The Good Sec Thread(tm)

[Coolguye]

So, we've got a long chain of stories, threads, and other literature about Bad Security on these forums, but we don't really have any stories or discussions about what makes Good Security. The only resource for that is the wiki page, which doesn't get into a lot of specific behaviors that people seem to whine about. Really, the only direction you get is to not crush someone's face with a deactivated baton, cross-round grudge, and other shit that is awful no matter who does it. However, this isn't enough when you actually play Sec. You're always going to take some verbal abuse and hear a lot of whining in a red suit, but you should hopefully do your best to not earn the hatred and vitriol of the entire crew, which is very possible without even trying a lot of times.

Apprehending suspects
The ideal that a lot of people seem to talk up in the Good Security Officer is that they use their words before they stun a suspect. But, from my time as Sec and watching Sec work (sometimes from the business end of the baton), the reality on the ground is just plain not conducive to that. Even in the case of something hugely minor, such as an assistant with thermals, a Sec break-in, etc, telling someone to stop in the name of the law is going to prompt them to hit you with a fire extinguisher or run the hell away.

From a Sec perspective, this isn't cool. In the case of the fire extinguisher, you could very easily be KOed, robbed, and murdered because you were trying to give someone doing something they obviously shouldn't the benefit of the doubt. If they rabbit, you can now either spend 15 minutes chasing down one guy, or let them go and be assured they will be back to whatever they were doing in seconds. As Sec, you're in a quandary. If you stun first and ask questions later, you're a Bad Sec Man. If you get your shit kicked in or let random shitheads go scot-free, you're a Bad Sec Man. So which is better? Detaining for questioning causes screaming from the detainee, the alternative causes a smaller amount of screaming from a larger number of crew members. What would you do?

This goes part in parcel with repeated stunnings as transfers are being made. When brigging a prisoner, do you leave their cuffs on, and effectively give them a pair of handcuffs, or do you keep them stunned while you uncuff them and recover your cuffs? On one hand, there are a hundred ways people can fuck over a player with handcuffs, so it seems pretty Bad to make them so available to someone who's already acted up once. On the other, the sheer amount of bile I've seen hurled at guards for stunning someone two or three times during a brigging or arrest process is absolutely insane. Someone who was grumpy but placid will suddenly become a dictionary of rage and insults. This basically turns that person into a shithead with a vendetta the rest of the round, which is also easily construable as Bad, if for no other reason than the pollution it causes on the radio. How do you handle this situation?

Sentencing Suspects
This doesn't involve identified antagonists - the rules are pretty clear that if you positively identify someone as an antagonist, you can pretty much do whatever you want with the guy. The community also doesn't much care as long as you neutralize the traitor/changeling/vampire from attacking unassuming locals. Instead, let's talk about the other 95% of people you arrest - the random non-antags who are just up to no good.

The brig is on BYOND time. Everyone who's been hucked in there knows that. For every minute you get put on there initially, you can expect to go through two or three minutes getting out of there. Security gets a lot of good leeway for brigging people this way, but is there anything acknowledged as OK in lieu of or in addition to brigging?

ID demotion is often talked about, but with the HoP's penchant for vanishing and the Captain's penchant for getting killed, drunk, or obsessed with a vendetta against an Assistant, it doesn't seem very realistic a lot of times. Has anyone ever seen this happen reliably?

A few Officers on rounds I've played as Sec have a fondness for buying some Discount Dan's and force-feeding a sip as a punishment for minor asshattery. The rationale is that it skips the tedious arrest process for little shit, and the rest Food Poisoning forces mimics brig time pretty closely. Opponents say that poisoning someone is pretty much universally Bad, and if things are so fucked up that a proper arrest would take too long you shouldn't be arresting minor asshats anyway. How shitty or un-shitty is using Discount Dan's or other mild poison as frontier justice?

Let's try to avoid making this another gripefest about Sec or particular shitty Sec players and use this thread as a place to talk about what behaviors you expect to see in Good Sec - even when you're the one getting dragged away in cuffs.

[Crumplehat]

Feeding people what is pretty damn literally poison is being bad sec, hands down. From my experience DD doesn't just give you food poisoning but it also has mutagen in it which almost always gives you Tourette's or seizures or something. Don't do that.

What I've found to be surprisingly effective to the security process is to utilize the Detective for the legwork bits. It's a bizarrely fulfilling feeling to be a good detective and actually get results.

