The over worked Admins cannot be in five places at once and don't have the time to plant RP evidence on every body found in the city. I mean, we see at least 3 to 4 corpses (or more) a week. So what evidence, in a code friendly universe, could be easily and automatically placed at the scene. Perhaps weapon of death. Corpse code could include rough form of death. Beaten with a carbon pipe equals blunt force trauma, weapon diameter. Gunshot to the temple, well, gunshot to the temple, etc. To average Joe on the street, this sort of evidence is not accessible. Body is transported to WHJ forensic lab for examination before City Services comes and collects. At the crime scene the corpse could leave evidence, attributes placed on the apartment object itself. Evidence as simple as Jim was killed here / Jim was not killed here and his body was moved to the apartment. No need for deep scientific evidence. Just the fundamentals to fire an investigation. A corpse could hold a 'DNA' sample if it is handled (City Services needs some big ass gloves and overalls). A room object could sustain multiple evidence readings. Six months of killing and there are a dozen bodies. More trouble for the forensic scientist. Sifting through evidence.
Back at the lab the body could be examined. A string of 5 or 6 evidence tags are produced in a report for the forensic player. Time of death, 'logical' cause of death based on the body, DNA if corpse was handled, perhaps even physical evidence from melee or blade weapon, although this would require I think a bollocks of a code hiccup in combat against #dbref of weapon, calibre of bullet, etc. WHJ gets a water barrel and we have a matching system for bullets, of course the old weaponsmith skill could replace barrels, etc. My whole rational for this rather long post is for a coded environment where a body / murder scene can be analysed to rip out some vitals for an investigation. Judges are hard pressed enough to manage the actual live crimes, getting shot at, arresting people, etc. A body is just a body. If the forensic boffins can dig around in the congealed blood and muck and produce reports, even match data against data, investigations can move forward.
Problems I see are DNA samples. This isn't RL. To keep DNA samples on citizens after an arrest or whatever would pose a lot of RP problems. Your garden variety villain is going to give up his career and do WW runs forever if everything he touches can get him pinched. Perhaps some 'fudging' of reality might be needed. DNA samples disintegrate after a period of time. I know, I know, the record of DNA is data, just step outa that pocket of logic for a mo. Cloning could cause the destruction of DNA samples. It's a genetic thing. It's a GenTek thing. Maybe a fuck up, maybe it was done on purpose, maybe a geneticist didn't want the city to have that much power, who knows, but without a major push by WHJ against the clone labs to change it, its here. DNA has a shelf life and no records are kept. This way the law has a window of opportunity to catch the villain, after which DNA evidence is worthless. Physical evidence? Well that hangs around. If a butterfly knife leaves a trace, and that butterfly is found, you get a match. Whether the law can put a face to the crime is all up to RP and investigation. Of course we always have the illegal molecular 'washroom' theory where a villain contaminates a crime scene with a powerful aerosol which actively destroys DNA evidence, and substantially damaging a corpse if its still there.
This is all very rough of course, just the seed of an idea. Plenty of background on this subject if anyone wants to chat.
I'm sorry if this post is a little long. I was just trying to think of code that enhances RP, maybe even giving life to a new career, maybe a handful of careers. Crime seems to be fast and dirty, and that suits the theme and the game, but I'd love to see WFJ crime scene tape up or barricades, those big coats with 'EVIDENCE UNIT' on the back walking about glaring at the mix passing by. They would certainly be busy with the amount of bodies floating around. A villain getting the hand on the shoulder 6 weeks after a mugging gone wrong down on Ashlin, would make great RP, and lots of lead RP right up to the moment.
