The Gang problem in our city.

[BrandonM]

The gangs in our cities are out of control.
 

Let me tell you guys a little story about a call I had a couple nights ago.   I responded to a call of a man down near Simeon's auto dealership.  I showed up on the scene to two women next to a man who was shot, and a guy dressed in all blue. Bandana over the face, bulletproof vest, the whole nine yards as far as "GangMember-chique" goes.  I get conflicting stories about how the guy in blue says he didnt do anything wrong and how he was just defending himself, the guy in red tells about how he was ambushed, but it all boiled down to these guys repping different sets and it lead to violence.  As I was conducting my investigation, no less than seven red cars and ten people dressed in red appear at the scene and start telling the guy in blue about how he fucked up and how he's marked and all that.  I drop the iron hammer of justice and tell them that if anything happens to the suspect, I'd pull RICO on their asses so hard they wouldn't be able to sit down for a week. After commanding them to leave the scene and finishing my investigation, I send out a tweet and tell the members of the red gang that they are to report to Mission Row for a not-optional meeting. Once they all show up, I explain to them that what they are doing is in direct violation of federal law. They respond with a bunch of "Oh, okay, officer!" "Well what if we dont all dress the same?" "Can we still all hang out?" I explained to them that we didn't have a problem with any of them hanging out together, but only 4 of them could "rep their set" at the same time. Lieutenant Young was there and assisted with the community outreach. We genuinely tried to be cool about the whole scenario and handle this without making a big fuss about it.

Since then, I've still seen them all gathered, all dressed the same, all retaliating to different scenarios as a unit.  I wanted to settle this in game, through role play, before bringing it to the attention of the rest of the server.  Honestly, I wouldn't have even made this post were it not for last night. As we were hanging out, role playing a scenario where my character was getting a rematch for a previously lost street race, I overheard one of the members of the red gang talking to someone about the gang. The conversation went verbatim:

Non-Gang Member: "There are a lot of you. That's crazy."
Red Gang Bodybuilder guy: "Yeah, there's not supposed to be more than four of us but we do what we want."

Dude. C'mon.

The problem that this runs into is that a mob mentality starts to form. If one person in that group starts to break server rules, the rest of the people in that group will follow suit. I'm not saying it's because you don't, as a whole, care about the rules, but it's because it's literally animal nature. This leads to things like people disregarding the rules because "Well, my friends are doing it, so I'm gonna do it too", not having proper initiation into role play scenarios, disruptive behavior with ten people all trying to talk over each other at the same time, generally annoying behavior (like yelling the name of your gang over and over, which, like, why?), and worse results like RDMing and harassment.

 

Per Speed in the rules thread:

Quote

Gangs

• Gang Sizes
  • Gangs are limited to 4 active players at any given time.
  • Gangs members in excess of the 4 player limit may not take part in hostile roleplay with the main group, and should not wear gang attire.
  • Gangs should not ally with other players, gangs, or security groups to increase their effective size.
• Gang Violence
  • Gang violence is not allowed in player-populated areas of the greater Los Santos area (Legion Square, legal job areas, the yacht, etc.)
  • Initiating hostile roleplay on any active member of a gang constitutes initiation with all other active members.
  • Gang violence must adhere to all server rules, including hostile initiation and NLR.
• Gang Behavior
  • Active gang members should wear matching attire that makes them easily identifiable as a member of the gang.
  • Gangs should not harass or otherwise disrupt the gameplay of other players.
  • Conflicts between gangs should remain civil and within RP at all times.
• Gang Disbandment
  • The BadlandsRP Staff reserve the right to disband any gang that breaks server rules or behaves in an overtly toxic manner.

There have been direct violations of EVERY SINGLE BULLET POINT in the last 3 days from a few members of the Red Gang.

Some things to take note of:

• A person cannot be green lit for no-initiation killing under any circumstances. All actions taken against another player must have proper initiation and role play leading up to it.
• Disruptive behavior is a federal crime. If ten of you are together yelling "GANG GANG" for no reason while others are trying to role play, that's disruptive.
• Blatantly disobeying the rules of the server in front of other players, and then bragging about it, gives the impression that you think you're above everyone else. You're not.
• Having ten people attack one person because they coughed near them is a great way to get other players to stop playing the game.
• Role playing sexual assault is never, under any circumstances, acceptable. Threatening sexual assault is never, under any circumstances, acceptable.
• If someone is saying you are harassing them, it might be because they feel like you are harassing them. Give them a break. Disengage from them for a while.
• Discussing game events in a discord and giving information to other players to use is metagaming. It's hard to argue that you're not metagaming when you're live-streaming your metagaming.

