Strict security operating procedure

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

Everyone and their mother is whining about how terrible security is but why don't we change any of this?

 

The current problem i see is the following:

We have way to many meaningless crimes on the station. People stealing stuff because they can't be bothered to wait or even ask, or people that just can't accept when they are told: No!

 

So security is overburdened with this petty crimes and handing out rushed and false charges to anyone, since a security officer has effectively no real oversight, because the often HoS has to deal with more important stuff and can't monitor everyone. As an attempt to combat all this bullshit claims, which security is in a way forced to make (because they are rushed), we changed the rules and laws so the average timer is now way lower. I think this is a terrible way to go about that, you don't get anywhere by just treating symptoms.

 

 

Here are my suggestions:

- Make Sec Officers accountable for what they do. There needs to be a defined operating procedure and when it is not met then the suspect / prisoner has to be released, maybe the HoS or Captain may overrule the release in case of capital crimes.

 

- The procedures clearly define how long a suspect might be held inside security without being charged of a crime. When and if someone can be searched, or that a prisoner has to be provided with a lightbulb (ffs), just clear guidelines and instructions what and what not to do. Maybe or maybe not we inculde certain loopholes into such security procedure, like reading equivalent of reading Miranda rights like in the US.

 

- Such procedure also requires filing out some sort of short report before someone can be put into a cell, preferrably printed by a console that has yet not been invented. Basicly pick the charges, list your evidence (ohh yes, you need evidence! If it's physical it needs to be in evidence storage) and the resulting timer. Such report has to be attached to the Cell timer in some way for quick reference.

 

- Evidence might range from eyewitnesses to a banana peel with pruple fibers on it. The amount of evidence needs to be relative to the charge. Tresspassing might be enough if two people or a single head of staff confirms that someone came into there department uninvited, while you might need hard evidence when trying to slam someone for murder.

 

- If avaiable, the IAA or a not yet existing job has to be involved once a suspect is been brought into security. Said person is a "neutral thrid party" which is there to ensure that the corporate procedures and interests are met. In case the officer and IAA cannot come to an agreement the Magistrate will be involved to pass final judgement.

 

- There needs to be a law against wrongful imprisonment, incase the officer and / or the IAA are deliberately acting outside their bounds.

 

- Code Red will override such procedure and officers may have more leeway, but they still can be held accountable afterwards if they acted way out of line. Maybe code blue is somewhere inbetween, yay for alert levels having a meaning again.

 

 

Some of those things might be found somewhere in wiki, but they are not enforced inside the game.

 

Strict guidelines that are not just words in a wiki but also enforced are extremly important, otherewise people just do what they want, currently there is very little to no oversight. Threaten with or hand out job bans if nesseary. To facilitate all those processes and extra time spend inside security and gathering evidence, we have to reduce the overall amount of crime happening on the station. Thus we need to dial up the timers for crimes again and i think it's cirtical to make resisting arrest a way more serious crime again (like 15 minutes).

 

Let me explain why i think that is so important:

Security should be more about questioning, finding enough evidence and at the end of this: arresting someone. The actual arrest should only be a small part of the work and not your main activity of an officer. A 5 minute timer on resisting arrest invites anyone to just try and run away, because it's basically free. While i from time to time appriciate a good hunt, it's not really worth if you want to arrest someone for stealing stuff from the kitchen. I think the 15 minute timer for resisting arrest did just that, because why risk 20 minutes if you could just accept your crimes and wait for 5 or ten minutes. Also, with the changes i suggested a suspect now would have a more objective person (IAA) with him when he is being processed, which i think is way more worth then a free shot to run away, just to be captured later.

 

 

The ultimate goal should be that being arrested should engaging and interessting for both sides. Maybe lawyer yourself out of it or maybe make a deal to rat out someone worse than you. Currently that is impossible because officers have no time for that and are not required to make the effort. Being arrested should be more than just being shot unanounced, dragged away, stripped and put in a cell until a timer runs out, while having no say in it at all. It's an RP game so there need to be words involved otherwise it's all meaningless.