See, when people who are causing/having trouble see a sec officer, they might get the jitters and scram, but people don't usually just run right away at the sight of the detective. I've used that to settle a few petty disputes by trying to get both parties to explain their side of the conflict. Since they have to stop beating each other's faces in to explain to me why the other person is shit, that at least gives a little bit of a reprieve in the fight. You're not sec, really, so people don't expect you to make an arrest, so they won't be demanding it or fleeing if they think they're the ones on the chopping block. You need to stress to them that you're not sec for this to be effective, though, some detectives can get just as overzealous as real officers. If you can establish that, sometimes you can convey to the squabbling party just how fucking stupid their argument is, and if you're annoying enough they might just get sick of it and leave it alone. It might be temporary, though, because I've done this and later learned that the one person attacked and killed the other guy. If you think there's going to be a lingering grudge, alert Sec to the parties involved and ask they keep a lookout for any trouble from them. 8 out of 10 times you see petty fistfights like this, neither of these people will be antagonists. It's a sad fact but you have to realize that while this shit is awful, neither does it warrant a full-on SWAT team raid just to brig a couple of jackasses and start off some cockamamie Benny Hill chase when one or both of them inevitably flees.

Let the Detective collect evidence, take witness statements, gather info. Unless you saw the crime yourself (and if you did, report it right away over the radio with all the necessary information [location, suspect appearance and name if you caught it]) alert the detective to the nature of the crime and its general vicinity and let him go do his sleuthing thing. It saves the average officer a lot of work and a headache to boot to have the flatfoot doing all the public interface bits. Most of the crew don't like or don't trust Sec, but the Detective is generally just another crew member with fancy goggles, a sec headset, and a gun that he isn't supposed to use and which isn't very good anyway.

And FINGERPRINTS! THESE ARE IMPORTANT! More important than some people like to think. The detective's scanner isn't as useful as it would be if you could actually identify blood, but it's still pretty useful!

Statistically, most people on the station don't have gloves. The people who do can usually be categorized as the following: Insulated fibers indicate someone with yellow gloves had the item you're scanning. [Engineering/Electrical has insulated gloves, but often times Miners can get their hands on some, as can other people if Electrical is being sloppy. QM can order some, and they generally don't hide the fact that they've ordered engineering crates.] Black fibers indicate the prints belong to someone who was wearing black gloves. [QM, hydroponics, the detective, and mining all wear black gloves. The only way that these gloves are obtained are if they're taken off one of these groups or if they're left just laying around, or if the box of them is stolen from the Detective's locker.] White latex fibers indicate the person was wearing medical gloves. [Roboticists are the only ones who start with these gloves, but a box of them can be found in Medbay for use by anyone who can get to it.] These facts won't always lead you directly to a suspect, but it gives you a place to start.

Remember, multiple prints on an item are listed in chronological order. It's almost always a good bet that the first set of prints on a traitor item belong to the one who created it, unless they belong to whoever snatched it up and led sec to it (or if it's an officer's prints). If you can collect evidence on a suspect, you can point him out to Sec; give them his name, his job, and do them the favor of setting Beepsky on his trail for added backup. If all you have are fibers, go to the areas where people wear those sorts of gloves and question them about any sneaky shenanigans they may have seen.

For extra arpee bonus fun, find a piece of paper and a pen and take elaborate, detailed notes written in a gruff and hardboiled fashion about your interrogations and findings, so when people find your corpse they can find out what lead you were chasing when someone killed you in the middle of writing something.

Now about Security
First off, despite the fact that you are told it's okay to do whatever you want to a confirmed traitor (though that's not expressly true either), you have to realize that not everyone else will always be privy to the same evidence as you. If Pubs McTraitorface murdered someone with a cyalume saber, and you disarm him and chase him across the station with it to murder his traitorface in front of a crowd of people, guess who looks like the crazed lunatic? It's not the poor greyshirt getting killed with a c-saber. See, people are paranoid of Sec because they don't always know that they're not traitors in disguise, or zealous assholes out to nazify the station. And sometimes, if one or two sec officers legitimately are being shit, the rest will suffer from it when the crew starts harassing security back. THE WRONG THING TO DO IN THIS SITUATION IS TO START HARASSING THEM BACK AND CHASING ASSHOLES AROUND THE STATION FOR FARTING ON YOU. It is an INSANE waste of resources, time, and energy. Additionally, while it's definitely a bad thing to let an assistant swoop into sec and steal gear, do NOT go and mobilize the whole fucking force against him. Again, 7/10 times this happens it's just some jackass assistant trying to fuck with security. The more force you exert against such a force, the more it is going to beat you in the face. Remember his face, bide your time, maybe set beepsky on him, but don't go on a bloody rage rampage over it. It is NOT worth it. Trust me.