My role play proposal/scenario for going forward is this: The city is placed in a state of emergency. The gangs are growing beyond the federal cap, which makes them federal crimes. Federal agents have come to town and issued statements to the press that RICO laws have been enacted in the city. Any known gang affiliates caught engaging in gang-like activities should be green lit for "Stop-and-Frisk" with probable cause being their known criminal affiliation. Any activity that results in a loss of property or life should end with the maximum sentencing of jail time and fine available, because they're part of an organization whose sole purpose is to disrupt and cause crime. 

 

My out of character proposal for going forward is this: It's the responsibility of the community to start reporting this behavior. If you see a gang with more than 4 members rolling around, screenshot, record, report. It is the responsibility of every player to adhere to the rules of the server. If you're in a gang and you've got three other members and you see another person joining up, tell them they cant. You can still be friends with them, you can still hang out with them, just follow the rules. I don't think this is a hard concept to follow.

Anyway, that's the end of my rant. It's possible that, as an officer, my interaction with these guys is more frequent because of their activity, but most gangs try to keep their illegal behavior under the radar, and I'd expect for gangs in this city to do the same.

 

[dK_]

The "red" gang have already been told of these rules several times at this point. They've caused multiple issues with people including harassment, i'm all for this "state of emergency" tactic if this is something that can be enacted. 

[Payne]

I believe the Red gang is an offshoot of the disbanded grove street gang, or at the very least enemies of that disbanded gang. They love to bring up server rules to disengage from role play.

(One of them accidentally got crashed into during a chase, because he spun out in the middle of the road, and another person smacked into them because they couldn't stop in time. He proceeded to not value his life, sat in his car refusing to get out, said he was reporting people for VDM, then after 5 minutes of "Get out of the car, put your hands up or we'll shoot", he gets out of his car, pulls his gun, and kills 2 people as we're walking away to disengage, because they are being cry babies and not wanting to roleplay.)

But when they break the rules themselves, they laugh about it and try to blame it on you. 

( Im chasing them for 10 minutes, they lead me to all of their friends, i go in reverse trying to disengage and drive away, they all crash into my car repeatedly. When i state they cant do that, they scream at me "You crashing into us! we're reporting you!". I was blatantly driving in reverse trying to get away. while they were smashing the front end of my car.)

In general, they are all terrible at RP, want to kill anyone possible, and get scared and break the rules the second they are confronted. Its kinda pathetic to be honest. Gangs need serious monitoring, especially when they are all NEW players. 

 

(Edit) Turns out i have the clip of them smashing my car as im trying to leave, will post later if it is needed.

(Edit2) Also have the clip of them not valuing their life and proceeding to shoot us. Will use this also if needed. 

Edited March 2, 2018 by Payne

[BrandonM]

I don't want this to be a "shit on gangs" thread.

I want this to be a constructive type of "Here's what you're doing wrong, here's what you need to do to fix it" kind of thread.

Lets be positive in here, yeah?  Come up with some RP related solutions or some OOC solutions rather than just tell us what they do wrong.

[Johan]

1 hour ago, Payne said:

( Im chasing them for 10 minutes, they lead me to all of their friends, i go in reverse trying to disengage and drive away, they all crash into my car repeatedly. When i state they cant do that, they scream at me "You crashing into us! we're reporting you!". I was blatantly driving in reverse trying to get away. while they were smashing the front end of my car.)

This is straight rule-breaking and you should have reported it straight away especially if you have a clip of it. Admins can't do anything to something like this if they're not aware of it.

Edited March 2, 2018 by Johan | ynzx_

[Gambino]

There has been a shift recently of regular players turning from crime to being "businessmen" due to the stringent police punishment/payouts of the illegal jobs available  - The gangs may be out of control OOC, but that is up to the playerbase to record/report if there are any rule violations.