 

Change the cells:

Last but not least we need something inbetween the cells and perma brig. A location where prisoners can interact with each other in some way, because the 3x3 single person cells are boring as fuck and not suitable for anything more than a 5-10 minute stay. The cells should be able to be opened up into some sort of yard/general area.

 

 

 

Not everyone might agree but hopefully together we can find something that works and actually change how security is done on this server. I think a working security department and law is the foundation of every ss13 round and it could be so much better.

 

[Keroman]

 

We have way to many meaningless crimes on the station. People stealing stuff because they can't be bothered to wait or even ask, or people that just can't accept when they are told: No!

 

It would seem to me that this is the real problem, not Security overstepping their bounds. You break Space Law in-game and security shouldn't ignore it (unless there's a significantly bigger issue to deal with).

 

So security is overburdened with this petty crimes and handing out rushed and false charges to anyone, since a security officer has effectively no real oversight, because the often HoS has to deal with more important stuff and can't monitor everyone. As an attempt to combat all this bullshit claims, which security is in a way forced to make (because they are rushed), we changed the rules and laws so the average timer is now way lower. I think this is a terrible way to go about that, you don't get anywhere by just treating symptoms.

 

Any player who believes that they're unjustly serving time for false charges is encouraged to contact the IAA, Magistrate, or NT Rep on staff. If none are available and willing to hear the prisoner out then the player should ahelp the problem and usually an Admin will sort it out.

 

Big List of Bullet Points

 

A lot of this stuff is covered in the following two links:

http://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Leg ... _Procedure

http://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Sta ... _(Security)

 

-Such procedure also requires filing out some sort of short report before someone can be put into a cell, preferrably printed by a console that has yet not been invented. Basicly pick the charges, list your evidence (ohh yes, you need evidence! If it's physical it needs to be in evidence storage) and the resulting timer. Such report has to be attached to the Cell timer in some way for quick reference.

 

- Evidence might range from eyewitnesses to a banana peel with pruple fibers on it. The amount of evidence needs to be relative to the charge. Tresspassing might be enough if two people or a single head of staff confirms that someone came into there department uninvited, while you might need hard evidence when trying to slam someone for murder.

 

Evidence must already be present for someone to be brigged. This can be as simple as an eyewitness testimony or injuries to one or more people, or as complex as a detective's scanner report of fibers and fingerprints found on contraband items. It's really up to security to maintain that standard and I have absolutely seen criminals get off with lesser charges because the evidence was not sufficient. Forcing security to fill out paperwork for every arrest could actually prolong the amount of time a brigged criminal has to sit in a cell, as well as keeping Security from their actual job of protecting the station.

 

- If avaiable, the IAA or a not yet existing job has to be involved once a suspect is been brought into security. Said person is a "neutral thrid party" which is there to ensure that the corporate procedures and interests are met. In case the officer and IAA cannot come to an agreement the Magistrate will be involved to pass final judgement.

 

IAA should be keeping Security in check when it comes to ensuring proper sentencing and brigging procedures. Their entire job is to be that neutral third party. The Magistrate, too, is there to ensure that Space Law is applied properly. I have seen many instances of IAA and Magistrates doing just that - stopping shitcurity from overstepping their bounds. It's not going to happen 100% of the time, especially during rounds where nobody is playing IAA or Magistrate, but as stated above players who feel they're being unjustly brigged with no IC recourse can ahelp it.

 

- There needs to be a law against wrongful imprisonment, incase the officer and / or the IAA are deliberately acting outside their bounds.

 

- Code Red will override such procedure and officers may have more leeway, but they still can be held accountable afterwards if they acted way out of line. Maybe code blue is somewhere inbetween, yay for alert levels having a meaning again.

 

http://nanotrasen.se/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7968

In that thread Tully outlines a new law regarding Kidnapping which should be going into effect fairly soon. If any member of security is found to have held someone against their will as part of an illegal arrest then it would likely fall under that law (or Kidnapping of an Officer if it's someone in a Command or Security position.) The Code Red procedures are already outlined in the Security SOP page I linked above.

