Hello everybody, I am here once again to give my unsolicited opinion on the forums.
This one's been brewing in my brain creases for a while. I was a part of the PLPD when we first started making the full move to PLPD online (ask any IA investigator about the spreadsheet, it was traumatising,) and I've noticed that the quality of officers has seriously deteriorated.
I want to make it clear, by no means is this the fault of any specific member of the department. All command members work for free to help run this thing and I'm grateful there are still people dedicated to the project. This is, in my opinion, just a part of a wider problem.
Firstly, let's talk observation reports. They're ineffective at actually judging the effectiveness of any officer. A majority of the time, an officer who wants one can barely even get a corporal+ who's interested in writing one. I've heard "I've already done 2 this month" more often than I could count. There is no ability to recognise officers for a single act of good policing. Back in my day, we had commendations, which were able to be issued for either a single notable act or an entire patrol. I feel these should be brought back, in conjunction with patrol reports, so that CPL+ isn't so "burderened" by the horrors of writing observation reports.
The main issue I have is that all cops are way too shootout hungry. Officers will literally drop anything they're responding to if a shootout comes up, leading to a lack of actual decent policing and just a constant TDM between police and zerg criminals. Only a handful of officers both enforcing traffic laws, and barely anyone can roleplay for shit. It's all just measuring what you can do against policy and as soon as an arbritrary policy threshold is crossed, doing that thing. The radio is basically just people screaming over each other about the latest shootout and nobody could give a shit about anything less. A lot of the time, TFO are essentially permanently geared in some form, and will never deal with anything except a shootout. What's the point in being a police officer if you don't do any actual police work?
There's seldom any tactical thought put into anything either. Pistol cops are so hungry to be the one to get the kill that they rush into properties and get shot before even firing a bullet. Breaches are predictable and sluggish and nobody holds a perimeter anymore.
The PLPD was never perfect, but we used to have a lot more officers who cared about the little things. Who would be reasonable and try to roleplay as somebody who actually valued their life. Supervisors used to carry authority and actually cared about the behaviour of lower ranked officers.
The whole culture feels like it's shifted. There's probably no solution, because this isn't just a police problem, but rather a wider issue with the quality of roleplay on the server.
Idk, rant over, thank you for coming to my ted talk.