Additionally, resisting arrest is annoying and dumb in many cases, and if the person you were trying to arrest was a high-profile suspect, by all means try to track him down. But don't go running around with your stun baton and taser in hand like a big "PUSH ME OVER" target is taped to your back. Again, securitrons can come in handy, and barring that, the detective and his ass-seeking goggles can help you locate the guy. Worst case scenario, back off and let the detective talk to him, try to see what his deal is. If he says he's innocent, ask him to prove it by agreeing to a search. Even if they refuse they may still be innocent, but as long as you have them talking you can still try to straighten the situation out. Do it over the radio, ask for witnesses. Anything beats dragging someone kicking and screaming to security using only your flash to keep him immobilized so any assistant with a head for injustice can come and kick your ass and let him go to start the process over again. Remember, if you look like the bad guy, people will think that's what you are.

So consider NOT ramming a traitor's c-saber through his traitorface. Maybe consider stealing all his cool traitor jams and chucking him back out into the wild to try again, if the game's only just started and you only caught him because of thermals. If his second attempt is equally pathetic, steal his shit again and kick him back out. If he comes at you with a fire extinguisher the third time, then he's out. But maybe instead of dragging him to an airlock to throw him to space, maybe borg him? Or maybe brig him for five minutes, which as previously stated would probably translate to 10 minutes, being generous. Don't worry, he'll either break out of there using his shoes or talk some other naive dope into breaking him out long before that point anyway. Remember, a round without traitors is kind of boring, and when it happens all you have are a bunch of bored assistants looking for havoc to wreak. Nobody wants that.

Try to come up with non-lethal, non-psychopathic responses to problems. That's how you avoid being crucified by the crew for being bad sec. And lock the fucking equipment lockers and close the goddamn doors, you fucking morons.

[FrontlineAcrobat4]

I am looking for a good Security Officer who is big and strong with muscles. He can protect from all of the nerds, but he also has the tenderness to cradle me in his arms whenever I get a scrape, and can sing.

[Coolguye]

stuff

There's a lot of good stuff in here (I didn't know that fingerprints were in chronological order, that's badass), but it looks to me like a lot of this is the same really broad advice we get from the wiki - don't get involved in petty vendettas, don't act like a lunatic, etc. I'm hoping to more get nuts and bolts that there's no guidance on, anywhere. Most other jobs have step by step instructions to being 'good'. A Roboticist should make these upgrades to be 'good' to the cyborgs, the Botanist should grow weed like this to be 'good' to the fuckoffs on the station, whatever. There's no such specific help for Sec.

Part of that's inevitable, because Sec is inherently PvP and that's bound to change every round. But that's no reason to not have rules of engagement, e.g., DO take your cuffs back after brigging someone and this is how you do it. DON'T get creative with punishments on non-traitors (because DD's fucks you over the whole round). DO search everyone you apprehend and this is how you do it. DON'T confiscate XYZ items, ever, because they are critical. Shit like that.

[Crumplehat]

Alright, well for one thing, never try to search a person in a congested area, and never take off their uniform unless you absolutely need them buck-ass naked for some reason. If you get them somewhere away from prying kleptos, take off their backpack and empty their pockets. If they have a PDA, take that off too. CTRL+click them after they've been cuffed to make sure they won't be going anywhere, because they can't get away when they're cuffed and someone is pulling them around. Use this to search suspects on the scene, because just straight stripping them bare and letting them get looted, only to find out you had the wrong guy, is so fucking terrible. Even if they aren't getting looted, they still have to spend a few minutes getting everything back on and straight. Don't strip people, it's rude and obnoxious and makes people hate you.

