meeting, when the bar is stormed by a fully armed swat team, because there is a 25 nuyen poker game in another room.

So totally stolen!
After all, mere shadowrunners can wait. We have poker players, the menace of the 6th world, to deal with. Ask yourself, who's the real criminal here?

And thus PokerRun was born.

Augmentations could include:

Cybereyes with the ability to see UV to see secret markings on cards.

Cyberarms have loads of potential, ranging from enhanced hand and wrist motors for faster shuffling and dealing from both ends of the deck to a hidden card dispenser on the inside of the wrist sporting a few extra aces.

You think Renraku has decent IC? Try cracking into some of the Online Poker sites, friggin subzero, and with most having some sort of mob/underworld crime connection, retaliation is usually swift in coming.

While outright spells & spirits wont be allowed at the table, a good assensing could help read a players mood and may provide useful tells.

A good face man is a much needed wingman at the table, helping to set up the pigeons for a plucking as well as alternate winning with so folk don't get too suspicious.

All the while you are trying to stay one step of the Gambling Offenses Division and their rabid G-Patrols.

Rumours also persist about Casinos that cater to Spirit & other Awakened Critters, using astrally active cards so they can be read by all, but where the stakes are a bit higher with Services, Essence & Karma being the coins of choice.

Sure you might come away from the table with half your soul sucked out, but you also might walk away with a few Great Form Elementals or a Master Vampire owing you some favors.

Funny, I had thought about posting the same article yesterday since it just screams dark future -- well, except for not being SciFi...

And the section about stars tagging along on entries sounds like an instant plot hook: B-List actor gets more than he bargained for, get him out and make any awkward evidence disappear

There is a second part to this story
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/militarize..._next%E2%80%9D/
So, technically, star SWAT teams should be shot on sight in self defence then?

I think the moral of the story is rather that even in the finer parts of town, LS won't even bother to simply send two guys with a warrant and handcuffs for your unpaid traffic fines. They will bulldoze your fence, breach a few doors and walls, shoot the dogs (could have been shapeshifters of fleshforms, y'know), and then send bunch of guys in MilSpec armor to drag you out of the bed. Speaking of bed, maybe you hid some evidence in that mattress? Or the sofa over there? Bring me my monofilamant saw...


PS: I also find it amusing how this thread once again proves the article's statement about dogs provoking more empathy than humans...

I dunno about that. Municipal police forces can get away with crazy SWAT stuff due to being taxpayer funded. I imagine Lonestar being all about their profit margin, and a lot of the overresponse sounds like a hit to their bottom line. I find it more interesting that they are borderline negligent in most cases due to not wanting to waste money. Different version of a fictional truth.

I'd guess the major price point is having such a team in the first place, which LS or KE would certainly do. Not just to visibly show "we are prepared", but also because some runners teams might just require it.
And now that you have this fancy SWAT team, why not use it? In other words, the same reasoning as IRL

Use them when needed, sure. But those grenades and things cost y'know! Every time a KE SWAT unit raids a poker game with flashbangs, CS, and goes full auto with gel rounds, a KE accountant goes berserk.

Why would the accountant go berserk? It's all billed to the city. "SWAT rollout: 10,000 SWAT ammunition expenditure: 2,500 "

I can see them going berserk because the way I understand the Private Law Enforcement (at least for UCAS cities) is that the City pays a flat rate base contract (this provides a blanket service as in the Low Lifestyle bracket) that covers the C rated security Zone and the pittance that gets put into the D zones. Then the security firm is then allowed to charge a premium for cover (much like insurance and the old style fire services) that creates the B regions and up (which are typically your closed communities or those with neighbourhood committees etc) with the top end gated and corp sponsored estates paying the top rate for nigh instant response and deterrent. Which all goes into the Lifestyle costs.

Of course Enclaves, Arcologies and other exclusive Corp communities often use their own security provider. So rocking out the full kit for every little infraction would end up costing the Corps and since they're a Business not a public service they are far more hostile to breaching those bottom line numbers. Ironically I see a lot of the misdemeanor style offences that happen being left alone (or buying off the local beat etc if there is one) because it's not worth the Corps time to deal with. Cost vs Result. Not to mention how many places they won't even bother going to.

Yeah i really don't see SR style for profit police corps wasting money on sending SWAT or FRT teams to do misdemeanor busts, thats much more of problem with current style government backed police departments that don't have to answer to accountants.

Depends. If the contract is up for renewal they may increase their presence to show they are on top of their job.


Or if they are trying to make an example or two..

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.

Yet another reason to live in the city rather than the county.

But ultimately, I would agree that the nature of their contract is such that KE and LS are going to underrespond to low profile incidents to cut costs, and overrespond to high profile ones to justify their rates.

I noticed the entrapment right away, but it seems like it's too busy being straight up MURDER for the entrapment to be much of an issue.



This is part of the premise of Southland Tales; the rest of the premise is arglbarglcrazycrazycrazycrazy. What a weird movie.



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.



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.

I'd imagine that in the Sixth World where at a minimum everyone has guns and some people are cyborgs or wizards or cyborg wizards, the cowardly rent-a-thugs would be even more likely to tool-up-to-the-max for every situation.

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

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

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.

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 fine. mutiply it out and these raids will turn a profit. They are corps after all.

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?

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. 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