"Rico laws" would stick a nail the coffin for any illegal behaviour, even the people that put effort into it. Punishing those just by association would be a cruel step to take and denigrate the experience for any player trying to get involved in nefarious activity - The criteria to establish what is strictly "association" and what warrants a search is somewhat subjective and could cause unnecessary dispute.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------That is only a minor point however, its sad to see gangs making a return using OOC as a means try and get free of police cuffs etc. I think the minority are spoiling it for the majority. Perhaps if this gang is an offshoot of a disbanded gang by staff, maybe its time for more disciplinary action as they seem to not be learning from their "mistakes".

[Str84it]

This seems to me to be a case of leaving things unchecked. Either it be through non reporting or not emphasizing on the framework we set forth at Badlands. 
I totally get you Brandon.  It is clear they are not following the rules or use them as they see fit.
I applaud the way you and Lt Young handled the situation.
As I also prefer to deal with things through RP. If that would be possible.
It seems to me it's possible situational-wise, complying and responding to your communication at the time.
But overall they go their merry ways.

I base myself entirely on this thread as I have not had the joy of encountering them.

I see a two options here. First of all it's clear these players are very aware of the rules.
Either we collectively take action and start reporting these individuals, if they do not adjust the ban hammer will fall for some. Maybe the rest will go in check or leave.
Or we R.P it out, basically set up such a scenario where they would be prohibited or at least hindered to continue on their streak.

Not only that, even more concerning, stop ruining the fun for others. Who knows, could be a lot of fun to think about it and RP it out.
The suggestion you gave was already a good one. 

Personally I hope if one of these individuals read this thread they have a bit of reflection, that people are not enjoying it and they are risking being a part of a great server.

Regarding giving a constructive answer to this thread. I don't think it's the best place to brainstorm if we are talking about setting up a RP scenario
But always count me or my character in when it comes to making the city a better place and having an RP scenario.

After reading this, any experience I have with these guys that doesn't follow server rules, I will document in case we decide to involve staff anyway.
I hate to take away the fun some players have, but I care to much for this community to let 'fun' for a few, ruin it for everybody else. There are rules for this reason.
Thanks for sharing mate!

[Payne]

2 hours ago, Johan | ynzx_ said:

This is straight rule-breaking and you should have reported it straight away especially if you have a clip of it. Admins can't do anything to something like this if they're not aware of it.

I report a lot of people, and I don’t want to be the guy causing bans to every person who breaks the rules in every little way. I have discussed this with staff; I am a magnet to misconduct. It always happens to me. I gave these guys the benefit of the doubt, hoping they can improve, since they are so new. I don’t want the first thing they do to end up with them banned. If I reported every little thing I saw, I wouldn’t be playing, I would be reporting every five minutes. It’s not an enjoyable experience, so I try not to report anyone unless they do it multiple times. After reading this thread, anything they do to me will definitely be reported. 

[baps]

Hey, member of Red Gang here. It seems all of this is getting blown completely out of proportion. We have talked to an admin about current and past events and cleared some things up. Now gossip and straight up blatant lies are painting a slanderous picture of our group. So, it seems we need to clear things up on here too. Now, we aren't perfect. We are indeed fairly new and doing the best we can, but there are certain "veterans" of the community that are exaggerating and blatantly lying in an attempt to ban our group. This needs to stop.

First off, we, under no circumstances, sexually harass or try to sexually assault anyone. We are all strongly against that. It is unacceptable. It is also unacceptable for someone to lie about that. It is a highly sensitive topic and can be very damaging.  No one should ever lie about such a thing. We have been accused of targeting certain individuals and trying to "RP rape" them every day. We haven't ever done this, and the lies about this need to stop. We also don't have a green-light to hunt down and target or harass people, as someone (who I won't identify) claims. Lately, we have been accused of harassment for everything we do. Last night, someone said we were harassing their gang because their gang colors are silver and their gang car is the comet, and someone in our group has the same car. "They copied our gang color and car, that is harassment!" Really? That is ridiculous. One of our members grinded for 20 hours to buy the comet because it is his favorite car. Driving a certain car isn't harassment. So please stop calling everything harassment when it isn't, and stop with the damaging lies. If you have a problem with us, come and talk to us--don't just tell every ear who is willing to listen your grievance with us before clearing things up with us first. What happens when you do that is exactly what is happening now: we clear things up with one person, but there are 50 more that only know one side of the story.

