Views on Security

[UnknownMurder]

Security Issues

 

I want us to take a stop back and rethink this, "Why do I hate Security so much?" I'm surprised no one has done to speak up or anything after continuous rant on OOC or Deadchat. I want your opinion, I want to know of what you think of Security. How you view Security. How we can change the issue. This is a Discussion, not a Question nor a Suggestion. How can we, the players, change Security without having OOC rules applied to us. How can we change Security without staff's assistance? We have players that does not trust Security or despise Security because of their actions.

But, please... Let's have a reasonable discussion. I don't want ranting, bickering (bitching), or any salts or I'll shall ask the Forum Moderators to lock this topic down and lose my hope in humanity's attempt to resolve a simple issue. We can solve this issue? Yes, we can.

EDIT: I'm an Officer and a Head of Security in SS13, Alex Graves. I want to fix this.

Edited February 29, 2016 by Guest

[Commissar_Drew]

Onto the subject at hand.

People, for some reason that I have yet to comprehend, dislike those in positions of authority, or those who enforce the status quo. The "man" always seems to be in the way stamping down on "fun". In some cases, this is true, and these cases bring me to point one: Security can be lenient. Issue warnings. Talk to folks. RP it out.

This segways into point two: act professional. Be professional. As a security officer one should maintain a certain level of decorum. This does not mean you need to be an unfeeling robot, but as an officer, ideally, people should be unbiased, cool, and collected when responding to situations. And hopefully not threatening people with beatings, briggings, or such (overtly).

I have guides, several, actually, that I have written over the past few years. They outline behavior for an officer and promote a thinking, feeling, professional.

But, in reality, what it boils down to is having thick skin. As security, you need to brush off the stupid and function as a professional. Person berating you, your mother, and your dog? "Thank you for your time, sir. Have a secure day." Cowboy up. To be in a position of authority, to be a leader, to be a sheepdog you must be able to shrug off the sheep's bleating and keep the vigil all while not nipping the sheep too hard.

[UnknownMurder]

Good start, Commissar_Drew.

Anyone else?

[XdwbX]

As a department, I like security. I just hate some of the dumb stuff that people do while in security positions. It's because of the influx of power-hungry, quick-to-go-lethal kind of people that I've started playing security again. I wanted to bring a level-headed person to the team that would be quick to help someone, and hesitant to fire on colleagues.

To change things ICly would mean to change the individuals in security to change how the department is viewed as a whole. I think it requires changing mindsets from "I'm a bad-ass, so don't F with me." to "I'm here to protect, and serve. How may I help you?". It would also help for more people to be aware of Standard Operating Procedure; they can't act surprised when they know that Code Blue means that anyone and everyone is subject to a search of their being, their property, and/or their work space.

Once security starts to establish itself as the entity it was meant to be, a part of the staff dedicated to protecting the crew and the station, that's more interested in helping to solve problems than to be controlling and needlessly hostile, then everyone else can begin to trust them, again.

And, for Pete's sake, detain the intruder when possible. Whoever Pete is...

Side note: I really enjoy seeing Graves. Seems to be a good, level-headed guy from the majority of what I've seen.

[Conservatron]

as a player and character i used to hate security and was a (i believe) a portion of the engineering vs sec problem. I have reassessed (since bluesec became a thing) and decided that I have no real hatred towards sec, so I actually begrudgingly help them out, even willingly if its in my best interests. Depends on the individual officer though really. There are officers I wouldn't help, and those I'd go out of my way to help.

I just wish people got briged more than they got killed

[Talkarcabbage]

Here is my opinion as someone who has never played as a security officer. Well, that's not strictly true, I was a security robot one single time before.

I don't personally hate the security force and its members as a standard. There are three main times that I find myself wishing for a new security team. I will name them below and address the problems I see with them. I'm sure I could come up with better names for these, and better definitions, but, effort.

