Suggestion Don't allow voice identification for criminal activity

[avralwobniar]

Having to change your voice gets straining. There's other means of identifying people like fingerprinting, style, vehicle choice, behavior and so on. I could change my entire outfit, wearing multiple layers of masks but someone will still immediately identify me as Rusty.

I don't want to change my voice to sound like a chipmunk or use a voice changer to have a chance at getting away with criminal activity.

 

[Northgate]

Jarl Balgruf why are you tasing me!!!

Damn you Stormcloaks. Los Santos was fine until you came along.

 

[avralwobniar]

This should not be a rule at all as this will breed the toxic cop v robber mentality. It is best to leave the matter unregulated from an OOCly perspective and let the ICly consequences apply to the individual that sought to pursue such arrest.

Being nice and letting people go because you have no evidence outside of recognizing their voice will never breed a toxic cops vs robbers mentality, that doesn't make any sense.

It absolutely should be a rule that you can't identify someone solely on voice or use your only point of evidence as a voice. I'm not interested in doing rp in the courts covering situations that aren't even based on rp, but rather pd trying score a win over you because voice identification is the easiest and laziest form of evidence. It doesn't bring good roleplay, ever, and discourages someone like negan from doing the funny voice. I'd sooner stop playing than need to deal with this on a regular basis

 

[Aether]

I have no idea why this has kicked off so much but I'll give my piece on this as a reporter who has pretty much met everyone once or twice.

I am on the side of "people should be recognisable by their voice" but I agree with the "but it can't be used as legal evidence of someone 100% being that person you suspect them to be and additionally if they're at least trying to hide their voice a bit then you should go along with it"

but that being said:

hell i walked up to @Aether on Hayden after getting new clothes and going "hi my name is David" and he was completely none the wiser

I agree with this, Hayden usually looks like a spooky ghost and instead he looked like ken from barbie and I 100% did not recognise him, even with the voice taken into account. If you go out of your way to look different as well and change your walk style, it can definitely help.

You should be able to guess who someone is based on their voice and I think expecting everyone to not recognise them without any attempt at all to change it will be too much to ask.

Can I offer perhaps a suggestion of "much like how changing our voice level changes our voice volume, maybe wearing a mask adds a muffled filter over your voice" and then everyone just goes "well their voice is muffled because they're wearing a mask so even though they sound roughly like someone I know I can't tell for sure"

 

[Straven]

If you go out of your way to look different as well and change your walk style

As Negan I have on multiple times dressed differently and walked differently, I even become Barry the Chipmunk with my voice. People still recognise me purely based off of how my microphone sounds and the way I say certain words and stuff. It doesn't matter how much you change yourself if your voice (and some factors outside of voice such as how your microphone sounds) can lead to you getting instantly identified.

 

[avralwobniar]

You should be able to guess who someone is based on their voice and I think expecting everyone to not recognise them without any attempt at all to change it will be too much to ask.

You just act like you don't recognize them

 

[MaXenzie]

You just act like you d

well said

 

[Aether]

As Negan I have on multiple times dressed differently and walked differently, I even become Barry the Chipmunk with my voice. People still recognise me purely based off of how my microphone sounds and the way I say certain words and stuff. It doesn't matter how much you change yourself if your voice (and some factors outside of voice such as how your microphone sounds) can lead to you getting instantly identified.

I don't think I've ever recognised someone based on "how their microphone sounds" but very much about how they act and speak. With you specifically however, I think there's an argument to be made for celebrities.

You just act like you don't recognize them

Or people could not wear the same mask/outfit every time they want to be inconspicuous and could at least try to not sound like themselves.

 

[avralwobniar]

Or people could not wear the same mask/outfit every time they want to be inconspicuous and could at least try to not sound like themselves

That's the point. People do and are still forcibly recognized. I also don't believe someone should have to change their voice to be unrecognizable. Unfortunately not everyone here is a D list voice actor and the vocal range of a player shouldn't be a barrier of entry for different activities on the server. Congratulations to the people that can talk in funny accents and pitches, but that should always just be flavor and not something that has an actual effect on how much you can participate

I think it's really odd that there's so much contention over this, since at the end of the day it's just gtarp. People are here to enjoy themselves and not being able to recognize someone who doesn't look like themselves, masked up, hardly takes anything away from your own experience besides being able to immediately rat/seek revenge on people without the rp of discovering who it was

 

[Aether]

That's the point. People do and are still forcibly recognized.