Second, our gang/group size. We indeed do have a large group. We probably have 20-30 members. We are basically a community as well. With that said, we have gotten better about committing crime with only 4 people in a group. Now there have been instances with more, I am not denying that. The latest one was an issue in Legion Square. However, since the meeting, we do make an attempt to keep it to 4. We do have a lot of new members and we tell this to everyone. We don't have an attire requirement anymore, and we don't tell people that they have to make their attire or vehicles any particular color. We even suggest that people don't wear red. However, people in the group are still free wear what they like. It is all up to their personal taste. It isn't designed to rep the gang by any means. If you see us with more than 4 people, we are probably just hanging out or grinding money. At the end of the day, we are friends, and we want to play a fun game together. So if you see a large group of people, please don't feel intimidated, we are just hanging out. However, if someone rolls up and tries to start problems, I can't promise the outcome.

Moving on to RP. Most of the time we do our best to RP by the server's standards. I wish we could say we do this all the time, but we are still working on that. Again, we aren't perfect. But neither is anyone else. People slip up, people break character, people sometimes try to take the law into their own hands... we can do better, but so can everyone else. With that said, we try to stay on server 2 when we can. We only go to server 1 when we have to because server 2 goes down. That is when the issues started to arise. When we go to server one, we do not try to target or hunt down a specific individual, we don't try to "RP rape" or harass people. We go there to make money. When we first went there, we tried to RP rob people, and so on and so forth, and we kill people when they don't comply to reasonable demands. The issue is that when we do RP, certain veteran and non-veteran players usually break character and complain about how we don't RP correctly. Most of the time, the people we kill don't comply with any demands and don't demonstrate having any value for their life. Which, again, veteran players should know that you are supposed to value your life. When they don't, they are breaking RP. There is a hypocrisy to it all. If you don't like us, that is fine; but if we RP, then hold yourself to your own standards and RP back. This whole "I don't RP with them on principle" or "because they are going to rape me" is a cop out. If we RP with you, RP back and record. If someone in the group does some heinous shit, report them. We don't want them around either. It's that simple. In the meantime, we are going to stay away from the people we have problems with the best we can.

Lastly, I feel like I should bring up last night, since it seems the issue has made its rounds throughout the entire community. Last night, before server 2 went down, one of our members was VDM'd. As there was no EMS online, he died. The individual who did it pulled out a meth truck. The server crashed for the night and we noticed he went to server 1.  So we decided to go check out the meth farm (with 4 members). This is where we were in the wrong--we should have RP'd the scenario when we found him. But because we were mad at him for what he did, we were going to just do an eye-for-an-eye. Again, this was the wrong way of handling the situation, but we were pretty mad. I am sure many people can relate. We drove to the nearest garage and saw smoke from a meth trunk. We approached it and before we saw who it was, one of our members opened fire. It wasn't our perp. It was a case of mistaken identity. We should have stopped and cleared it up right then and there and called an EMS. But we didn't. We continued to look for the guy that committed the VDM. We thought it was possible that the person that we shot was with him. Up until that point, everything that happened was indeed our fault. We own up to that, we apologize for that, we talked to the admins about that.

However, it didn't end there. Several minutes later, we received a message from other players stating that the person we killed was telling other players that we tried to "RP rape" her and such. She went to every person she saw with this story. On her stream she says, "Every night they try to hunt me down and they try to RP rape me and kill me. They have a green-light to kill me because I don't go along with their RP rape." This couldn't be further from the truth. That isn't something to lie about. It is a serious issue and should never be used as a weapon to get someone banned just because you don't like them. We don't hunt her down, we don't have a green-light on her, we don't sexually harass or assault her or anyone else. It was mistaken identity and wrong place/wrong time. We try to avoid this person because every time we run into her and her group, there are problems. Now, you may see a clip of a person saying, "For that I should get on tomorrow and try to rape her." That is indeed something that should have never been said, but a couple things on that matter: the person who said that doesn't play GTA or FiveM. He happened to be in the discord when the drama was going down. It doesn't excuse it, but the person that said it made the comment after this player made those false claims, and he said it after we heard about the rumors being spread. He made it in response to that. Again, that doesn't excuse that person for making that comment. But a comment that a person makes that doesn't play the game shouldn't get someone that does play banned. Sadly, it was used to get someone banned. The footage was doctored and made to look as if the person who recorded it was the one saying it. Even after they knew it wasn't him that said it, they still used it against him to get him banned. This has since been cleared up with the admins.