As for the handcuffing issue, they can still get past you with cuffs on if they're not stunned, so just leaving them standing but cuffed in the brig cell while you go out to set the timer won't keep them from gunning it right back out and unquestionably resulting in that same benny hill bullshit I mentioned earlier with the segways. Every fucking time. Stun them with the baton, take your cuffs, set the timer. They can bitch all they want but that's their prerogative, because it's all they can do in there. And for fuck's sake, if you brig someone, don't leave them with tools or shit to break out with, but at the same time don't steal it all and squirrel it away either. If I remember right, brig lockers are still a thing, and you can put confiscated items in there. When the timer's up, the locker unlocks, and anyone who isn't a moron can get their stuff back before jumping down the flusher. So don't leave an engineer brigged with his insulated gloves and tools, dummies.

You say this stuff is the usual obvious stuff you'd see on the wiki but you'd be fucking amazed how often I see it happen.

[Coolguye]

If I remember right, brig lockers are still a thing, and you can put confiscated items in there. When the timer's up, the locker unlocks, and anyone who isn't a moron can get their stuff back before jumping down the flusher. So don't leave an engineer brigged with his insulated gloves and tools, dummies.

I still don't remember if those work right or not. Next time I'm Sec I'll double check to make sure they still work as intended.

You say this stuff is the usual obvious stuff you'd see on the wiki but you'd be fucking amazed how often I see it happen.

No argument - I've had to chew out my fellow Officers for that shit, plus even more dumb nonsense like openly talking about 'making an example out of' some reoffending hooligan who's been in and out of the brig 3-4 times for generalized asshattery. If you do that mess, it's time for a *suicide and succumb, because you need a break from Security. A lot of people just plain don't read the wiki. The difference is, once it's on the wiki, you really don't have any excuse for deviating from it in a huge way. That's your fault.

Annnnd this topic may or may not be a thinly veiled attempt to build consensus from experienced Security Officers and HoSes to put some of that shit on the wiki.

[Anticheese]

When people talk about a good security officer using their words first, we don't mean that you should give a Galtesque speech. Instead, don't walk around with your weapons out. When its not a life or death situation, be polite and give someone a chance to explain themselves and or come in quietly first.

People are a hell of a lot more cooperative towards a nice officer than a total dick who bucklecuffs you and feeds you Dan's for slipping them up on a banana.

[FrontlineAcrobat4]

One big thing I never see Security do is communictae with the crew. It can be a big help to annoucne what you are doing and why so the crew knows that when you arrest someone, you are doing it for an actual reason, and is not a wannabe SS Guard.

[atomic1fire]

Huge list of words

I think the best part about having security let detective play scooby doo (paraphrasing)

Security has actual evidence that someone is terrible, and not just so bored they feel like playing prison break. Plus if security is telling detective to do things, detective isn't getting drunk or getting murdered for his thermals, especially if detective keeps sec updated of their findings.

[Dachshundofdoom]

One big thing I never see Security do is communictae with the crew. It can be a big help to annoucne what you are doing and why so the crew knows that when you arrest someone, you are doing it for an actual reason, and is not a wannabe SS Guard.

I'd like to point out that this is entirely correct. If the whole crew knows that certain antags, traitor items, etc. are on the loose, they'll be more likely to help out or look for the offending party on their own, because god knows nothing gets the assistants excited than something they can legally beat to death. At the very least they'll be more cautious in lonely corners of the station. More in line with what he said, it's very common to walk in on a fight where both parties are covered in blood and screaming that the other guy started it, and while it's YOUR job to find out what happened, the crew has a bad tendency to just pick a side and help out when they see a fight. If they know that John McAntag is a changeling, they'll be less likely to rush in "to save the day from the facist Sec officers!" when they spot the whole security team bashing in his skull with harmbatons and dragging him to the crusher. Nothing hurts more than having that janitor who just killed 14 people with a cyalume get yanked out of your grasp by a sec-hating staff assistant who has no idea what he's playing with.

In fact, Sec should communicate more, period. I'm not happy unless there's constant radio chatter. Not only do you keep people up-to-date on your continued survival, but you make sure that the whole team knows about all the bad stuff going down. That's the difference between catching the guy with the boiling Dan's pen and having the Detective ask if anything bad is happening on the station while the guy with the pen is standing right next to him.

[Conor12]

As a detective I'm pretty much always chatting about what I see going on, and I try to pair up with a sec officer during my patrols. A team-mate always helps.

[Coolguye]

When its not a life or death situation, be polite and give someone a chance to explain themselves and or come in quietly first.

