Hi friends and @roxie,
I apologize in advance for spelling mistakes and the big chunk of text. I just felt I had to write this...
I wanted to make this nice little thread for two reasons, to stop people from asking me the same questions, and give a hand in reviving the PD.
In my opinion, the police department is dead, fully dead. As dead as George Washington. I absolutely don't want to shit on the command teams, they still do good work. But the PD is not evolving. It's been like this for a while. The weeks before I resigned as Chief of Department, Dom and I created a plan, a new structure for the PD. Much like the current plan, it was a plan we slowly started implementing. But as I resigned, and Dom left this plan was not followed through, instead decisions contrary to the plan were taken. And that would be fine if the current administration actually had a new plan, but they did not. They continued on the same track as we had for years.
Late February and the very beginning of March, of this year I contacted the Chiefs and informed them, that I was no longer comfortable with us still hosting the old website, due to privacy and security flaws. Bad people had, and still have ways to gain access to accounts. These are issues that easily can get fixed by re-creating the website. Making a new one with security and privacy in focus. I asked them for a list of critical parts, that must exist on a new website upon release. I did this, as I had a lot of time during March to code, and wanted to push a base website out and then add stuff as time goes. Much to my surprise, the only one who actually took time out of their day to assist in making a list was @McGlinchy . It took over a month for the Chiefs to react to my list, and by then it was kind of too late. It's important to keep in mind here, that I bumped the conversation several times, but the explanation we got was that they forgot. Which is ridiculous. The website is one of the core parts of the Department. Without it, how will you handle ranks? complaints? any issues brought up regarding it should get their full attention.
Unfortunately, the website was not the only thing that was overlooked, no progress whatsoever was made to the PD. Only very small changes. And anyone who plays on the server knows that the PD needs to change, as the player base and play type of players has changed.
It came to a point several months later where I spoke to Ayjay when he was Community Manager, to force the PD to restructure and make it actually work. This is something we did, Tinyslayer, Collier, Momo, and I started going through how the future of the PD would look. This resulted in the document Momo posted on the forums a few weeks ago.
But as I said during these sessions, it's a long shot. The PD requires a new intranet, a more simple website with basic functions, which would take a lot of time to create. The current website is extremely bad and throws more errors than anything I've seen. And I had barely any time to put into development, which would be a major issue.
We decided to proceed anyway, and I got approval to hire more developers and offer them bonuses moneywise in-game. This was when I hired @Smudger and @flugs. We started work on the new website, and as I had very little time, I took care of planning and testing. As time went I got bored with the project, as I was the only one pushing for it. And I saw that only one of the Chiefs were interested in its success, that was @Momo. Whenever I asked questions in regards to stuff, he replied. He was the only one...
One can claim that the Chiefs couldn't make any changes to the PD before the website was out, but that's not true. There are many things they could do to prepare for a major restructuring.
It, unfortunately, came to a point where I totally got bored of PERP, and tired of feeling like one of the only few pushing for PD change. This was when I handed in my resignation per policy, I would stay for 14 days due to me holding an administrative position. Pretty quickly after I submitted my ticket to @McGlinchy he informed the Chiefs via Slack. And they pretty quickly went into a meeting to see what they would do, considering I have been the one for years to handle PLPD Website Development, and that I owned everything, Domain, Slack, Google Drive, etc... This was unfortunately the last time I saw the whole of SMT trying to resolve the situation. Since then I have been told that SMT has tried to get a response from @Collier about the ongoing situation, but he is not responding. Which is just fucked up.
I have yet to been contacted by the Chief of Department about transferring ownership of the stuff I own to him. Fredy after a few days noticed I resigned, and asked me to transfer the domain to his name, which we did. But still nothing from the Chief of Department. I still own a bunch of stuff...
So, I still think the PD needs a restructure. And I personally think that should start with @Collier resigning from Chief of Department. This for two reasons, his inability to actually answer slack messages from his most senior officers about ongoing situations, and the little time he actually spends on the PD, which is probably because he is also Senior Admin. I do not think SA and CoD should be the same person, its ridicules. I think an election should be held for the position of Chief of Department. And after that Senior Administration NEED to be INVOLVED in the PD LIKE I ASKED YOU LAST TIME.
Before an election can happen, I think @McGlinchy should be given the temporary role of Chief of Department. So he can clear up the PD, and make it work. After that, an election can happen. But the PD can not continue on the current track. Even if I am no longer playing, I don't want to see the PD be dead. I've spent so many years in it... and so have so many of the community members. It would be so sad to see it actually not progress.
In no way am I trying to hurt @Collier and @Momo. I like both of them, and consider both of them friends. But at the end of the day, it doesn't seem like anyone else is saying these things so...
I would also like to mention, I do not like taking stuff like this public. Absolutely not, it paints a bad image on the ones involved and on the PD. But I feel like this is the only way to get a reaction, considering Collier is not responding to his own SMT.
Thank you for reading and I hope change happens, soon!
