NOTES book 2 order response department

i thought this would be quick short doing.... ending up a lot of story now making dedicated notes to this.

152 =======================

Response Daily Log / Notes

June 3rd, 2021

Calls Taken : 231

Calls Responded To : 110

Responding Breakdown : 17 non-issues, 41 emergency transport, 2 home invasions, 3 assaults, 2 domestic violence, 1 S&R, 10 mental health crisis, 20 assistance calls (CSFD), 7 prank calls, 7 non-emergency aid.

Response Teams Active : 4 official, 3 provisional

Response Team Injuries : 1 minor

General Note : A large number of calls today from teenagers asking if we were real. The majority of those calls ended in asking for us to teleport to them. Requests denied, obviously.

General Note : Majority of calls are local, but not all of them, leading to bad distribution of times. We need more members on call for small things, even if they’re not part of full teams.

Personnel Note : Of fourteen recent recruits, we are down to eight remaining after another three quit today. Training programs are working as intended to cull overly aggressive aspirants.

Personnel Note : For impressive performance under stressful situations, we should acknowledge provisional team 3 and formalize them as a Response unit. Add **Jake K. and Maria G.** to bring their unit to full rotational strength. Designate **Ann M.** as Knight-In-Command, and Spire-Cast-Behind as Knight. Good job, all of you.

Event Note : Drone deployment for search and rescue was used to find a lost child. Deployment was successful, but time consuming and rough. Drone operators aren’t used to working together, we need a specific training plan for exactly this situation.

Event Note : First case of a response unit taking fire today. 9mm from a pissed off boyfriend. Team stayed calm and situation was resolved nonviolently. Thank Christ for the shield bracers.

Resource Request : More shield bracers.

Event Note : The **CSFD** is calling us for support on things they don’t need support on. Better safe than sorry, from their perspective, but they’re treating us like bonus cops on scene, and it’s a problem. The CSPD has also explicitly noticed us because of this. As of today, I suspect confrontation is going to happen within a week.

General / Security Note : **Maria Schumer**, representative for **Washington organization Less Cops More Care**, contacted us regarding expanding operations to the Seattle area. She did not use the emergency number, and I do not know how she got my email. Regardless, her offer lays out a plan of rapidly replacing city police via community recruitment and donation funding. Unsure if the numbers stack up, CC Karen to check into that.

Resource Request : We need space, and more mental health specialists, for when we need to extract people from traumatic situations. Domestic abuse, violent assault, and also mental breaks. We need a space for people to be kept safe, from themselves if needed, and we need people who can help with that. Especially important for people who dont trust / cant afford hospital care. (Valid concern for anyone facing suicidality; hospital observation rooms are shit). I know this is another massive cost, on top of what we’re already looking at, but this matters.

Event Note : Teenager attempted to use us for a swatting prank. Didn’t work. Policy of teleporting nearby but not exactly on target is working as planned. Good job keeping cool, everyone.

Daily Summary : We need more people. We need better training programs. We should considered creating local chapters. We should also consider going public, and pushing for legitimacy. Same request as always. Good work today.

-Harvey Allison-

162 harvey hiring plan for response

“Okay. Harvey, hiring plan?”

“Yeah.” The other man passed James a rather thick blue file folder, which James took and started flipping through, seeing resumes, notes, and personal profiles. “So. Currently, we’re operating with two bottlenecks to Response. One is the number of teams we can safely deploy, and one is the number of telepads available.”

“Is that seriously a problem already?” James raised an eyebrow.

“No, but it will be within a couple years.” Harvey told him. And suddenly, James realized just how long term the de facto leader of Response was thinking ahead. The grey in his hair started to make sense. “So, to alleviate both problems early, we’ve started identifying candidates that would make both good mundane Response team members, and potential delvers, to increase our access to more telepads.” Harvey stated. “These are people, some of whom have applied previously, some of whom we’ve scouted in a few ways. Social media trawling, personal recommendations, and dungeontech info gathering. A lot of them aren’t going to be perfect fits for us. But that’s never been a problem previously. \*I\* wasn’t a perfect fit, neither were half our members. We have an established culture now, that can effectively absorb a large influx of members, without losing its identity, and we should take advantage of that.”

“This is a \*lot\* of people.” James muttered, flipping through the profiles.

“How many is ‘a lot’?” Sarah asked.

“I’d like to start with twenty.” Harvey replied, drawing apprehensive breaths from a few others at the table. “Moving up to eighty before the year is over.”

