The Alphaville Herald

Assault on Precinct 15

by Alphaville Herald on 18/01/05 at 10:36 pm

by Neal Stewart

I’m taking a stroll through the Sido sim on Friday night when I notice a large concentration of green blips in the corner of my map. Something big is taking place. As the scene comes into a view I see an AH-1 Cobra Gunship parked on a rooftop. According to the map, the avatar-concentration here is all centered in the building beneath. I can’t figure out why there’s so many people at the location. It doesn’t look like a club. I suddenly spot a Linden Liaison hovering
about 50 feet above the rooftop, peering intently through 3 feet of cement roofing. Looks like trouble.

As I land beside the Mercedes parked at the front entrance, the first thing I hear is, “I’m not going to count to three. I’m not even going to count to one. You will put that shotgun away right now or you will die and be shot on sight from now on.”

I’m apparently at the Second Life Police Department 15th Precinct Headquarters at Sido. It’s 6:45pm. There’s gunfire coming from inside the station and flashes visible through the windows. Are the police running a live-fire exercise with officers roleplaying as crims? Why has a Linden Liaison been called? Now I’m hearing the audio sounds of police officers on a closed-circuit radio. Could this gun battle be part of some sort of real-time live-audio roleplay stream being run
by the local residents? I rush through the front door and into the police station lobby and, with my face pressed up against a glass window, peer inside.

It’s chaos. Dark figures in uniform are running back and forth through the smoke. Everyone’s packing heat. There’s a guy decked out in black with tats on his face. I’m not sure who are police officers and who aren’t. Green debris blasts across the room. What sounds like real police traffic is streaming through my earphones and it’s punctuated by the sounds of explosions and small-arms fire coming from the virtual police station in front of me. All the while, text is streaming through my chat history:

“…get the f*cking gun off of him”
“im being threatened”
“He’s armed.”
“no im not”
“I see a shotgun”
“he’s fine”

I can’t see too well through the side-window so, despite my better judgement, I try to get past the lobby and into the secure area of the building. Someone shouts at me to get down. With my First Life head ducking, I’m scrambling through my gestures trying to find a /duck for my Second head. I got nothing. I’m wondering if a /bow will give me a smaller profile but decide that I don’t want to be standing there bowing, looking at my shoes, should some gangster Mofo come charging out the front door wielding a chainsaw above his head. Note to self: /commando-crawl.

As the gun-fire starts to die down, I’m approached by a police officer: “Can I help you sir?” Commanding officer Sergeant Katja Eisenberg stands only a few feet tall, but she carries a pump action shotgun that’s almost as big as she is. And she moves quick and wields it like nobody’s business. Note to job-seekers: She tells me the PD is looking for new recruits.

Officers of the Second Life Police Department’s 15th Precinct (from left: Malificent Maelstrom, Kimiko Onizuka, Katja Eisenberg, Pierce Logan)

After the smoke has cleared I get a chance to talk to some of the other SLPD officers at the scene: Kimiko Onizuka, Pierce Logan and Malificent Maelstrom. They’re a slick looking bunch and very well-stocked, packing firearms and ammo pouches, radios, mobile phones, pagers, flashlights and handcuffs.

“I’m not really at liberty to discuss the details, but I can tell you that we came under heavy attack. After a few moments of confusion we remembered our training and mounted a very effective defensive,” Officer Pierce Logan tells me, “Everything from small arms fire to explosives.” I ask if there were any fatalities. “Not that I’m aware of. A few of the attackers left heavily wounded, but they were alive when they left. We would have lost a lot of officers if they hadn’t been issued body armor.”

When asked about the attackers, Officer Maelstrom didn’t pull her punches, “Simple case of ambitious punks with no honor wanting to make a name for themselves.”

After IMing a bystander at the scene, I was later contacted from two SL resident claiming to have been the perpetrators of the 15th Precinct assault, Obelix Tapioca and The Wolfe. Obelix claims to have been a former member of the SLPD. According to him the current dispute originated while he was still on the force. After donning the guise of a beggar in the Cordova sim, Obelix claims his then-colleagues attacked him for bringing dishonor to the force. Officers allegedly shot him with a “tp gun” that teleported him to cell block in an unknown location. “[It] had stretchers and shit”, Obelix said. “It was a torture chamber”.

In retaliation, Obelix and The Wolfe formed the Terrorist Mafia and began launching attacks on the 15th precinct that same day, bypassing the security door system by using a box exploit (sitting on a box and editing it through the front door). According to Obelix, The Wolfe was forcibly logged out of his account for the rest of the night after that incident, indicating that a Linden may have been contacted by the 15th Precinct at that point.

The box exploit will be made irrelevant if the 15th Precinct goes ahead with plans to install an access-list only zone-based security system.

Obelix Tapioca and The Wolfe hover outside the SLPD 15th Precinct in Sido

Even while I interviewed the Terrorist Mafia for this story, they were conducting additional assaults on the unmanned 15th Precinct station. (I had to wonder whether my questions and presence were inciting them further.) In the course of documenting the story, this intrepid reporter was killed by standing too close to an explosive device. Exploding can really change a man.

The Wolfe responded to Officer Maleficent’s characterization of the Terrorist Mafia as “punks with no honor” with a qip of his own: “We’re gonna kill them. We’re going to blast this building to shreds if it takes forever.” Under another name, The Wolfe is reportedly a member of another police unit, though he refused to reveal which one.

The Wolfe, seen here carrying a pump-action shot gun

Obelix Tapioca carrying what appears to be an M-16/AR15 with a fibre
optic reflex sight

The SLPD 15th Precinct has had its troubles in the past. According to Officer Kimiko, resident that the SLPD was grooming as a prospective trainee turned up at the station claiming to be drunk several days ago. He was coaxed into a jail cell and later released. But as the holding pens are within the station’s secure area, he was released not onto the street but directly into the area where officers work,
and promptly started firing.

Officer Kimiko, elsewhere in the building, was alerted by the sounds of gunfire and the cries of other officers shouting, “He’s armed! He’s shooting!” A stand-off ensued, with the assailant drunkenly yelling at Officer Kimiko to get on the ground and put her hands up and Kimiko demanding that the assailant put down HIS weapons. By this point Sergeant Katja Eisenberg had managed to flank the gunman. She opened fire and the assailant was killed.

Asked about the Linden Liason, Officer Pierce Logan claimed to be unaware of her presence. ” I was concentrating on organizing our defense and didn’t pay much attention to anything else. If one was indeed contacted then I would say that it was probably because someone grew angry with the situation. Tensions always run high when bullets are flying around.”

The Linden Liaison attending the scene declined to comment for this story.

Local store owner Pupuce Blanc reports that the Police Department is generally quiet. Living near the station has it’s perks; Officer Katja Eisenberg is a friend and watches over the shop for Pupuce and her partner when they are away.