CSI Unplayable (A plea to HOS/Captain/Warden/Security)

As of right now, CSI has become simply unplayable. Unfortunately, it's not the fault of the code or staff, but rather with other players.

In the last four rounds I played CSI, all the evidence was tampered with (not all of the scenes, all of the evidence at all of the scenes). Every body was moved/touched/taken, and some even revived without even alerting CSI they were ever dead.

Here is a list of everything you should do when you find a body:

Call security

NOTHING ELSE

The order of events for a dead body then following are:

1) CSI performs autopsy and collects evidence.

2) Janitor cleans when CSI is done.

3) CSI investigates evidence to first, determine it's not suicide. If suicide, turn in case report, and attempt to borg the brain. If NOT suicide, the body is returned to medical for revival.

4) CSI works on figuring out what the evidence means and reports to HoS/Warden/Captain/whoever else needs to be alerted for warrants.

5) Warrant is issued, officers arrest. Detective begins investigating alibi and stories of all involved with the evidence.

6) All information is collected, and judgement is passed.

Any other situation, the CSI is really just a system of identifying possible suspects for any crimes with no witness. If there IS a witness, usually the Detective does all the work. If the witness is an officer, the officer does all the work.

Why Medical thinks that a dead body means they need to go 'rescue' it is beyond me. Just think about how you would react in real life, you'd call police to come investigate, when they collect all possible evidence, THEY call for medical/coroner to come pick up the body.

As is now, CSI really does nothing since everyone just ignores the possibility of evidence.

An example:

A known suicidal person is reported dead.

I arrived on scene to see medical breaking into the room by tearing down a wall.

Medical cut down the body before I even SAW it hanging, but I heard it before I got there, kinda metagaming for me to say it was a hung body, but what choice did I have? The suicide note was picked up and crumpled by an officer.

So here's the evidence I have:

Fingerprints... EVERYWHERE, including on the method of execution (the wire he hung himself with).

A tampered with door, and a tampered with wall, two signs of forced entry.

A victim who suffocated and had injuries to the chest (was that a struggle? was it not? WHO KNOWS?)

A crumpled up "suicide note", that I have no way to verify the authenticity of.

It looks like a murder scene from the evidence. OOCly I KNEW what happened due to post-round chat.

He broke into the door, wrote a suicide note, then hung himself, as expected. The body injury came from cutting him down (which I would have been able to note when photographing him hanging.

Evidence in THAT situation:

1) Tampered with door by victim's fingerprints

2) Body hanging with no injuries

3) Suicide note with victim's fingerprints and no one else's

HARD to deny the second one, first one kind of gray huh?

The argument, "You saw me cutting him down" came up.

Ok, I was there by CHANCE. What I saw was someone tampering with evidence before calling for Security, that is SUSPICIOUS. YOU are now my prime suspect. I'd like to see Wardens, Captains and HoS' that are willing to 100% trust the physical evidence, no matter how obviously tampered it is, and just arrest the wrong people because they had the audacity to fuck with dead bodies. It would be HILARIOUS to turn in a report like the first one, and the HoS to say, "Well it LOOKED like a suicide, but the injury and fingerprints lead to him, and you say you SAW him cutting down the body?", then that person spends the rest of the shift in a cell for murder. THAT would be hilarious.

As a frequent player of CSI, situations are always different, your never going to get to situations that are the EXACT same, circumstances always come into play,

Lets say Urist McBaldie finds his long time lover, Urist ThiccBaldie laying dead in a room. Now natural human instinct would come into play where he may check for a pulse, or breathing which leaves fingerprints. Obviously then the normal, 'cloning comes before investigation' comes into play afterwards. Frankly people are idiots, and will most of the time tamper with evidence either accidentally, or purposely for whatever reason, With a body its slightly understandable every reacts in different ways, given the situation. But a bloody knife in maintenance, yeeaaaaah.. No don't touch that, you'd have to be an idiot to do so.

Thats probably your main point 'cloning before investigation' being your issue, and I agree its quite the shitty system, usually when I do come across a body. I announce that no one is to touch it under any circumstances, as its classed as evidence, usually then no one touches it I can preform the scans on the body and evidence and then allow medical to clone the body. Everyone is happy, (apart from the dead man)

Things like this is always about circumstances in my honest opinion, whilst medical should always let the CSI, do what is needed to be done, some people trying to 'aid' a dead person without knowing they're dead is understandable, All in all, whoever tampered with the evidence is the one serving a HuT for murder, their fault at the end of the day.

arrest them

^ or that

As someone who plays CSI (albeit very rarely), I can confirm that tampering is quite annoying with this example:

Spawn into round at beginning

wait 30 minutes for stuff to go down

Get reports of dead body and excitedly get over there

see body already gone and everyone walking all over scene

cry on the inside and complain on sec and common channels

go back to office in defeat

repeat.

It isn't just that they CAN be arrested, but the person here wants the HoS/Warden/whatever to ENFORCE it.

@b[mention]ben10083[/mention]

That's right, The problem is, as a CSI, my only recourse is getting information and relaying it to the HOS/Warden/Captain/Powers that be. CSI doesn't process the arrest. What I'm asking for is more strict enforcement, where if your evidence is all over a scene, even if gut instinct and metagame knowledge is that you didn't do it, your evidence says you did.

I make it a point to sometimes charge the people who contaminate evidence with the crime, even if I OOCly know they didn't actually commit the crime. It's the only way people will get it through their thick skulls not to touch a clearly husked changeling body or obvious bloody murder weapon.

And if the victim honestly can't wait the extra 5-10 minutes for forensics to do an autopsy before handing the body off to medical, then why are they even playing a HRP server? If they have that much of a pathetic level of patience, they don't deserve cloning at all.