The Warrior of Justice (read as: handcuff fetish)

 

The type of officer that believes him or herself to be an enforcer of justice. This is the type of officer that will ignore circumstances and focus on whatever law-breaking could be happening. This is the type of officer that will quickly, efficiently, and viciously follow the rule book. See a citizen with a laser rifle? Better pull out the big guns and take him down before he hurts someone, ignoring the fact that he was on his way to give it to security. This type of officer will immediately seek to arrest the individual responsible (read as: the one that is still standing) for a crime, will be sure to arrest first, ask questions later, and will ignore the answers because they don't matter anyway, a crime is a crime. This officer believes that the purpose of security, rather than to protect the crew, is to prosecute wrongdoers.

Officers should avoid jumping to conclusions about a situation until it has been properly interpreted. Communicate with those involved, detain them at the scene. Do not just arrest the person you think is guilty nor ignore the person that you think is innocent. If you can't figure out what happened and you have no reliable source, do not only arrest the most guilty looking of those involved of any situation. Immediately assuming an individual should be arrested because they are dragging around someone who is injured or unconscious is an example of this. The person left standing could have been acting purely in self defense. If the person on the ground cannot explain their circumstances, leaving them alone can make matters worse. Likewise, don't take the person standing's word for it being self defense, because the person on the ground may not have been the one to start the assault. If you see someone injured being dragged by a miner to medbay, follow them and help them (and quietly make sure they don't hide them in a locker forever). Don't arrest them unless you see a definite reason to, and don't walk past them assuming they are a law-abiding citizen just because they said they're helping out.

 

The Brute (read as: brings a nuke to a papercut fight)

 

This is the most stereotypical reason to hate security. This is the officer that will gun you down, handcuff you, and drag your convulsing body to the brig because you tried to hack into the kitchen to make some food. I shouldn't need to expand on this point too much further, it also ties into the first point I've made, especially concerning jumping to conclusions. Your first response to a crime, unless there is an immediate threat of serious harm or murder, should be to ask the parties involved in a stern but polite way to stop what they are doing and explain why they are doing it. You should not need to use a flash, or a stun baton, or a taser, unless the situation cannot be resolved without it.

 

The Oblivious (Sometimes read as: Lone wolf; Often read as: I have a radio?)

The oblivious officer leads the life of a true hero. Wielding his sacred stun baton of duty, he will patrol the halls, search the maintenance tunnels, and eat his fair share of donuts. He will also be the one to arrest someone and bring them to security only to have the captain and head of security chewing him out prior to sending them both back out into the world. This is sometimes not the fault of the officer, but rather a problem that exists in all departments: Communication

Many times I have seen problems escalate beyond recognition due to a lack of sufficient and effective communication between members of security (and other departments). Having five officers all individually choose to go arrest a drunk in the bar, only to find out that someone broke into the armory, would be an example. A Head of Security should be directing his/her officers, and the officers should be listening closely for instructions at all times. This officer believes that the purpose of a security officer is to protect and serve; he often does not realize, however, that he forgot to include "the security team," let alone "the crew," in his definition.

 

I have seen many good officers on aurora, and I have also seen times where improvements could be made. In my opinion, the playerbase has an extremely irrational disdain for the officers. I would assume it is to self-fulfill the stereotype about them if I had to make a guess.

My most memorable negative experience is as follows.

During a particular round, my character had been asked to open chemistry. While doing so, the chemist took the opportunity to force-feed me a pill of space drugs. I proceeded to roleplay halucinations, attacking the air with a crowbar, that sort of thing, and the other medbay staff eventually fixed my condition. On multiple occasions, I and several others informed security over the radio of what the chemist had done, seemingly to no response. The chemist also attempted to do this to multiple people and succeeded in a few other cases. During crew transfer on the shuttle, I saw the chemist collapsed down in a chair. When I went up to him, he punched my character in the jaw (which to begin with would be EOR conflict). In response, I passively grabbed him (in case he was injured, I wasn't going to spread his blood everywhere) and dragged him over to the security airlock on the shuttle. In response, the warden (read as: not an officer) opened the door, immediately flashed me, then dragged me into the security room. My repeated explanation that not only had the chemist punched me (which to begin with was in sight of both the crew and several on-lookers), but was also the one who had poisoned me earlier in the round, was completely ignored. On arrival, I was then dragged into the security holding area aboard central command. The chemist was never arrested. In fact, he laughed hysterically ICly at me while I was being arrested. The chemist was not a traitor and was self-antagging for the entire round.

