With that kind of view of things you could get pretty much anywhere here, I wouldn't have had this view myself and would rather have joined an organization which could help me get proficient in guns and how vehicles handle, which is exactly what I did.
It's always nice to see people with a wide point of view, you might want to consider joining the PLPD sometime when you feel ready for it.
Being an officer doesn't require a rocket science degree, you just need common sense, good knowledge of the laws and rules (which comes in time), and a little bit of dedication if you want to go further.
And once you do join the PLPD, you have to follow extra sets of policies while on duty, which sounds like a lot but you get used to it like anything else.
I can agree with you that new players get boned, it's extremely difficult if you're not discreet or just don't understand how the gamemode works, and it isn't the end of the world receiving punishments from staff, I racked up a bunch early on and eventually it evened out. It took longer between punishments, I got used to the rules and now it's in the back of my head, I don't need numbers to know what rule someone is referring to, nor the laws.
I racked up 3 bans in one year, then another the year after, and now it's been roughly under two years since that last ban. Most of the times when I slip up it's very minor and unintentional, but even then the terms and agreements state specifically that any ignorance is not tolerated, so even then you will be punished.
By the sounds of things I take it you're enjoying the gamemode for what it is and can be, and I respect that. There's not a lot of people that do, some would complain how ridiculous some mechanic here and there is, or how stupid the cars handle.
Updates are on the way this year, and it looks a lot like we'll be seeing improvements to third and first person animations alongside other things to smooth out the gamemode. Fps improvements can still be done, which there currently are no words from XQ or any of the other guys that this is happening, we can hope though.
When you think about things like this, there's a lot of things to take into consideration once you step back and just have a look.
Meanwhile in GTA you just hop on and do your thing (not my best comparison since it's not really that an in-depth of a game in terms of interaction, but you get what I mean)
For a simple game, there are some communities that just take things one step further, and we're one of them. XQ, Fredy, Stephen and I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) Carrot and Tanges worked together to push the game to its limits.
They put together/built the biggest map they possibly could (after running the gamemode on evocity for some time), made it functional, added many different mechanics, vehicles, weapons, clothes, criminal activity potential, police and policing, several other jobs and ways to make bank, the rest was shaped by the community, PLPD became whitelisted because of some demand, and is now a fully working police system with several different ranks, divisions and positions originally lead by Jordan who resigned and handed it to Ayjay which is the current head of PLPD.
Fredy and the boys came together and helped make it work, added vehicles, the community created skins for police vehicles and came with ideas for new vehicles.
SWAT turned into TFU and required that you meet certain qualifications before you could apply, a new 'useless' traffic division (debatable when it still has potential) was created, based solely on traffic management. Those were the big changes.
New weapons were implemented, they replaced the old clunky ones which we all knew and loved at the time, with brand new improved ones that had better animations, better models and overall a better feel to them. Some didn't like this change, others loved it, you can't please everyone after all.
I got off track and wrote a massive one, didn't I?
You get the point.
TL;DR: There was a lot of effort put into this by the developers to make it as enjoyable as possible (as long as you see it from the right perspective)
You're headed in the right direction with this point of view, apply for PLPD and get involved, make a change if you wish to go that far, make yourself known, join the staff team or forever be a member like me, there's a decent amount of fun to be had.