“I… hm.” James suddenly felt a nervous tug in his chest. “Okay, I… see where you’re coming from with this. But… eighty people? I already feel bad that I don’t know everyone in the building anymore. Can we even pay eighty people?”

“That’s such a goddamn ominous sentence.” James shook his head. “Okay. Okay! Twenty people, you think that’ll be okay?” Karen nodded. Harvey shrugged, as if to indicate it would be an okay \*start\*. “Part of me wants to be one of the ones contacting potential hires, but that might just be me panicking and hoping to hold on to control of something I don’t need to.” He sighed. “Alright. Do it.”

“To be fair, I could use the help.” Harvey told him. “I’m busy, a lot. I was gonna get Knife and Ann to do most of the work, since they’re both off rotation for a week or so.

“Unneeded.” Knife-In-Fangs grumbled.

“Downtime is \*critical\* to long term mental health.” Harvey sniped back without missing a beat. He turned back to James. “So, yeah, they’d probably like the help.”

166 karen -> getting insurance companies + emt's asking for jobs + vigilantes

“It’s going good! And we’re back to talking shop.” Alanna pointed out with a grin, which even a worried Anesh returned. “But whatever. It really is going good. A lot of what we do is honestly just medical transport, but we’re \*really\* good at it. EMTs keep asking us for jobs. Oh, Harvey or Karen is gonna present a plan to you to actually go formal and interface with insurance companies so we can cover expansion costs. I dunno if I’m supposed to tell you that, so act surprised?”

“I mean, that’s cool. I’d prefer it be free, though.” James said.

“It’s a weird deal, you’ll probably like it.” Alanna said. “But yeah. Busy. And \*weirdly\* non violent! I mean… just based on what I was expecting.”

Anesh made an appreciative noise. “It’s better that way.” He said. “I’m helping out in one of the training courses later this week, and it’s almost all deesclation and subdual tactics. And I think the fact that so far, that’s basically all we’ve needed, really drives home a point.”

“Well, also to be fair, we don’t respond to certain things.” Alanna reminded him.

“Ehhhh.” James wobbled a hand. “We don’t respond to, like, shoplifting, or stuff like that.”

“Yeah, why is that?” Alanna asked. “Isn’t it still ‘a problem’?”

“It’s a problem we aim to address in other, larger ways.” James told her. “But also just on a practical level, it is literally not a problem. Unless someone is stealing from, like, a farmer’s market? The company is gonna have loss insurance, and they’re literally not ‘losing’ any money. Interference from us would just be punitive, and stupid, and most importantly, a waste of Response resources. Remember! If you see someone shoplifting food, no you didn’t!”

“But we do get calls about it now.” Anesh pointed out. “Kind of a lot of calls. I think people think we’re reckless vigilantes.”

169 overview council for response department = 9 watchers / council members

Harvey just cocked an eyebrow at him. “I know you’re a little focused on certain things. But we’ve \*been\* getting notice. I think the only reasons we aren’t getting requests for interviews from cable news is that they can’t find us, and we have a policy of hanging up on non-emergency calls.” Harvey gave a harsh grin. “People are aware of us. And most importantly, there are people who are willing to work with us to make sure that we end up being what we promised.”

“What \*are\* we promising, anyway?” James asked. “I’ve… I mean, I’ve done Response runs. But I’m usually just focused on the job at hand. I know, in abstract, that we’re trying to replace the police. But what’s our actual, like… what are we billing ourselves as?”

“Civilian need focused emergency response.” Harvey said. “Which will now be operating with independent review and oversight.”

“Alright. Give me the details.” James said, leaning back and letting Harvey have the floor.

The plan was simple, and, in both their opinions, something they really needed to get set in stone early.

Response had an alarming amount of power. Not actual government authority, but they were operating in the capacity of people who had \*personal\* power, and used it without a policy beyond ‘we are helping’. Which wasn’t bad, on its own, but it wasn’t future proof. So, a protective measure was devised, at least as a transitional step.

They’d stolen the idea wholesale from a number of civil rights groups who were petitioning for something similar to be in place for the actual police. An independent review body, that had actual authority to remove knights and aspirants from Response positions, who would be tasked with handling any complaints about use of force or criminal activity.

It had been a negotiation to set up. Between the Order’s membership, they had a surprisingly large number of contacts in local civil rights organizations, but fewer in the other places they’d started operating, like parts of Colorado or Ohio. Still, after they had a short list of names, and reached out to those people, getting them all to agree had been… challenging.