This would be an example of Warrior of Justice (no questions, only arrests), The Brute (no questions, only unnecessary force against an unresistant opponent), and The Oblivious (a lack of communication in radio earlier in the round, resulting in a criminal not being addressed properly, along with repeatedly maintaining ignorance of the chemist when directly informed).

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I don't have an opinion on the chart.

[UnknownMurder]

The Chart is off topic and is not related to the topic. However...

My question still remains... How can we change Security?

[Carver]

Security can't be changed without changing the people who play Security, and people can't change, silly. Security by mechanical nature, exists to challenge antagonists and keep the other departments in balance so they don't go full nations.

Being someone who's almost exclusively played Security for about 3 years, I could probably go into a big ol' rant about the nature of Security and why you get this wonderful mixture of shitheads and saints in there, but I'm far too tired for that. So I'll put it simply, the issue with Security can't be fixed without OOC supervision. Why? Because I can 100% guarantee you that if you gave Security's tools and options to any other department, that department would be just as bad. Case in point, the old issue of Ramboneering on Baystation a few years back.

In short, don't blame the department, blame the people.

I also wanted to point out that another issue with these things is the odd 'domineering power fetish' you find in these kinds of roles in all sorts of games; HL2RP, Jailbreak, etc., any instance in which players are given the option to hold power over another, you'll have this issue. But hey I didn't want my argument to sound /too/ Freudian, so even though I do believe this is a major component of the issue, I opted to hide this part of my argument.

[MetaphysicalPersona]

Fire all the current officers and hire good people.

[Carver]

Fire all the current officers and hire good people.

Fire the entire station and hire clowns, they would be more responsible tbh.

[MetaphysicalPersona]

Actually I met one good officer as Ames and I was an antag at tat point. I needed jackboots from some guy and he gave them to me so as repayment I was going to kill him and take his ID which I did kind of do until some girl walked in on the battery and shortly after another guard, the cop I beat put the blame onto the girl and I was free to go.... Wow that was some cop, eventually they healed him up and we teamed up and stole all the guns and walked onto the shuttle trying to "provoke" EORG which got me banned (Threedaycation) after a short gun fight, you live you learn.

[Guest]

Fire all the current officers and hire good people.

 

lol

[Guest Menown]

Fire all the current officers and hire good people.

 

Somehow Delta and my charts weren't on topic, yet this is apparently more constructive.

The crew not cooperating with security makes security hate the crew. There's nothing quite like every single member getting called shit because of a few bad ones (which is partially due to our now lack of a ten day age limit.)

There are good officers, and most commonly the people that seem to complain about them the loudest tend to be antags. No shit a bunch of players who want to cause chaos will end up not liking the force that exists to prevent it.

As for security, there's a lot that can be done to shift judgement on you. Offer to help deliver something for somebody. You're probably headed to wherever it needs to go anyway, so make somebody's day easier. You don't have to be friendly, but you don't have to be an ass either.

[Guest]

Let's dispel this notion that the forum mods have no idea what they're doing. They know exactly what they are doing.

Now that we've done with that, I'd like to continue a point I was going to make regarding the chart, in which it was actually a very serious post and I was piquing a legitimate question in which what kind of level of skill and effort they want to see from their officers.

 

 

Let's get into this. We have two variables, x and y. X is our skill level, challenge level is our Y. For the sake of this discussion, I will not get into whether these variables are dependent, independent or controlled as they will detract from the discussion.

