Neil Hurst, Pauline Reed, Sid Routman and Mal Lesperance
Det. Pauline Reed, Senior Field Investigator
Description: Pauline is an attractive but somewhat aloof black woman in her mid-40s. She prefers pantsuits to dresses but still maintains her femininity. She is in excellent shape and jogs regularly. She maintains professional and cordial relations with her fellow officers but gets along with the women somewhat better than the men.
Reputation: The most senior officer on this shift, she wanted to be the next precinct Captain but was passed over. Rumour suggests she's gay (and being a gay black woman in the police is not likely to get her a promotion any time soon), she certainly seems frigid and uninterested in men. But when it comes down to it, she's a good officer with 20 years of experience who shows commendable dedication and efficiency in her work.
Neil “The Hulk” Hurst, Rookie Patrol Officer[]
Description: Neil clearly shows the Black Irish ancestry of both his mother and his true father, with black hair and thick bushy eyebrows. His eyes have a smoldering intensity that draw women like moths to a flame, at least until his moodiness and barely sublimated anger frighten them away. When not in uniform, Neil favours comfortable jeans, tennis shoes and T-shirts or jerseys carrying the logo of one sports team or another. Neil is in superb physical condition.
Reputation: Rumour has it that his dad (who was also a cop) was killed in the line of duty when Neil was young. Neil is a nice enough guy, but he's young, something of a party animal, a flirt and has a hell of a temper, which will get him into trouble unless he learns to keep a lid on it. He's a member of a local Kung-Fu club but he's not been going for the last few weeks for some reason.
Sgt. Mal “Angels Advocate” Lesperance[]
Description: Mal is tall and imposing, and can generate an aura of genuine menace as easily as turning on a light. He has a pronounced widow’s peak, and his remaining dark brown hair is kept tightly trimmed. His face is deeply lined from the stresses of more than two decades of service to Midway’s citizens and the officers who protect them.
Reputation: Mal is the local Police Union representative. Very popular and knowledgeable about matters of law. He's single and quite religious, being on very good terms with Father Calhoun the police chaplain. He studied law for a while (His father was some big-shot lawyer) but dropped out and joined the police. He has a reputation for being dependable and hard working. He helped clear the names of a number of cops across the city who had been wrongfully accused of excessive force a few years back. He's straight as an arrow though. If you're doing your job honestly, then he will defend you to the death before lawyers and reporters, but if you're breaking the law, he will come down on you like the wrath of God.
Description: Sid is a 63-year-old, non-practicing Jewish man with black-and-gray hair and a slightly receding hairline. He’s just under six feet tall and fairly healthy, though age and good cooking are finally starting to catch up to him. He almost invariably wears one of his several identical brown suits except to funerals, when he wears a blue suit. While at the office, he often ditches his suit coat for a cardigan, as he often complains of how cold the detective’s offices are in winter.
Reputation: A family man with a wife of 37 years and three grown-up daughters. Calm and unflappable, despite all the horrors that he has seen in the Homicide squad. He's the best homicide detective in the city by a wide margin, with an easy sense of humour and sometimes acts as a genial fatherly mentor to rookies. Just don't let him show you pictures of his grand-children, you will be there for hours.
Wade Whitfield, Arthur Delgado, Aleandra Quintero and Gena Buehler
Description: Gena was once very attractive and still can be if the situation calls for it. But her beauty is fading, worn away by years of stress and obscured by the hunted expression common to undercover officers. A natural blonde, Gena stands about five foot seven. She is in good shape but no longer exercises regularly. While undercover, she tends to dress vaguely “slutty,” but when in the office, she favours dress pants and crisp pants, and she keeps her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Reputation: As she's undercover she's not in the office very regularly, but she has a reputation of being dismissive of patrol cops. She did pull off a high profile take-down of a drugs ring in Providence, RI (Rhode Island) (a city not too far away, importantly somewhere that nobody would know her) a few years ago. Now she's working on something big here an doesn't socialise much with other cops. Rumour has it that the stress of the job is what caused her husband to leave her.