Again, I think it's fine for them to guess, but ultimately be unable to be certain and for it to not be legally certain either. If someone goes "that's x" you should be able to go "no it isn't" and both answers should be equal.

not being able to recognize someone who doesn't look like themselves, masked up, hardly takes anything away from your own experience besides being able to immediately rat/seek revenge on people without the rp of discovering who it was

I mean that's a pretty big part of everything though. Having absolutely zero way to identify someone makes shit very boring and honestly pretty cringe because then it just turns into "you have absolutely no way of knowing who decided to fuck with you on repeat" and it just becomes very tiring.

Like I get it, cops identifying you on voice alone is bad, but civvies need some way to be able to figure shit out otherwise it's just going to be a mess. They don't have access to fingerprints/dna/etc so what else can they do other than go off of guesses?

 

[alex]

I think when a civilian recognises you by your voice it’s going to happen mostly when you’re just chatting and doing nothing nefarious that needs you to conceal your identity.

But I do agree that due to how police can be the end of your activities, voice alone maybe shouldn’t be enough to identify you unless obviously you’re making zero effort to conceal your face.

As for other options like submixing with masks, I feel that would only work once or twice and then that voice would be recognisable.

Hell, I wore Negan’s outfit for a while just in the hopes that police would stop associating it with him. That’s the problem, there aren’t unlimited masks, clothing or ways to change your voice.

 

[Aether]

As for other options like submixing with masks, I feel that would only work once or twice and then that voice would be recognisable.

I do think at least having some kind of audio difference would help, at least from my perspective.

 

[Pyromaniac]

TL:DR at bottom

I just saw someone that looked a lot like Silver Sun (face-wise) but the voice was evidently very different.

Any form of APB; Clothes, Skin Colour, Voice, Vehicle etc can be replicated by others IRL and in-game your voice is shared by your other characters.

An APB helps an investigation, find potential suspects and inquire them about the incident or potentially gather enough probable cause/reason to detain them for full proper identification and potentially analyzing certain things such as their weapons.

A voice alone is not and never has been enough evidence to pass in court or reach a guilty verdict. However, if you get an APB be it voice alone or clothing (Examples; Suspect sounded like Silver Sun) that can be enough reason to warrant your own character to assume a chance for it to be the guy you're looking for and try to get proper identification. Perhaps some officers immediately assume guilt but without proper evidence will find themselves not getting far and if they get the wrong guy (as in evidence does not indicate enough guilt) that person can make a complaint with the chiefs/gov and perhaps get them in trouble with the chiefs IC.

TL:DR, Any form of APB is to help find potential suspects, this includes voice. However if a suspect ran away without you having any more solid means of identifying them any charges brought against them are very unlikely to stick and if cops do still, hopefully as a character RP decision, assume guilt and charge solely on that information. You can complain about it to the chiefs for it to be handled/compensated.

E: This entire discussion reminded me of this video

 

[RedMan]

Being nice and letting people go because you have no evidence outside of recognizing their voice will never breed a toxic cops vs robbers mentality, that doesn't make any sense.

You can release a suspect regardless whether the rule exists or not, and we have released people on the basis of no evidence (or lack of applicable charges on that matter; joyriding, attempted burglarly and so on) in the past. If a cop arrests you on the basis of solely recognising your voice, you might as well pursue it in court, exonerate yourself and earn a fair piece of that sweet compensation for the troubles. Alternatively, you can bother the Chief of police and appeal the case yourself in-character and avoid the entire court process. You have options to pursue and punish this illogical way of thinking within the PD in-character, and you choose to tackle it out-of-character by imposing restrictions on roleplay.

Once you start imposing these sorta restrictions, you will start to formulate a criteria which cops will undermine; doing the bare minimum to warrant the arrest and leaving it at that. It is far better to encourage logical thinking and punish those that try their luck through the aforementioned minimalistic efforts.

There's other means of identifying people like fingerprinting, style, vehicle choice, behavior and so on. I could change my entire outfit, wearing multiple layers of masks but someone will still immediately identify me as Rusty.

It is not that simple. Fingerprinting is only available once you catch the individual. Vehicle choice is unreliable since no one really owns a vehicle and no one is stupid enough to use their own personal vehicle in a crime; not to mention the majority of criminals always drive a "stolen" sports car. You cannot identify someone solely on the basis of their behaviour, there is the concept of recidivism and the process of correlating certain characteristics of a person with a crime, but it only serves to grant more credibility to the arrest rather than something you can use to identity and arrest someone. You also cannot identity someone on the basis of their clothing alone unless they have a very distinct source of branding; refer to the gangs of Los Santos or Joker and other villains in the Marvel Universe. Even then, the person will only become a person of interest and nothing more beyond that unless there is concrete evidence to suggest they were in fact present at the scene of the crime.

