Sci-Fi Police of the year 2049 AD

[Phantasm]

Allow me to go the other direction:

Tanks in the streets. Riot police with AP bullets.

(Theme from Dominion Tank Police plays....)

Yeah, I'm done here....

[PTTG]

The answer depends more on your narrative than on technology. Are you going to assume that civil society as we know it persists? Then it's likely going to be a patchwork of local regions with varying levels of police armament, most of it pretty much like today, just a little smaller.

If you want to have a future society where technology solves all problems, most police will probably be given only light equipment with minimal lethality, with heavy weapons deployed only on remote-operated drones.

If you want a dystopia, then don't make a distinction between police and soldiers in terms of equipment.

[hal]

Now, with all of you gathered about *teasing grin*

ULTRATECH is a source book in search of a game world. Various things contained within will have certain applications or uses that may surprise people. The implications of things may surprise people.

Rather than discuss dystopian outcomes before you even design the equipment for the police, why not use GURPS ULTRATECH for 4e, and design the equipment that each police officer might have. If need be, difference the police by role - patrol beat cop, traffic cop, warrant servers to violent criminals, detectives, etc.

Dig through the book and see what the implications are for the police in general. Don't stop with the regular equipment per se, but consider medical equipment as well. An ambulance that can get to any location within the city within the span of 5 minutes due to its airborne functionality might prove to be interesting in its implications with the Portable Emergency Support Unit aboard. How long can a character be legally dead but still be rescued from death when you have an PESU nearby?

As you do this, think of how much the equipment costs, and balance it against how much it costs to train replacements for dead officers?

Me? I'd go with the following for a starter:

High grade light weight body armor.
Some means to display HUD information.
Facial recognition software
Tactical awareness software
Ability to sound alerts of "Officer in trouble, needs immediate help"
Ability to render suspects incapable of resistance
Ability to handle public relations
Ability to handle potential riot conditions
Ability to handle potential emergencies

Perhaps there might be a use for stress analysis software (lie detector kind of thing) to help the officer(s).

Perhaps with the funding dropping in levels, the police can't get enough bodies on the street, let alone sufficient equipment. What are the bare bones you think you can get away with using UT equipment?

This is a threat to have fun and get creative. Somewhere, someone is going to steal your ideas and use it in their own campaigns. Somewhere, someone is going to read this and be inspired to run a scenario that suggests itself when you have either an NPC police officer being used against player characters, or player character police officers having to deal with the common events of police work in the year 2049.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by khorboth

I had a chance to talk with a police chief recently about trends in future law enforcement.

One idea is a very lightly equipped officer. Perhaps only a ticket book and communications equipment. BUT there is also a mobile armory for backup. Given the era in question, possibly a drone-dropped quick-deploying body-armor and lethal weaponry combo. Even power armor. This would allow the officer to appear friendly and approachable, but quickly respond when necessary.

I think a lot will have to do with what transportation looks like. Will the car still be central? Are drones going to become ubiquitous?

So the sort of thing Iron Man has in a bunch of recent movies, for everyone?

[AlexanderHowl]

Speaking as a researcher and a professor of CJ, one of the major challenges facing the CJ system is that technology is not nearly as useful as it first seems. Cybersecurity is a major issue (cybercrime was a $600 billion industry last year according to the FBI), and it is only going to get worse. With IoT, I would not be surprised if cybercrime breaks $1 trillion a year by 2025 and $2 trillion a year by 2030.

In addition, anything digital can be altered, deleted, or forged. Whether it is digital DNA records, fingerprints images, or other forensic evidence, it is not safe if it is connected to the internet. With neural-networked AIs, even relatively poor criminals can make a decent chunk of change through cybercrime if they are smart.

Thus, police would evolve to counter cybercrime more than physical crime by 2049. Right now, it is possible to create nude images of any human being through using certain programs, so police in 2049 will find themselves investigating identity theft in the form of crimes like harassment through the use of virtual snuff porn that uses characters that resemble the victim. As long as society continues to depend on computers, policing cybercrime will continue to grow in importance, as offense continues to outpace defense.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

So the first question is what the socio-criminological environment is, and that is likely to continue to vary geographically and with culture.