Let's make an example. You have a new job! You work as a grill operator for Wendy's. It's your first working week after a two-day orientation online. You've never done grill before, and you're being taught on the job. You're taught to put down raw patties down onto the grilles, shake salt over them, and then slam the top grill down in order to prepare and cook the meat. Assume, at the moment, it is 10:30AM. It's close to lunch, but it's around the time where maybe one or two people will come in for early lunch either to dine or through the PUW in the drive-thru. You have fairly low skill level and at the moment, there's no rush for anything. It's not particularly challenging as it stands, in fact, you could be considered pretty skilled now that you have your portion of the job down. You're relaxed, you're simply in a good mood but there is no current challenging aspect of the job that's eating at you.

It's now 11:20. It's lunch time, people are coming off of their 9 to 5 shift for a break to eat at Wendy's. And by 'people' I mean a fuck ton of people. You may live in a small town but there is about 10 customers pulling through and being served per 20 minutes. This is the rush hour. This is where the challenge increases in level due to the nature of the fast-food business. It is not the fact you get your food quickly, it's more that the people serving the food need to be really fucking quick in getting burgers and grilled chicken off the grills, getting nuggets/fries/fish/spicy chicken out of the friers and into tubs for the sandwich artists and frier operators to serve up orders for either the PUW or for the dine-in. Bare minimum, you are going to need to get the order out within 2 minutes, at the most. No later.

Now, since this is lit. your first week experiencing the rush hour, you need to learn how to adjust to it. Right now, you're going to be a little uneasy about your overall skill level and general competency regarding your crew position. You're going to be up there in the sections of "Worry" and "Anxiety". Because you're worrying, or becoming very anxious, you will most likely begin to hesitate, or you will be more prone to simple mistakes due to simple nervousness and a general lack of faith in yourself in being able to pick up on the job. You'll forget things, yada yada. Most likely you'll be yelled at, which will make things a little bit worse because you're in a position in which you're doubting yourself. Not good, boss. Not good.

But, whatever, you tried, you get through it, it was a humbling experience and you learned a lot about the fast food business even if you didn't help any regarding hitting any records or standards. Provided, that is, you didn't simply stop giving a shit halfway through.

Let me touch on that, that will be known as "Apathy." Being apathetic is a state of mind in which you do not care about your job, your work effort, anyone else's work effort, or anything. For that matter. You simply don't give a shit about it, and don't want to put any level of effort into doing anything. And not many realize this, but complacency is a real killer. No one likes to have the useless, bitchy, moaning crew member doing absolutely nothing to fix themselves or the issues surrounding them. They never apologize, not for themselves nor for anything else. They make constant excuses and are overall just a giant burden and morale-killer. The one who willingly does absolutely nothing about anything will reflect negatively on their co-workers, their associates and the surrounding onlookers. And for good reason, too. They are much worse than the unskilled rookie who is giving it their all to get the hang of what's going on around them and to improve, to make their mark on what's around them. Apathy is death. Seriously, put it to memory, because when you look at everything around you and take an introspective glance at those who refuse to do anything about something, you will see that things begin to decay and get worse because nobody did anything to fix the problem(s) or concurrent issue(s). And that will forever reflect on those who decided to do absolutely nothing instead of something. Apathy is death. It is the only objective truth in life, because the opposite of that tenet is what defines life. A living, growing and constantly acting thing. That's the best way it can be described of.

Boredom is something you want to keep away from, too. You need to make your work interesting to you, otherwise you're still part of the goddamn problem and will eventually sink into a useless apathetic shell of a person.