 

Let me explain why i think that is so important:

 

I've actually seen a significant drop in the number of people resisting arrest lately (though it hasn't stopped completely.) When I play Magistrate or Warden I try to find legitimate reasons to reduce a person's sentence, and I'll tell them that cooperating will make sure they spend less time in a cell than they might think.

 

With regards to evidence, well, the only personnel properly equipped to gather evidence is the Detective. Whenever I'm playing the Detective I'll hand off the spare forensic analyzer to the Warden so that he or she can scan evidence that's brought to the brig while I'm away. Security is there to enforce Space Law and intervene when the lives of crew are at stake. Security Officers should certainly present evidence in the form of their own witness testimony, as well as provide the names of other witnesses. They should also ensure any physical evidence such as weaponry or contraband is retrieved and brought to the brig for scanning. And that's about all that should be expected of them when it comes to evidence. So far it seems like that's working out just fine.

 

Increasing the time for "Resisting Arrest" isn't, in my opinion, going to help much. Players who are likely to resist being arrested are already making a split-second decision to run or fight when they see Security approaching. It's a stressful situation and I don't think that punishing the player for giving Security a bit of a chase is a nice thing to do. Also there's a definite culture among certain players in which they don't care how long their brig sentence is because they just suicide as soon as they're captured. It's a shitty thing to do and it happens way too often when the person could easily just sit in their cell and watch something on youtube or netflix or some shit and then continue the round once they're let out. Increasing the amount of brig time for a natural reaction to being arrested will only exacerbate the problem.

 

A redesign of security and the permabrig is definitely something I think a lot of people want to see. The treadmills were added to the cells precisely because being brigged is so boring, and while some folks do make use of them it doesn't seem to be quite enough. There's at least one PR in the works with an aim towards redesigning the permabrig to have more activities. While I wouldn't mind giving non-perma prisoners more to do I think that designing a communal brig area is a lot of work for very little reward when, as I said, it's pretty easy to just alt-tab out of the game and go watch a video or something until your time is up.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

It would seem to me that this is the real problem, not Security overstepping their bounds. You break Space Law in-game and security shouldn't ignore it (unless there's a significantly bigger issue to deal with).

I never intended to imply that sec should not arrest those people but that we need to reduce the amount actual crimes going on in order to handle every arrest that is made with way more professionalism.

 

Any player who believes that they're unjustly serving time for false charges is encouraged to contact the IAA, Magistrate, or NT Rep on staff. If none are available and willing to hear the prisoner out then the player should ahelp the problem and usually an Admin will sort it out.

That is not enough for me, it can't be a gamble if you actually get some justice solely based on the fact that maybe there is a magistrate and that he actually cares. We need strictly ingame punshiments and guidelines to what and what not to do. The moment a Admin has to be involved the system has already failed. Also i have respect for how the admins operate and i think they do a good job, the moment you need to involve a admin you are speaking in out of game terms. It is not fun for anyone involved. Adminhelp is not the place to argue over evidence and make deals or spin a clever alibi.

 

Granted my suggestions is also depending on IAAs and Magistrate being peresent, but this is sort of the chicken or the egg dilemma. You will only have people play IAA and Magistrate if they are more than just ignored fluff positions. If they are made a integral part of the justice system, then i am sure they will be around way more regulary. Additionally currently prisoners are more ofthen than not completely stripped of everything and don't even have a way to communicate with such positions. And this only happens because there are no enforced rules as to how to treat a prisoner.

 

I played Brig Physician for a few rounds just to observe what security is going inside the brig. And most rounds i simply felt ashamed that i was part of security. People were completely stripped of everything: clothes, PDAs and even the light bulbs were mandatory removed from the cells. I mean what the actual fuck is going on there? I stood near the prisioners speechless as to how fucked up they were treated for a petty theft.