 

[boots]

A voice alone is not and never has been enough evidence to pass in court or reach a guilty verdict. However, if you get an APB be it voice alone or clothing (Examples; Suspect sounded like Silver Sun) that can be enough reason to warrant your own character to assume a chance for it to be the guy you're looking for and try to get proper identification. Perhaps some officers immediately assume guilt but without proper evidence will find themselves not getting far and if they get the wrong guy that person can make a complaint with the chiefs/gov and perhaps get them in trouble with the chiefs IC.

TL:DR, Any form of APB is to help find potential suspects, this includes voice. However if a suspect ran away without you having any more solid means of identifying them any charges brought against them are very unlikely to stick and if cops do still, hopefully as a character RP decision, assume guilt and charge solely on that information. You can complain about it to the chiefs for it to be handled/compensated.

I think if voice identification is being used as grounds to warrant a player and perform an investigation on that alone then it will reduce the server to simply I don't interact with cops or talk to them ever because then that will be used against me, and even though I want to have fun, if I use my voice it will jeopordize my future and my liberty so I will just drive away as fast as possible and avoid every cop interaction ever.

The interaction between a wanted player (while masked) and a cop should go like this in my opinion:
Cop: You sound a lot like John
John: No that's not me
Cop: Ok

If police pursue a suspect or witness them committing a crime and they are unable to catch them during the pursuit then they should be free to walk away with the risk of being identified later down the line if you are again somehow linked to the crime, typically by wearing the same outfit or through DNA evidence, which would be acquirable by police catching you commiting a crime again under the same APB so same vehicle/clothing/face identification.

 

[Deleted member 442]

Alternatively, you can bother the Chief of police and appeal the case yourself in-character and avoid the entire court process.

I’m toilet-posting right now but I just wanna hop in and say this shouldn’t be happening if the charges have already been processed.

If they’ve been charged, fined, and sent up, appeals should only be going through the courts, not the same agency (LSPD) that charged and sent you to begin with. Courts are supposed to be the mediating force between two parties.

I know that it’s a little wacky not having any judges right now, but this should just be more incentive to hurry up and get that stuff going and make it a priority. Hopefully the courts are established before the statute of limitations for day 1 crimes expires.

 

[Pyromaniac]

I think if voice identification is being used as grounds to warrant a player and perform an investigation on that alone then it will reduce the server to simply I don't interact with cops or talk to them ever because then that will be used against me, and even though I want to have fun, if I use my voice it will jeopordize my future and my liberty so I will just drive away as fast as possible and avoid every cop interaction ever.

The interaction between a wanted player (while masked) and a cop should go like this in my opinion:
Cop: You sound a lot like John
John: No that's not me
Cop: Ok

If police pursue a suspect or witness them committing a crime and they are unable to catch them during the pursuit then they should be free to walk away with the risk of being identified later down the line if you are again somehow linked to the crime, typically by wearing the same outfit or through DNA evidence, which would be acquirable by police catching you commiting a crime again under the same APB so same vehicle/clothing/face identification.

While you might not mean it the way you used it, Warrants (shouldn't) be applied on voice alone already. That requires more statements and I believe the chief's are vigilant for it especially after your case w/ Silver Sun.

Let's assume the following case:

An officer is performing a traffic stop, the suspect did speak momentarily with a voice the officer could (later) recognise before speeding off and disappearing.

Later the officer is sitting in burgershot, when a man with different clothing/mask comes in and speaks in a voice the officer recognises from the aforementioned situation. The Officer can go up and ask/attempt to get an identity on the individual that matches the APB. Let's assume that the officer gets the identity either through voluntary ID or through arrest for Obstruction of Justice and the following process.

Congratulations, the officer now has an individual with the same voice as the one that got away from him. What do you mean can I prove it was him driving the car and not just someone with a similar voice? (Suspect is later found innocent as there was not enough evidence to prove he was driving)

Now, if you have committed a crime where enough evidence was brought against you to identify it as you who did it but you haven't been caught yet. You'll be under a warrant, which means the threat of officers identifying you is significantly raised. Then this becomes a problem for you as should be natural.

Now with all the chaos that has happened in the days since warrants functioned, we've only had 4 maybe 5. Which collectively was for like maybe 2 or 3 people because not all crimes get warrants and even fewer crimes where the suspect got away to have enough evidence to prove it was the suspect which means that it won't be warranted.

 

[avralwobniar]

If a cop arrests you on the basis of solely recognising your voice, you might as well pursue it in court, exonerate yourself and earn a fair piece of that sweet compensation for the troubles. Alternatively, you can bother the Chief of police and appeal the case yourself in-character and avoid the entire court process. You have options to pursue and punish this illogical way of thinking within the PD in-character, and you choose to tackle it out-of-character by imposing restrictions on roleplay.