Not because they were against the idea. A lot of people - a \*shocking\* number of people, James had thought at the time, having limited experience with this beyond the abstract - were almost instantly on board with replacing the police as a viable agency. The problems cropped up, as always, in the details, and the questions.

Who \*were\* they? What were their credentials? How did they expect to expand their operation? And then, once they’d gotten through the explanation that magic was real and they could teleport, more practical questions. Was this review board supposed to be a full time job? How were they planning to manage their membership? What counted as “criminal activity” when they were clearly setting their own code of conduct? Could they be penalized somehow for \*failing\* to uphold a law, if that came up? Also, how did the review board maintain itself? Who selected the members, and who verified they weren’t bad actors? Were they allowed to make decisions about Response’s operations, like using dungeontech that could fall into the wrong hands, or even just employing the camracondas?

The answers had taken months to hash out. But, finally, Harvey had something concrete to give to James, and introduce to the Order.

A nine person group, with policies for creating new units as Response did, fully let in on the secrets of the Order, but operating as outsiders. Finding people willing to accept that had been the tricky part, and Harvey willingly admitted that half of the initial batch of nominations were actually just training as Response members now. Their authority was rooted in the Order respecting their calls, but that was to be baked into the culture of Response from now on. Also, their authority was to be a little more literal, with long term members of the review board being offered Authorities to compliment the nature of their roles.

It was, Harvey freely admitted, a risk. But it was a risk that he and James agreed was needed, if they were going to build Response into a system that could be trusted, and not just a capricious band of well intentioned vigilantes.

The existence of systems was never the problem. Only ones with no oversight, and no compassion. And James fully intended to make sure Response had both.

“So, what now?” James asked when Harvey was done with the explanation and getting James to look over some paperwork, including briefs on all nine of their new watchers.

Harvey folded his hands calmly in his lap. “Now I get back to work, and so do you. Remember, we were already following all the rules we just negotiated other people to keep an eye on us for. We’re self-regulating. But that’s not good enough, if we’re going to be a public force for good. So just remember, if you pick up a shift, that you need to follow our use-of-force restrictions. Oh, also, if you find anything in the Office tonight that works as a conflict resolution tool, make a few hundred copies and hand em out to us.”

James nodded. “Alright. Hey, have I thanked you lately, for doing all the hard work while I screw around? Because thanks. You seriously are doing a great job.”

180

“Great! Do that!” James clapped his hands. “And then expand Response. Harvey, how many people actually work for you?”

“They work for \*us\*, for one thing. You are in charge here.” Harvey said. “And also currently **we have a hundred people working with Response in some capacity, forty full time knights. Eighteen of our responders are camracondas**.” He shot a nod to Priestess-Under-Stone, who nodded back with a bobbing motion. “**A lot of those people are part time volunteers,** which helps keep our costs manageable, but I am aware that we’re going to run out of money.” He added. “Also, **we have sixteen Authorities on the roster now**, though again, they’re not actually being paid. Uh… wow, I just said that out loud. We should be paying them.”

180

James smiled quietly at the soft poetry of the camraconda’s comment. “Okay. Between that, and platinum sales - someone get some platinum? Karen? Yes, good - between those things, we should be able to start expanding safely.” James nodded. “Harvey, what do you want for Response?”

Harvey had prepared a report.

Response hadn’t been idle. In fact, they were starting to get really, really busy.

**Every day, they had between four and twelve teams on call at any given time. Teams ranged from two to four people, with a standby pool of individuals for simple medical transport or shoring up teams that sustained injuries. Some teams were specialized; there was, for example, always one team and at least one backup knight specialized in mental health crises in the rotation.**

**Each team replied to between ten to fifty incidents. A day.**

“Hang on.” James stood up, crossing his arms in an X in front of him. “Wait, woah, wait, stop. What?” He looked around the table. “I’ve \*done\* Response shifts! When did it get that… uh… fast paced?”

“Recently.” Harvey said gruffly.

**The actual incidents responded to were only about a fifth of the calls received. They’d hired more operators, and their phone network was arcanely enhanced enough to handle the throughput, but it was still a constant and stressful job.**

**Currently, Response was known to and working with sixteen different fire departments, forty one hospitals, and several well placed members of the Coast Guard and Park’s Service.**

People were starting to know the number to call for real help, right away.

“We haven’t made national or global news.” Harvey told them. “Yet. \*Yet\*. It’s coming, and soon, I think. Things are accelerating and I think they’re faster than we can manage unless we do something serious.”

End book three