 

A lot of this stuff is covered in the following two links:

http://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Leg ... _Procedure

http://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Sta ... _(Security)

I am aware of that, but as i stated in my first post, they need to be more clearly defined and contain repercussions if they are not met, otherwise they are just a mostly ignored fluff piece in some wiki. So they are kind of irrelevant for this discussion, appart from being a foundation on which to write better / stricter guidelines.

 

Evidence must already be present for someone to be brigged.

In practice it seems to be completly optional until it gets to far out of hand and you have to involve admins, at which point i already lost any desire to play.

 

With regards to evidence, well, the only personnel properly equipped to gather evidence is the Detective.

That's not true, probably the best evidence is observing the crime yourself, or maybe ask the hopefully impartial AI, or collect witness testimony, everyone can question a suspect and find discrepancies or find somethin incriminating on the suspect. Of course a detective can do more than that, but a normal officer has plenty of options which are just not utilized. Also nothing is stopping you from putting something in a evidence bag and hand it to the Detective to get some fingerprints.

 

Forcing security to fill out paperwork for every arrest could actually prolong the amount of time a brigged criminal has to sit in a cell, as well as keeping Security from their actual job of protecting the station.

If a person can't be bothered to write a few lines then said persion simply is not fit to play security.

 

Also there's a definite culture among certain players in which they don't care how long their brig sentence is because they just suicide as soon as they're captured. It's a shitty thing to do and it happens way too often when the person could easily just sit in their cell and watch something on youtube or netflix or some shit and then continue the round once they're let out. Increasing the amount of brig time for a natural reaction to being arrested will only exacerbate the problem.

Yes it might suck, but everyone is allowed to deal with it in their own special way. I can't really blame those people because being brigged is not engaging at all, most of the time you don't get the option to defend yourself legally. Best case everybody ignores you, worst case you are physically and mentally violated for stealing a golden pen.

 

While I wouldn't mind giving non-perma prisoners more to do I think that designing a communal brig area is a lot of work for very little reward when, as I said, it's pretty easy to just alt-tab out of the game and go watch a video or something until your time is up.

You yourself complain about the people suiciding in the cell, how can you not see the gains of giving people something to do while in prision. You might have found a solution for you and just tab out, but there are probably a lot of people that don't want this disconnect from the round. I for myself want to continue playing and interacting with people, but if you are simply ignored and denied everything while stuck in a 3x3 box, what the hell are you supposed to do?

 

[Vivalas]

In my opinion magistrate should be whitelisted rather than karma-locked. It's too vital a role to the security process to be locked behind a karma wall.

[Kyet]

 

A redesign of security and the permabrig is definitely something I think a lot of people want to see. The treadmills were added to the cells precisely because being brigged is so boring, and while some folks do make use of them it doesn't seem to be quite enough. There's at least one PR in the works with an aim towards redesigning the permabrig to have more activities.

 

I have a PR up right now which does exactly this: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4747

 

Vote for it.

 

[GelatinousGlob]

 

I think something that would really help is a comprehensive and printable security record report on any person with ease. Whenever a cell is closed on someone it should require a name and list of crimes they broke along with the security member's ID card used to close the cell. It should also have room for custom comments or evidence on that same cell monitor. Either through putting in a paper note or form or inputting it manually in a text box. Even a simple 5 words someone can input under evidence would help tremendously. The detective could also attach his own evidence to this.

 

On a full security report it should have all the general security data in addition to the cell data and detective evidence together for review. Then, if there is a disputed case for the IAA to take up they have a full security report to start with and can easily find who to talk to and what they need to talk about. The IAA could then use his interviews and the security report together to make his own report to send either to whoever they like be it HoS, Warden, Captain, or CC themselves. Right there is a comprehensive and hopefully clear and complete actionable piece of paperwork. A security officer who properly fills out the arrest record with what evidence they have along with whatever evidence anyone else may have put on the case would have absolutely nothing to worry about and would have minimal interference from IAA and others. An officer who doesn't doesn't fill it out properly, which is not what we want, would have to give much better word testimony when the IAA or others come asking questions about complaints. It would encourage proper arrest reports but not disqualify someone for having bad arrest reports.

