Cops should not be able to decide whether a player can RP their own death.
The PD on this server consistently meta-game to a level that does not allow for good roleplay scenarios, and which allows the PD to punish players who have criminal characters with real-life consequences. How many times have you been shot down in a gunfight with the police, only to have a bandage wrapped around you and shipped off to jail? I have never seen anyone successfully roleplay their own death, which is utterly ridiculous. Just this year, there have been over 350 deaths at the hands of the police in the United States . If the PD's main priority is to accurately reflect a real-life U.S. Police Department in the way they roleplay, this should be reflected in allowing people to die instead of just fixing them up and sending them to jail.
Anyone who is even remotely aware of the way police operate in the United States, and Los Angeles in particular, will know that the police are not hesitant to shoot to kill. So if I am standing 5 ft away from a cop who unloads their SMG/Shotgun at me, they aren't going to be looking to merely incapacitate me, rather to end my life to protect their own.
Surely then, cops would be shooting to kill on Eclipse, particularly given the brutality of some of the gunfights that occur on a daily basis involving S.W.A.T. and heavy weapons on both sides.
It is not good roleplay to shoot a load of criminals then keep them alive with CPR until an ambulance turns up and takes them all to prison
The subtle meta-gaming of the PD on Eclipse
This is a server-wide problem caused by structural problems. Players who have cop characters want you to go to jail if you commit a crime. It is not in their interest to let you roleplay your own death because you were the one gunning for them a moment earlier.
Obviously for a player, the more desirable outcome is for your character to just die rather than spend hours in jail. So if your criminal character has been messing with a cop character, of course they are going to want the worst outcome for you as a player. This is meta-gaming and not in the interest of realistic and fair roleplay.
Death RP conflict of interest
The big problem here is the conflict of interest between players with cop characters and criminal characters. The cop player trying to get you sent to jail should not be the one deciding whether or not your character is allowed to die. In essence it is a choice between allowing a player to get back to playing the game again or for their PC to basically become useless for up to 2 hours. I know which option I'd choose if I had a police character and was on a bit of a power trip. I was shocked to discover that this was a rule because it seems obviously ripe for corruption and misuse. The PD at this point are basically fighting a meta, out-of-character war against the gang factions on this server where their main weapon is an OOC punishment for players with criminal characters.
Prison is an OOC punishment
I am certainly not the first to address this topic. The fact that you can't even logout during your prison sentence is testament to the fact that this is a punishment for the player, not for their character. GTA V is a very intensive game and for many people with lower-end rigs they simply can't use their computers with the game running in the background. So what you are really doing when you put someone's character in jail is locking their computer for however long the sentence is and making it unusable.
There is literally nothing to do in prison, and very few options to roleplay, since most people there are just AFK anyway. Again, and I can't stress this enough, this punishes the player, not the character.
We are all equal as players... right?
One would think that all the players on this server are equal, whether they choose to play with a criminal character or a law-abiding one (read: cop or mechanic, since there is basically nothing else legal to do that isn't a grinding minigame). Sorry to everyone in the PD, but you are a gang, just like everyone else. You are not here to protect the needs of the law-abiding public, because there barely are any. We're all just equal people playing video games here, so your cop character may well want my criminal character to go to prison, but you are meta-gaming if you keep my character alive just so he can go to jail. You do not have any moral high-ground over me because you choose to roleplay as a good person, and this should be reflected in the rules.
Clearly, however, we are not all equal, and the PD get unfair treatment - no doubt thanks to the number of admins in their ranks. It is not uncommon for a cop to suddenly turn into an admin during an encounter and for them to pause RP while they find excuses for you, the player, to go to prison. One could go as far as to say that the PD on this server are practically just the in-character admin faction. There is a significant overlap in the use of admin and regular prison - and the fact they are the exact same thing is further proof of prison as an OOC punishment.
The lack of good roleplay from police on this server and their reliance on meta-gaming and admin support has basically made Eclipse into a big game of OOC cops and robbers with unbalanced rules and no room to actually have unique roleplay interactions.
Why did I make this long post?
Well, as you have probably figured out by now if you've read this far, I was in this exact scenario just now. I was shooting at a police officer standing right next to me, and he was shooting back. I was downed, and tried to roleplay my death considering that I had just taken 5 gunshots at very close range. I tried to make this point OOC with the medics and cops while MarcoD kept repeating that it was the cops' decision as to whether or not I died. Oh, guess what? They decided I wasn't dead! How convenient. I guess that's 2 hours of me not being able to use my PC. I even had to close the game while I typed this up because my computer was too slow with it running in the background.
Fair, right? And instead of MarcoD forcing the roleplay to continue and having me stretchered into an ambulance and taken to MD to then be arrested, I was instantly teleported to jail by a cadet who referenced the teleport in character over voip by making a joke. Hmm.. I wonder if that's because the gang I'm in is known for trying to rescue police hostages on the trip from MD to the prison? Or perhaps just pure laziness and a cynical attempt to get me out of the way when I was raising a legitimate point. Another explicit example of meta-gaming by the PD, backed up by the admin powers of MarcoD who is apparently infamous for using his admin powers during situations his character is part of.
Maybe the possibility to roleplay your death should be removed entirely then. I think a possible solution would be to make the neutralised/injured state different when you are shot by a cop rather than another regular player. Maybe if a cop shoots you, you simply die. This could encourage cops to use their tasers more if they really wanted to arrest and imprison someone - it would promote more intelligent and tactical policing rather than going in guns blazing with armour and heavy weapons, then letting the medics clean up the mess afterwards. If you are trying to discourage players from going out of their way to fight the police, maybe heftier fines would be a fairer way to go about it rather than wasting the player's time with 2 hours of nothingness. There are 0 real-life consequences for police who get killed or roleplay themselves into bad scenarios, so why should there be for any other players? Again, I think that players with criminal characters are being mistreated and face heftier OOC consequences when really police and criminals are codependent and the game would be no fun without both. The line between police and admin is too blurred; the police should not be considered part of the server's infrastructure when they are just a roleplay group like any other. If it's a case of keeping criminals off the streets then I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to log out during your prison sentence. I think this is the real kicker for me as it really is an OOC punishment at that point and, again, with no equivalent police character version. Maybe a cop that messes up should face up to 2 hours in a police academy or something similar.
