The NVPD and You

The Neo Vegas Police Department is largely funded by Citigov through corporate taxes magnanimously paid by the megacorps that operate there, and they certainly act like it. Beyond that funding, the NVPD sustains itself through a spiderweb of bribes, kickbacks and under-the-table deals that ensure the wheels of justice keep on turning in the right direction.   The NVPD typically does not respond to petty crime reports unless they have targeted someone corp-affiliated. The city is too vast and its problems nigh uncountable, and if they tried to chase down every stolen car and purloined purse they would be swamped to the point of paralysis. Even violent crime is largely ignored, unless the victim is a corpo or the carnage is public enough that their inaction would make them look bad. If two Whitney gangers shoot each other during a drug deal gone wrong, the NVPD writes it off as the cost of doing business in the city and doesn’t look much further than that. If the son or daughter of a corporate executive happened to be caught in the crossfire, however, they’d hunt down the shooter and give him a very public perp walk all the way to the Greenfields Harmonization Camp. Additionally, if said shooter who’d gunner down one drug pusher went on to flatline twenty people at a shopping mall, the NVPD would descend upon the shooter with all the fury their corporate funding can buy. Neo Vegas has a reputation to maintain, after all, and it’s important to ensure potential investors can see the boys in blue know how to handle violent outliers.   If you want something from the NVPD, it’s invariably going to cost you. Their filing system is notoriously byzantine, but somehow the right files can be found if you know who to pass a few hundred credits to. For the right price, parking tickets vanish, assaults are purged from your public record, and they’ll even help remove the bullet-riddled corpse of the man who was sleeping with your wife (who definitely drew on you first when you burst in the door.) Justice, just like everything else in the city, is for sale, and if you fall afoul of the law, you’d best hope you have enough credits on hand to make them see that this was all just a big misunderstanding.   If you can’t afford to buy yourself clemency, the criminal justice system is about to get its claws into you in a bad, bad way. Judges are perfunctory at best, sentences are harsh (especially if the crime targeted a corpo, knowingly or not) and the prison system in the Free State of Nevada is an unmerciful beast. Most inmates are happy to sign themselves up for an indenture period with a Greenfields grow house rather than subject themselves to the sweltering prison warrens dug deep within the earth north of the city.   NVPD typically patrol in teams of two, whether in their squad cars or on foot. Drones are often deployed in high-crime areas where sending in personnel would be risky; it’s cheaper to replace a drone than it is to train up a proper patrol officer. When a firm response is required that typical patrol cops can’t handle, RRTs comprised of four SWAT members and a captain are dispatched to quickly neutralize volatile threats. Armed drone response squads and cyberwarfare Merlins are also deployed alongside augmented K9 units.   In instances of massive civil unrest, such as during the recent riots in North Vegas following the martyrdom of Saint Ophelia, officers are kitted out with riot gear, tear gas and other nonlethal measures to break protestor lines and cripple their morale. K9 units used to be deployed in these instances, but have since been scaled back due to difficulties in preventing civilian fatalities.