 

This would also alleviate the biggest hurdle of being an IAA which is actually obtaining the information you need for starting a case and also in getting the full story from both sides. Finding everyone that is involved so you can make a fair report. When you only can obtain one side of the story the job becomes nigh impossible to provide resolution for.

 

[liran424]

 

I have a PR up right now which does exactly this: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4747

 

You really need to add more windows to spess. For ascetic reasons.

 

[Twinmold]

 

One of the outright biggest issues is security already has such strict guidelines, and people fear playing security because they believe they will get banned if they mess up, even just a little. It's not the number of crimes in the system. Honestly, we are missing some crimes that really do need to be in the system. It's the lack of officers themselves. Security would work so much better if more people decided to actually play Security. More officers, more opportunity for officers to RP instead of having to double-time everything, which has further given security a bad reputation.

 

If people have the opportunity to RP, you'll even more likely see more IAA, and even Magistrates, which can improve the chances of people getting properly sentenced. More officers gives officers less stress of trying to get to every crime (especially serious crimes), and keeps things better organized. If people are calm through it, being calm shows more confidence that you are innocent than screaming "Shitcurity!" or "I'VE BEEN WRONGFULLY ARRESTED!" does. If you really are innocent, a calm asking for a lawyer will help your case much better. But IAA and Magistrates won't see action if people don't do that or are requested by security, and honestly an officer who feels entitled to that valid arrest will try to fight a lawyer getting anywhere near you. More officers would help make the chances of actually getting a lawyer much higher, as well, by diversifying officers and opinions better, and giving you a better chance to have a lawyer requested for legal counsel.

 

Yes, the system fails once an admin has to intervene, and the biggest issue with this: Is people assume that if they adminhelp, that increases the chance they will get unarrested, and even likely get that officer in trouble. Yes, it's a rule that officers are in fact held to a higher standard. That being said, this mentality of trying to get someone in trouble, consciously or subconsciously, or even trying to get out of IC issues with an OOC response needs to end. It's why people are afraid to touch security, why antags go rampant due to lack of officers, builds into people valid hunting due to lack of officers, especially in the late night. People don't want to fear getting in trouble, so they stay away from where trouble is most likely to be had because of adminhelps. If there is a very blatant illegal arrest, literally no evidence/witness testimony/officer literally couldn't have seen you do it, then adminhelp. Especially on trumped up charges. But I've had a few people who did commit crimes, the evidence was literally all right there, and the exchange of me with them was 'they didn't explain anything, illegal!'... This isn't the case in almost all those cases, either. I've had many times that they did explain the charges. The person literally just ignored them because they were screaming out loud, then complains when their headset is taken away.

 

IAA and Magistrate get told they can't intervene by overzealous securtiy, when really only the Head of Security and Warden should have any say in that, though Magistrate overrides allowing legal precedence in all cases. They should just stick to higher crimes worth anything, however. Both have direct access to Central via Fax, and believe me, I read all faxes. If it needs a response, I respond. So you shouldn't fear being an IAA, because it's literally your job and unless you are being disruptive to their actually safely processing people, you have expected right to talk to suspects and get the charges verified, getting both sides of the case (usually from the Detective who should have the evidence ready).

 

Security SOP is already strict. It doesn't need to be stricter, or we will have even fewer players than we already do. In all honestly, the people who are good at security shouldn't feel like they will get in trouble for actually playing security.

 

These are my views on it.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

I can see that point, but currently being security means just running around and dragging lots of people in the cell. Which i consider not being fun at all, for for both sides. If i play security i want to be able to search evidence, question people, all that stuff and then making a meaningful arrest, but the server is way to fast for that. To many crimes, most of all the small ones, but how should you differenciate if it's just someone breaking into science for the lulz or because he really an antag. Probably half the people you serarch will have questionable stuff on them, how should you start any meaningful investigation if your enviroment is full of crime. The moment you understand security and "get good" at it, is probably the same moment where the player realisies how pointless it all is and will lose interesst.

 

In short: If i play security i want quality over quantity and if that's not given then i simply won't play it.