This is a very silly and unfun way of looking at it. I simply do not care enough about it to go through an annoying process of punishing some cop that decided to be a dickhead and arrest me just based on how I sound. It's not fun, it doesn't bring forward any genuine rp to the table and just serves to make either side angry and upset. The rule would establish that nobody has to deal with getting arrested and being stuck in court for hours at a time over something that never should have happened in the first place. If you have to use someones voice to launch an investigation, and everything you've done with a player traces back to you simply hearing their voice then it's clear to me that the individual doing that has no place on the server, and they're not here to roleplay with others - they're here to score arrests by any means necessary, enjoyment of the other player be damned.

An officer is performing a traffic stop, the suspect did speak momentarily with a voice the officer could (later) recognise before speeding off and disappearing.

Later the officer is sitting in burgershot, when a man with different clothing/mask comes in and speaks in a voice the officer recognises from the aforementioned situation. The Officer can go up and ask/attempt to get an identity on the individual that matches the APB. Let's assume that the officer gets the identity either through voluntary ID or through arrest for Obstruction of Justice and the following process.

Congratulations, the officer now has an individual with the same voice as the one that got away from him. What do you mean can I prove it was him driving the car and not just someone with a similar voice? (Suspect is later found innocent as there was not enough evidence to prove he was driving)

The fact the player even has to deal with an arrest over such an inconsequential scenario is the issue in this situation. Dealing with the cops takes on hours of time sometimes, and arresting someone solely based on that and forcing them through the courts process should never happen in that way. This is just a testament that voice identification shouldn't be allowed.

I've said all I need to for the suggestion at this point, so this is where I stop.

 

[Pyromaniac]

Dealing with the cops takes on hours of time sometimes

That's a separate issue that I expect to lessen as officers learn the system more and become more certain in their actions

and arresting someone solely based on that and forcing them through the courts process should never happen in that way. This is just a testament that voice identification shouldn't be allowed.

I am saying that it is not enough to arrest people.

It's enough to detain them, perform a terry stop and get them to identify themselves. IF they choose not to do so, they're obstructing the officer from carrying out justice and can be arrested (and forcefully identified) and potentially charged with Obstruction of Justice.

However, if they do identify themselves It still doesn't prove them guilty of the original crime and as such cannot be arrested.

 

[RedMan]

I think if voice identification is being used as grounds to warrant a player and perform an investigation on that alone then it will reduce the server to simply I don't interact with cops or talk to them ever because then that will be used against me, and even though I want to have fun, if I use my voice it will jeopordize my future and my liberty so I will just drive away as fast as possible and avoid every cop interaction ever.

The interaction between a wanted player (while masked) and a cop should go like this in my opinion:
Cop: You sound a lot like John
John: No that's not me
Cop: Ok

If police pursue a suspect or witness them committing a crime and they are unable to catch them during the pursuit then they should be free to walk away with the risk of being identified later down the line if you are again somehow linked to the crime, typically by wearing the same outfit or through DNA evidence, which would be acquirable by police catching you commiting a crime again under the same APB so same vehicle/clothing/face identification.

As far as I am aware, there have been no warrants which relied solely on the voice as evidence of the identity of the individual. The closest to it would be Silver Sun's warrant which was issued on the first few days of the server opening, but even then, I spent at least fourty-five minutes going through the report and tossing out about 60% of the charges. This was mainly due to the poor quality of the report, but also because cops started to mash incidents together into a singular report. Seemingly relying on the APB of the first incident report. The quality of reports has since drastically improved for the better and I am yet to see a similar problem reoccur since then.

Otherwise, yeah, I agree. That is how interactions should roughly proceed unless there are some other outstanding details that may warrant a Terry stop or detainment on that matter.

For example, in the instance of executing Richard Leicaster's warrant, he chirped about his possible location and I had an APB of a suited individual with a bike helmet. This resulted in a Terry stop for someone matching that description, the detainment due to refusal in identifying themselves, and the eventual arrest for Obstruction of Justice for the lack of cooperation. The charge was dropped after fingerprints revealed the suspect was the person of interest and their warrant was served instead.

 

[RedMan]

I simply do not care enough about it to go through an annoying process of punishing some cop that decided to be a dickhead and arrest me just based on how I sound.

This might sound harsh, but I think you have no right to demand an entire OOCly rule because you find the in-character alternatives boring and annoying.

The rule would establish that nobody has to deal with getting arrested and being stuck in court for hours at a time over something that never should have happened in the first place.

If the court decides to rule in your favour over such affairs, you are going to have a lot of criminals thanking you for it. Since it would set the precedent that would apply to all arrests going forward. Which would provide a lot of roleplay for the cops, the court system, and provide a historical point in justice system of the server. A piece of history that I know @alex wants to pursue.