I apologize in advance for spelling mistakes and the big chunk of text. I just felt I had to write this...
I wanted to make this nice little thread for two reasons, to stop people from asking me the same questions, and give a hand in reviving the PD.
In my opinion, the police department is dead, fully dead. As dead as George Washington. I absolutely don't want to shit on the command teams, they still do good work. But the PD is not evolving. It's been like this for a while. The weeks before I resigned as Chief of Department, Dom and I created a plan, a new structure for the PD. Much like the current plan, it was a plan we slowly started implementing. But as I resigned, and Dom left this plan was not followed through, instead decisions contrary to the plan were taken. And that would be fine if the current administration actually had a new plan, but they did not. They continued on the same track as we had for years.
Late February and the very beginning of March, of this year I contacted the Chiefs and informed them, that I was no longer comfortable with us still hosting the old website, due to privacy and security flaws. Bad people had, and still have ways to gain access to accounts. These are issues that easily can get fixed by re-creating the website. Making a new one with security and privacy in focus. I asked them for a list of critical parts, that must exist on a new website upon release. I did this, as I had a lot of time during March to code, and wanted to push a base website out and then add stuff as time goes. Much to my surprise, the only one who actually took time out of their day to assist in making a list was @McGlinchy . It took over a month for the Chiefs to react to my list, and by then it was kind of too late. It's important to keep in mind here, that I bumped the conversation several times, but the explanation we got was that they forgot. Which is ridiculous. The website is one of the core parts of the Department. Without it, how will you handle ranks? complaints? any issues brought up regarding it should get their full attention.
Unfortunately, the website was not the only thing that was overlooked, no progress whatsoever was made to the PD. Only very small changes. And anyone who plays on the server knows that the PD needs to change, as the player base and play type of players has changed.
It came to a point several months later where I spoke to Ayjay when he was Community Manager, to force the PD to restructure and make it actually work. This is something we did, Tinyslayer, Collier, Momo, and I started going through how the future of the PD would look. This resulted in the document Momo posted on the forums a few weeks ago.
But as I said during these sessions, it's a long shot. The PD requires a new intranet, a more simple website with basic functions, which would take a lot of time to create. The current website is extremely bad and throws more errors than anything I've seen. And I had barely any time to put into development, which would be a major issue.
We decided to proceed anyway, and I got approval to hire more developers and offer them bonuses moneywise in-game. This was when I hired @Smudger and @flugs. We started work on the new website, and as I had very little time, I took care of planning and testing. As time went I got bored with the project, as I was the only one pushing for it. And I saw that only one of the Chiefs were interested in its success, that was @Momo. Whenever I asked questions in regards to stuff, he replied. He was the only one...
One can claim that the Chiefs couldn't make any changes to the PD before the website was out, but that's not true. There are many things they could do to prepare for a major restructuring.
It, unfortunately, came to a point where I totally got bored of PERP, and tired of feeling like one of the only few pushing for PD change. This was when I handed in my resignation per policy, I would stay for 14 days due to me holding an administrative position. Pretty quickly after I submitted my ticket to @McGlinchy he informed the Chiefs via Slack. And they pretty quickly went into a meeting to see what they would do, considering I have been the one for years to handle PLPD Website Development, and that I owned everything, Domain, Slack, Google Drive, etc... This was unfortunately the last time I saw the whole of SMT trying to resolve the situation. Since then I have been told that SMT has tried to get a response from @Collier about the ongoing situation, but he is not responding. Which is just fucked up.
I have yet to been contacted by the Chief of Department about transferring ownership of the stuff I own to him. Fredy after a few days noticed I resigned, and asked me to transfer the domain to his name, which we did. But still nothing from the Chief of Department. I still own a bunch of stuff...
So, I still think the PD needs a restructure. And I personally think that should start with @Collier resigning from Chief of Department. This for two reasons, his inability to actually answer slack messages from his most senior officers about ongoing situations, and the little time he actually spends on the PD, which is probably because he is also Senior Admin. I do not think SA and CoD should be the same person, its ridicules. I think an election should be held for the position of Chief of Department. And after that Senior Administration NEED to be INVOLVED in the PD LIKE I ASKED YOU LAST TIME.
Before an election can happen, I think @McGlinchy should be given the temporary role of Chief of Department. So he can clear up the PD, and make it work. After that, an election can happen. But the PD can not continue on the current track. Even if I am no longer playing, I don't want to see the PD be dead. I've spent so many years in it... and so have so many of the community members. It would be so sad to see it actually not progress.
In no way am I trying to hurt @Collier and @Momo. I like both of them, and consider both of them friends. But at the end of the day, it doesn't seem like anyone else is saying these things so...
I would also like to mention, I do not like taking stuff like this public. Absolutely not, it paints a bad image on the ones involved and on the PD. But I feel like this is the only way to get a reaction, considering Collier is not responding to his own SMT.
Thank you for reading and I hope change happens, soon!