The problem being, on the ground? This never happens. EVER. If you, as an Officer, catch someone doing something they shouldn't and you try to be polite and talk to them first, they're either going to rabbit (and most likely get away, causing the Sophie's choice of chasing or letting them go) or attack the officer, who now has conceded the advantage to their suspect.

The overwhelming majority of suspects I've arrested that are resistant, abusive, and shitty are non-antags. Honestly the last 7 times I've arrested someone who just admits to crimes I caught them performing like a sane person, they've been a traitor or changeling. I end up wishing the guy I'm arresting is secretly an antagonist so I can just give them the brig time and a free blunt and move on. A lot of the problems I see between normal crew members and Sec stem specifically from unrealistic expectations like this. An officer who's afraid of offending people, plain and simple, is either an empty red suit or a loot pinata.

People are a hell of a lot more cooperative towards a nice officer than a total dick who bucklecuffs you and feeds you Dan's for slipping them up on a banana.

See, these are the sorts of extremes that I'm hoping to clarify here. There's a lot of behaviors in between ineffectually spooking suspects and being That Guy That Made Shitcurity A Thing. We've got altogether too many fucking examples of extreme rhetoric as it is.

So the question becomes, what is a fair balance between being forceful enough to be effective, and gentle enough to not be a dickhead? The way I personally do it is that I will flash/cuff/pull someone to keep them from running away, THEN ask them what the fuck they were doing. If they can explain what the hell is going on, I'll release them with an apology. I also try to keep a scooby snack of some sort on hand that I can give to people I've wrongfully arrested. The one I like most is Tricord pills, which you can get from Chemistry if they're paying attention. Other times I just grab a donut from the Sec office.

One big thing I never see Security do is communictae with the crew.

So would you like to see security do a radio announcement when they arrest someone, or set Beepsky after someone via the Sec computer? If so that's fine, I'm just trying to clarify to specifics.

[Sundance]

Tis' very hard to add anything more onto this thread.
One thing I definitely agree is mobilizing the detective, a proper communication between security and detective is a force to be reckoned with.
One thing I see alot of security do is "sheep" alot. On one of the rounds when I was playing HoP, I noticed a scientist with a welder in one hand, and splashing a beaker onto the security wall, it was only obvious what he was doing. I yelled in the sec channel "Danny thermiting into sec, stunning him for you guys to deal with" when danny screamed "Help, I'm being killed"
Within moments 2 security, the captain and the detective rushed the scene and I got shot by the detectives gun without a) being questioned or b) not listening to my broadcast, then I was stripped naked on the scene, and the worst of all they let danny go. So there I was, bleeding, naked, stunned and mightily pissed off.
I see people talking about communication being important, but there can be alot of misconceptions with this. A good security officer needs to know when someone is acting in self defense, with good intention or is just a general shithead or traitor. Rushing blindly into something without preparation, communication or just following another sec officer just "because" shows your inexperience.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is head's roles in security. I see it more often than I should security yelling at the AI to open a door, when the HoP who was just around the corner easily do the same thing for them (I like to see the HoP as a human doorknob), or even change their ID if they wish to patrol a certain sector. One thing I tried recently was having one security officer patrol med-sci, while anther engineering/QM and another Bridge, and it worked surprisingly well.
Touching on my previous paragraph, security shouldn't automatically trust a head above them. I've seen a captain order for the execution of someone and sec carrying out the order without hesitation, without thinking "Well, why is it necessary to kill this guy?"
Sec should also be good role models. Notify the crew about injured party, perhaps even drag them to medbay because god knows what could happen to their body if you leave it there, etc.

[Sundance]

Don't mean to double post,
But I also forgot to mention that the flash can be at times a more effective tool than the stun baton.
Why?
But the stun baton can stick out like a sore thumb. People often don't see you take the flash out from your pocket.
..Just saying.

[Coolguye]

The other reason I prefer the flash over the baton for your bread-and-butter arrest is because even if someone does pull a lucky disarm out on you, the flash can't be used against you as long as you're wearing your sunglasses, like any good Sec officer should. Batons come out if someone is heavily suspected of being a traitor (and thus has reasonable motivation to take precautions), or is known to wear sunglasses (the Captain).

And you can add to this thread very simply: Just tell us what you do as your standard operating procedure on an arrest, and for bonus points be candid about what gets you the most hate from people.