For one example, see Stross' Halting State (2007) which looked at reports like 'sustainable energy without the hot air' and concluded that if less people will have personal cars, that includes public servants, and that the old stereotypes from when bobbies were ex-soldiers or from specific immigrant communities will become even less relevant to what Scottish police actually do.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Thus, police would evolve to counter cybercrime more than physical crime by 2049. Right now, it is possible to create nude images of any human being through using certain programs, so police in 2049 will find themselves investigating identity theft in the form of crimes like harassment through the use of virtual snuff porn that uses characters that resemble the victim. As long as society continues to depend on computers, policing cybercrime will continue to grow in importance, as offense continues to outpace defense.

Maybe. I suspect we'll get to the point where we can't trust video because CGI is just that good. After all, we're about to have a movie where James (long dead) Dean has a role. What good is video evidence if you can manufacturer a video of anyone doing anything on your phone?

[ericthered]

We'll pay more attention to cybercrime, if for no other reason than that we pay so little attention to it right now (from an enforcement standpoint. We're sticking lots of locks on doors, but the thugs trying to break in and steal stuff aren't being tracked down)

Originally Posted by naloth

Maybe. I suspect we'll get to the point where we can't trust video because CGI is just that good. After all, we're about to have a movie where James (long dead) Dean has a role. What good is video evidence if you can manufacturer a video of anyone doing anything on your phone?

The solution there is to to send any video you might need to be later verified to a neutral third party IMMEDIATELY. and probably two independent third parties. Which means that a lot of footage won't be verified, because people are cheap, paranoid about privacy, or just don't think the footage will ever be important.

Originally Posted by hal

ULTRATECH is a source book in search of a game world. Various things contained within will have certain applications or uses that may surprise people. The implications of things may surprise people.

Rather than discuss dystopian outcomes before you even design the equipment for the police, why not use GURPS ULTRATECH for 4e, and design the equipment that each police officer might have. If need be, difference the police by role - patrol beat cop, traffic cop, warrant servers to violent criminals, detectives, etc.

Culture does drive so much about police work though.

If taking a "gear first" approach, I'd actually design the criminals first. What are they doing, and what does it take to catch or discourage them? And a lot of what criminals are doing depends on culture.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The solution there is to to send any video you might need to be later verified to a neutral third party IMMEDIATELY. and probably two independent third parties. Which means that a lot of footage won't be verified, because people are cheap, paranoid about privacy, or just don't think the footage will ever be important.

"Verified" doesn't mean anything if you can artificially create footage well enough that it can't be distinguished from reality, regardless of the number of eyeballs that see it.

I'm not sure "immediately" means anything either. Video forgers would just need to footage ready made to use for a given time to make it look like it was done immediately.

Certainly this isn't a concern for the near future, but in 30 years it wouldn't surprise me if you could artificially create footage as easily as recording it.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by naloth

"Verified" doesn't mean anything if you can artificially create footage well enough that it can't be distinguished from reality, regardless of the number of eyeballs that see it.

I'm not sure "immediately" means anything either. Video forgers would just need to footage ready made to use for a given time to make it look like it was done immediately.

Certainly this isn't a concern for the near future, but in 30 years it wouldn't surprise me if you could artificially create footage as easily as recording it.

When it comes to security, nothing is perfect, but more is better.

Recording is just a matter of collecting light. In a creation, you have to decide everything that's happening in a scene. And the more shortcuts you take to speed things up, the more evidence you leave that this is an artificial clip.

"Immediately" means that the crooks have to get their story right BEFORE anything happens. They need to have the exact layout and lighting of the room. They need to seamlessly and instantly adjust merge the position of others and of random objects into their pre-prepared scene. They need to compromise the video feeds in advance, or arrange for the crime to happen in a place they can control the video of. And the footage has to account for all of the physical evidence the crime leaves. And you've got to make all the cameras see the same thing and FIND all of the cameras.

You can do all of that, but raises the bar for wrong-doers a lot. And it does reduce cameras to being mere witnesses that could be lying, but witnesses are still useful, and you can evaluate how reliable they are.