As I was saying. Now we've gotten to the post-firstweek shindig. You're fairly experienced with the basics now. You know how stressful rush can be, you have a clear idea of what to expect and what to anticipate. You're given a lot of ideas on how to properly prepare for folk coming in to eat without being overtly wasteful with prep food. You finally begin to grasp some level of relaxation during the slow hours in which it is not required to rush back and forth a greasy floor with no-slips, you begin to develop a sense of control over your body's dexterity, every movement becomes fluid, practiced and precise as you keep on working. And when the rush gets rough, you don't devolve into worry and anxiousness, you begin to have a specific flow to everything you do. People will look at you working and will wonder at how you do it, curious themselves as to how you're so capable of maintaining a perfect balance across the kitchen carrying varying degrees of hot delicious food, without any major incidents. You've become the machine you've only dreamt about being, but you don't even know it. For all you know, you're just doing your job, and it's just another weekday. To you, that's all it is, as you're more focused on doing the thing rather than thinking more deeply about it. It just comes naturally to you, because you've adjusted almost splendidly to your environment. Provided you gave any effort into doing it, right?

And let's clear up a little misconception regarding 'arousal', because while it is amusing for people to take it the wrong way and be goofballs about it, we seriously do not need any horndog officers who completely misread my points. Arousal is simply the mid-way between anxiety and flow. It refers to the sense of danger and risk behind an action, that's the feeling you get when you're about to make off with a hoodie full of candy bars from a shop without paying for it. It is what happens when you have some level of competency regarding what you are doing but you have subtle uneasy thoughts about the difficulty of your work, or even just generally worried about worst-case scenarios. So you begin to fantasize worst-case or best case scenarios in your head, eternally worried about the consequences that may lie ahead. Warning: Danger ahead. Do not be consumed by this, or you will tip right into uneasiness. Believe in yourself to do a good job, and you will do it. Only by believing in yourself in doing something can you actually get something done, whether it's good or bad. Because if you manage to convince yourself that you're gonna fucking suck major balls at your job, then that is exactly what you are going to do. So don't fall for it.

So. Let's sum up the chart then... Where's a good place to be on the chart?

That's really a matter of debate.

Just kidding, I don't want to be the guy that constantly misleads you into thinking that everything you do has no effect in comparison to doing just nothing. A good worker, someone who can stay focused on their task and do well at it, will stay on the right side of the chart. They will focus on bettering their skill in whatever they do to the point where they can feel relaxed during the quiet parts of the job, controlling of the situation in moderately difficult situations, and possessive of their own personal flow in high-energy, high-risk and high-adrenaline situations. It is important to use these for the greater good, however, and not for selfish, self-serving and self-righteous desires. It is okay to want to be better than you are, but focusing on being better for all the wrong reasons will lead you to the same destination as those who weren't interested enough in trying or those who were too uncomfortable and uneasy with themselves to make a real difference. It will lead to disappointment, regardless.

There is no shame in taking a spit-take when someone claims that people shouldn't worry at all, and should care less about the things that they deal with. These people who make such claims are disappointing, uninteresting, boring people in conversations and are constantly riddled with anxiety and worry when dealing with real life situations.

Perhaps I am taking this too seriously? Maybe. Or maybe you (referring to the obligatory cynics that will read this) are just not taking anything seriously enough.

[MetaphysicalPersona]

You just published a book in the middle of a post.

[Guest]

If you can't explain it simply, you have no clue what you are talking about.

Regardless, being robust is maybe a plus, but what really bothers me personally is the 'Sec must win' attitude. By saying that every Sec officer has to be robust, you are either saying that the entirety of the server should either focus on being robust and powergame, or that people should simply accept that antags capable of defeating a Sec officer shouldn't be a thing.

Sure, a good deal of sec players attempt to discern between shitty ganking antags and antags trying to be creative. Ohh man. You would be surprised which players make very little effort to discern the two, with the players simply being told GIT GOOD, when they complain at being rammed into the dirt by a rambo sec officer that coincidentally may or may not be liked by the staff. It's the most usual reason for complaints against security. This mentallity is seems to be accepted as a point of view when trying to decern if sec actually did anything wrong.

As for shitcurity, I actually don't mind. It's the hypocrites that I hate. Sec players that file an IR after IR against a player they claim is shitcurity, while stooping to that level themselves.

[SierraKomodo]

Topic has been locked at request of the original poster.