Fellow officers,
As a police officer, you must always make the right decision when handling violations against the law. To guide you through this process, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers offers you a variety of options to interview witnesses, suspects, or other citizens. Today, we're showing you some of the available options!
So, how does all of it look like in-game? Check out the video below to see the entire footage!
When can you interrogate people?
In general, it's quite easy: If you want to talk to a citizen, simply proceed to them and start a conversation. However, you should only begin an interrogation if you actually have actual suspicion or reason towards that person. Did you see that they committed a crime or violation? Are they witnesses?
If you have reasonable suspicion that to believe that a person may have committed a crime, you can detain them, frisk them and follow up with additional actions. We'll get back to that later!
If you stumble upon probable cause, you need more details to proceed. This means that more evidence or clues are required: You need to make it believable that a person is very likely to have committed a crime. Probable cause does allow you to search a person or their car respectively and make an arrest.
In this blog post, we'll focus on the situations you saw in the clip above and explain them in more detail.
Take immediate action
Right at the beginning of the clip, you see a man litter the streets in the distance. With your eagle eyes, you've spotted this violation immediately - and now you can act without having to hesitate!
Without the need for more details, you can issue a fine or at least a verbal warning. This option is available if it is a violation for drivers of car accidents, if you have pulled-over drivers or if these are civil infractions by pedestrians. Whether you decide to let them pay the bill or simply hear how bad they behaved... that's at your own discretion. Do whatever you feel is right.
By the way: You can hand out tickets without detaining somebody first - and not having to fear negative consequences. But detaining them first will reward you with some extra juicy Shift Points.
„During playtests, we realized that a lot of players do not detain citizens before giving them tickets or warnings. That's why we decided that detaining will be made an optional action which is rewarded with extra points.“ - Thomy, Project Manager
What if I go too far?
Law and order apply to both citizens and officers: If you have crossed a line, well, you'll lose Conduct Points.
Yes, you want to keep as many as possible...
Asking for an ID
If you have reasonable suspicion that a person committed a violation or if they are a witness, you can ask them to identify themselves. If you request them to do so, they are required to cooperate.
As an officer in Brighton, you are allowed to ask for identification if the person looks like a wanted suspect, probably committed a crime like assault, took part in a robbery, stole a car, violated any traffic rules by car or on foot, violated any laws like littering, drove suspiciously, simply behaves suspiciously, appears to have taken illegal substances, carries an illegal item or flees while being detained.
Yeah.. that's a lot.
We strongly recommend comparing the person's appearance to the photo on the ID. If they don't match, the ID is probably stolen. In addition, people are not allowed to wear any accessories on ID photos. If that's the case, that's quite a strong hint that something isn't quite right.
Let's make some progress!
A car accident? An assault? A robbery? In a city like Brighton, most likely another citizen has witnessed what happened and can therefore be interrogated.
You should always interrogate as many witnesses as possible to find out clues and get an idea of how the accident happened. Near car accidents, this includes both outside pedestrians and the involved drivers. We'll skip a bit over the options for car accidents as we'll have a dedicated clip for that coming very soon!
So, let's focus on crime witnesses: Very often, they can be encountered at the coherent crime scene. The more witnesses you interrogate, the more hints can be collected about the crime suspect. If you reached a point where you collected enough hints, a wanted suspect callout appears. If not enough hints are available, a search for the person is simply not possible. In this case, the investigation is completed automatically.
Here's some useful information: Accident and crime witnesses are being automatically detained without any proactive detaining action of the officer - even if that status might not be legally correct. This decision allows for a much simpler way of handling witnesses. No need to search half a city for this.
Use your intuition!
You're a very good officer full of experience. No wonder that your intuition can help you a lot when speaking with citizens! Using it gives you extremely important information, for example, if their behavior looks out of order.
The intuition system displays information of multiple types in certain situations and is displayed as text overlay beneath the compass at the top of the screen. Possible information gives you hints about potential drug influence, their reaction to questions, and lots of other stuff.
Oh no, they're fleeing! Arrest them!
If you question suspicious people or approach wanted suspects, they'll sometimes decide to flee. Sigh, they could have made their lives a lot easier. Well, in this case, you do have to chase them and bring them to stop. Most likely, you'll even have to draw your pistol or your stun gun to.. uh... politely advise them to raise their hands and give up.
A deadly force like shooting a suspect with a gun needs to be avoided and will be punished by the game! In general, aiming at a fleeing person with your pistol is only allowed when the wanted suspect was probably involved in an actual crime scene you have previously investigated. You can use the stun gun for other cases.
In many cases, you can and have to arrest these suspects afterwards. Simply handcuff them and call for a backup arrest transport. This option is not just allowed after they fled, you can also choose it if you know for sure they carry illegal items, drove under the influence of alcohol, have a fake ID, have a fake driver's license, or drove a stolen car.
Search & Frisk
Now we get to the point where you rightfully ask: Wait, how do I find out if they carry illegal items?
Well, you can both search and frisk suspects to find out! Frisking a person is allowed if they probably committed a crime, show suspicious or aggressive behavior, show signs of driving under the influence of alcohol or illegal substances or fled while being detained. Everything else goes too far.
The game is even more strict when it comes to searching for a person. This is considered to be more thorough and invasive than a frisk. The officer not only touches the visible clothing of a suspect but also inspects the content of a person's pockets, bag or car in detail. Therefore, it is only justified if the suspect is handcuffed rightfully, carries an illegal item (found out by having frisked them previously), committed a crime, shows signs of driving under the influence of substances, or fled while being detained.
So yeah, there are situations where you can decide to either search or frisk them but not all of them.
More to come!
We hope we were able to give you a few insights into how interrogations work in Police Simulator: Patrol Officers! If you want to see other tasks as well, we'll definitely have more to show in the coming weeks!
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