Perhaps regulations should have a moderate level crime called "Impeding a Investigation" which punishes players for contaminating evidence and removing the victim from scene.

Perhaps regulations should have a moderate level crime called "Impeding a Investigation" which punishes players for contaminating evidence and removing the victim from scene.

Do you mean.... Sabotage?

But really, none of this is an issue - if someone contaminates the scene, tell your Head of Security and continue to collect evidence.

If somebody is barging into the scene. Charge them with trespassing. If it's clear they're doing so to fuck up the scene, charge them with Sabotage. That's the direct definition of the Sabotage charge. "To hinder the efforts of the crew or station with malicious intent."

We have tools available to us to punish crew that contaminate a crime scene. As others said, sabotage and trespassing are applicable charges. However I do think that a form of reminder, IC'ly or by staff, would be helpful.

Perhaps regulations should have a moderate level crime called "Impeding a Investigation" which punishes players for contaminating evidence and removing the victim from scene.

 

Do you mean.... Sabotage?

But really, none of this is an issue - if someone contaminates the scene, tell your Head of Security and continue to collect evidence.

Well, it can be an issue if you're not there to witness it, which I think is the underlying issue here. You can have Joe Blow come by and put his hands on everything then run off, and Jane Doe comes by and does the same, so forth. Suddenly, you have a bunch of fingerprints that belong to people who never were anywhere near the crime when it happened but yet they're fingerprints are all over everything and so are their fibers, making separating the prints from the actual crime from the people who came up and touched their fingers on everything just to do it difficult.

Perhaps regulations should have a moderate level crime called "Impeding a Investigation" which punishes players for contaminating evidence and removing the victim from scene.

 

Do you mean.... Sabotage?

But really, none of this is an issue - if someone contaminates the scene, tell your Head of Security and continue to collect evidence.

 

Well, it can be an issue if you're not there to witness it, which I think is the underlying issue here. You can have Joe Blow come by and put his hands on everything then run off, and Jane Doe comes by and does the same, so forth. Suddenly, you have a bunch of fingerprints that belong to people who never were anywhere near the crime when it happened but yet they're fingerprints are all over everything and so are their fibers, making separating the prints from the actual crime from the people who came up and touched their fingers on everything just to do it difficult.

It's your job as a CSI to figure out who's involved in the crime and who isn't. Real CSI have to do this regarding fingerprints, with new technology being developed to help this. People could have visited the scene before, or after. It's your job to find out.

Do you mean.... Sabotage?

But really, none of this is an issue - if someone contaminates the scene, tell your Head of Security and continue to collect evidence.

 

Well, it can be an issue if you're not there to witness it, which I think is the underlying issue here. You can have Joe Blow come by and put his hands on everything then run off, and Jane Doe comes by and does the same, so forth. Suddenly, you have a bunch of fingerprints that belong to people who never were anywhere near the crime when it happened but yet they're fingerprints are all over everything and so are their fibers, making separating the prints from the actual crime from the people who came up and touched their fingers on everything just to do it difficult.

 

It's your job as a CSI to figure out who's involved in the crime and who isn't. Real CSI have to do this regarding fingerprints, with new technology being developed to help this. People could have visited the scene before, or after. It's your job to find out.

Real life CSI also have a lot more tools at their disposal. Fibers and fingerprints in real life also aren't as black and white as in game, and can be found on more places in real life which allows them to better fit pieces of the puzzle together. Not to mention that in real life, you don't have everyone coming along to touch everything, not to mention that real life crime scene investigators usually have much more time and manpower behind them to be able to analyze every single detail, a luxury that in-game CSI/FTs don't have.

In game, this can end up being a wild-goose chase, given the fact that many fibers can come up that don't belong. For example, a killer is a doctor who was happened to grab a patient as they went past a hall. Before you could get there, an engineer, the HoS, the CMO, and another doctor all touched the body. Suddenly, you have the fibers from insulated gloves, white gloves, black gloves, an engineering jumpsuit fiber, a HoS jumpsuit fiber, fiber from a labcoat and fiber from the CMO's jumpsuit.

Now, how exactly are you supposed to separate anything from that and get any lead? Unless you want to question every engineer and every person in medical, that piece of evidence (assuming there is no eyewitness account to get any possible link) is effectively useless because everyone touched it. You have no idea if the killer stole some gloves, if they stole a labcoat and ran around with it, if it was the CMO trying to cover up a murder they've committed or what-not.

On the other hand, if nobody has touched the crime scene, you get white gloves and a labcoat. That drastically lowers your suspects and makes questioning for the Detective a whole lot easier and it ensures that you have a general idea of anyone who possibly saw the offender last.

Players interfering with crime scenes is an issue, and a pretty annoying one that a lot of people don't run into, so therefore don't realize how annoying it is.

Players interfering with crime scenes is an issue, and a pretty annoying one that a lot of people don't run into, so therefore don't realize how annoying it is.

So ChArGe ThEsE pEoPlE wItH a CrImE???

We have tools available to us to punish crew that contaminate a crime scene. As others said, sabotage and trespassing are applicable charges. However I do think that a form of reminder, IC'ly or by staff, would be helpful.

[mention]Synnono[/mention] could we get a automated ccia notice for that ?

"i never report when people trample over crime scenes when they happen, csi is literally unplayable"

"i never report when people trample over crime scenes when they happen, csi is literally unplayable"

Again, this isn't dealing like the overall issue that was raised by OP. You cannot report someone who runs through a crime scene when you're not there. The complaint wasn't "I'm watching people run into my crime scenes", but instead "people are touching everything and therefore it's ruining my stuff and the HoS doesn't listen to me."

This sounds like an IC issue, regardless.