I hope this clears some things up for everyone else. I think I covered mostly everything. If you have any questions or problems with us, please come talk to us first before spreading more rumors and gossip. At the end of the day, we all play to have fun, and we play RP to have a different experience that GTA Online simply can't provide.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. See ya around.

[Luis Fernando]

You couldn't have explained it any better! 

[LouieCanicatti]

Yall call them gangs, I call them GTAO Worthy children. *Shrug Emoji* *Female Sign Emoji*

[dK_]

First of all I’d like to thank you guys for jumping on to the forums, to me that really solidifies someone’s intention on wanting to be a part of the community. I won’t get into to any of the sexual harassment stuff as I have never been there to witness it in person. What I have seen is multiple members of your gang talked to on a very professional manner twice now and even offered you advice and tips on ways to RP as a gang, and yet I have seen personally a coupl of your members still pulling the same kinda shit. I’m not saying everyone on your community has caused issues, but when you’re rolling around as a gang everyone of your members actions reflect on the entire group itself, so when you have a couple of people causing issues it gets seen as your whole group causing issues, you should keep that in mind when you let people represent you. Last night I jumped on ems, I wanted to get on for an hour or so help some people and then relax as a civ and as soon as you guys started popping off it was constant chaos from then on and I ended up staying in for approx 3hrs untill thens calmed down. No I didn’t see everything that had gone done that night but I he several calls that I responded too that were people who were killed by people they assumed were red gang due to there clothing. I was also verbally harassed and threatened when I was ems for not entering a scene to help someone in red while there was gun shots from a near by rooftop making it an unsafe scene for me to respond too, now I will say they guy that was actually down was a pleasure to RP with, his buddy obnoxiously yelling at me and everyone else I tried help wasn’t so much. This goes back to my point where everyone you choose to let represent you will reflect on your gang as a whole, whether it was the guy shooting people from the roof that we all just assumed was someone representing you guys or the guy threating and yelling at EMS to enter an unsafe situation. Sorry for any grammatical or spelling errors as this was typed on my phone.

[Payne]

As a leader / representative of a gang, you should understand that certain people are unmanageable. They do what they want. In that, claiming that you have 20-30 members, maybe take a step back and think about what issues this can cause. Its almost out of your control at that point. While baps, you do seem sensical and trying to reason it out, i do believe the crowd needs some thinning. Ill tell you the same thing i told grove street before they disbanded and reformed into a crime syndicate. 

1) Vetting process - People wearing you colors should be people you fully trust to always do the right thing. Yes, people mess up, but it is at a large scale at this point.

2) Limit gang size - Only allow 15 people, max, in your group IMO. This allows for at-least 4 people to be online at all times. If not 4, at-least 2-3. It's a manageable number of people to control and ensure they are doing the right thing, and it also allows you to have a large group of friends in which you will be able to always have someone to play with. 

3) Read, Love, Use the rules - Self explanatory, but ensure anyone on your group can recite the rules almost by heart. It doesn't take long to learn them. Im a cop, EMS, and civ, and can regurgitate almost any SOP or rule. Im known as the SOP guy between all of my friends. If i can learn and memorize all 3, i think the server rules are an easy one. Its a two way street, report anyone who harasses you / breaks the rules. Nobody is above them.  

4) Be an amazing gang - Do something different, trust us, we want an amazing gang on the server. We want someone who will give reason to the gang rules being in place. That said, dont be an obnoxious shoot-everyone-on-sight gang like we have seen 100 times before. Make an organization, be professional. Or be the gangsters you want to be, control a certain part of the map. (Not grove street or other sell points). Take over the docks, find YOUR reason to be a gang. Don't be another "We own grove / weed farm, pay us a tax to enter". 

 

While i cant speak for anyone else, i know what i posted was true, and i can send you the clips personally if you want to see them and talk to the members who did it, and try to improve them as a member of the server. Like i also said earlier, they were not reported because i believe in second chances, and don't want to ruin somebody else's chance to become the amazing gang i want to see. I am a huge proponent of improving others to make my own experience better. I spent hours talking to the Grove gang trying to teach them how to properly be a part of the server, and i will have no issue doing the same for you. I Am Alex Payne in the discord, basically at the top of the PD List. You can DM me any time and ask me for advice, tips, or in general any help you may need, just please explain who you are in your first message to me. (I use discord for work, school, games everything, so its hard to know who is trying to contact me.)

-Alex Payne, 15481

Edited March 3, 2018 by Payne

[Kye Cash]

.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Kye Cash

[TiLLeR]

I actually thought that the discussion above was constructive and honestly I welcome people trying to work it out other than just whining....  Not feeling your comment is very constructive nor useful.

[baps]

I appreciate the constructive feedback from you Payne, and everyone else. You are right, having so many people can be very difficult to manage. It grew to this size simply because friends want to play with their friends. Being accountable for so many peoples actions is a heavy burden. I understand that what one person does can affect the image of the entire gang. If someone is being a problem that claims to be [or is known to be] a part of Red Gang, please let us know. That way we can make sure it is indeed a member and not an impersonator and so we can take action. We aren't against thinning the herd if we have to. We aren't here to take over the city. We don't want to be a nuisance or ruin anyone's experience. We want to provide positive experiences for everyone, civilians and Law Enforcement alike.  Again, we apologize for past grievances and misconduct. Many of our members came from Altis Life, so we know how to RP. There are some rule differences, but as it was mentioned, they should be easy rules to follow, and they will be. I hope we can put any past issues behind us and move forward in a positive direction.

[BrandonM]

2 hours ago, Andrew Night said:

The amount of crying and whining is absolutely insane in this community.

If you dont feel like being constructive and actually contributing to the conversation, you can feel free to bounce, dude.

And just a heads up, I was watching the stream the night all the crashing was happening and saw you and LastKing spamming emotes and filling a parking lot with guitars and leafblowers. That's the reason the server has problems, sometimes, because people like you who are only here to troll and grind money instead of actually RPing don't actually care about it.  We have these conversations to express our concerns about what's happening in game because we genuinely enjoy it.  People who settle for the status quo are either actually content, which usually isnt the case and isn't in yours because I've heard you complain about things in game, or just don't actually care.  

To be fair, your comment could be construed as whining about people complaining.

If you're going to get upset when people report your crew for breaking rules that you agree to every time you log into the server, I'm not sure what to tell you.  When members of your group stream and you can actually hear the metagaming happening, that's not the community's fault.  That's on y'all.  I understand your bias, however, as you dont want to accept the fact that maybe some of your group don't follow the rules of the server.  They're your friends. You want to think that they're not at fault and aren't doing wrong.  Unfortunately, those rose colored glasses are hiding all the red flags in front of your face.

This thread was intended to be a heads up for you guys, instead of a bashing thread. These are simply some things that I've first hand witnessed that I wanted to address with y'all instead of taking it to the admins. Like I said in the meeting we had, I genuinely like you guys. I don't think you mean wrong, I just think you needed more clarification on the rules. When I heard that guy in your squad acknowledging that y'all were breaking the rules but then saying y'all dont care, after we had that long chat in front of the PD that you, personally, said we were on the same page about, I decided to make this post to bring it to the public of the community. Since you think that me handling it this way is "whining and crying," I'll just start with no notice reporting instead.

 

Since this thread has devolved to the state it's in now, I'd like to request it to be locked. @speed, @TiLLeR, @Serpico

 

[TiLLeR]

I don't think it's devolved but I ask that it not get personal (any further)

[SneakyAzWhat]

I am happy to see this discussion take place. It's important for players of different factions to be able to establish dialogue about problems without feeling persecuted. Hopefully the leaders of gangs can get together and have a gentlemen's agreement regarding the handling of business. This creates accountability on the player scale that can be much more efficient than repeated Admin intervention.

 

Good Job.