Alejandra “Alex” Quintero, Patrol Officer[]
Description: Alex is an attractive female officer with Native American features,yellowish brown skin, deep brown eyes and black hair, usually pulled back in a ponytail. Her uniform is invariably spotless. When Alex lets her hair down, so to speak, she becomes a stunning beauty. Alex works out regularly and also competes every year in the Midway 10K Run. She also studies martial arts like her partner Neil Hurst, but they seldom seem to train together.
Reputation: Alex graduated at the top of her class. Her family came to Midway in the 50's, she's not shy about her ambition to become a detective some day. She genuinely enjoys patrol work and is seen by the Native American Community as something of a role-model. She's picked up quite a few commendations (from within the police and by civil organisations), but hasn't be promoted much. Rumour has it that she's in a relationship with the deeply unpopular Brad Alford, a lawyer who is particularly skilled at getting evidence suppressed due to police misconduct, meaning that a lot of people are giving her a hard time for “Sleeping with the enemy”.
Sgt. Arthur Delgado, Night Shift Desk Sergeant[]
Description: Art is 61-year-old white male who is clearly too out of shape for field police work. He has gray hair and glasses and is portly, bordering on obese. Despite his age and apparent health problems, he seems to be more physically capable than meets the eye and a lot of people suspect that he's working out in secret despite his doctors advice to take it easy.
Reputation: He's been on the force for 28 years. He's competent and very amiable, but sometimes a bit lazy and not very ambitious. He got drummed off active duty nine years ago, due to a persistent heart murmur, but he was well-liked and some of his friends got him transferred to his current job as the night shift desk sergeant, allowing him to continue doing the work he loves with partial disability allowance. A bit of a night owl, he usually has a few books to read on duty. He's always been single and seems to just want to make it to retirement. He's always the guy who remembers peoples birthdays with a card to send round the office and buys the doughnuts at the start of each shift.
Sgt. Wade Whitfield, Patrol Officer[]
Description: Wade is 39 years old, with red hair that he wears full in front to conceal a receding hairline. He has a wide face that could be quite open and friendly if he were capable of those demeanors. Most often, though, his smiles look more like sneers. Wade is in fairly good shape but does not work out regularly. When out of uniform, Wade favours blue jeans and T-shirts, usually featuring either patriotic slogans or depicting NASCAR stars.
Reputation: Basically Wade is a White Supremacist and proud of it. A racist, bigot and homophobe and not subtle about it, who has caused a few incidents in the past. He regularly blames the “problems” (whatever they are) on Liberals, blacks, gays or whoever else makes a convenient target. He's had a few warnings about his behaviour and seems to at least be a bit more discrete about it these days. However despite being a colossal jerk he does appear to largely be an honest cop in other respects. He regularly listens to talk radio jocks and and picks up more than a few phrases from them like the “Gay Agenda” or the “West Coast Liberal Elite”. He's in the middle of his second marriage and has a kid on the way. Which may have mellowed him out a bit. He's been partnered up with Stewart Green (A noted Black supremacist) in the hopes that they would turn on each other and give the Captain an opportunity to rid himself of two problems at once. But they seem to have formed something of an unlikely alliance, and seem to be able to work together well enough.
Sammy Atkinson, Stuart Green and Richard Bucknell
Officer Stewart “Stew” Green, Patrol Officer[]
Description: Stew is a 36-year-old African American who is built like a professional wrestler, standing six foot eight and weighing nearly 300 pounds, almost all muscle. He keeps his head shaved at all times and prefers wearing the archetypal cop mirror shades. He has a tiny scar on his left cheek, a memento of Desert Storm. Stew’s uniform is always finely ironed, and he polishes his uniform boots every night with the attention that only an ex-Marine can give them. When out of uniform, he favours comfortable clothes with a slight ethnic feel to them.
Reputation: Almost the polar opposite of his partner Wade Whitfield. Stew lost a brother back in race riots of the late 80's, he joined the Marine reserve and spent two years overseas in Afghanistan and a further three years on a criminal justice degree. This experience let him get through the police academy with relative ease (although there's talk that he broke an instructors arm whilst he was there) Assigned to Precinct 1, he was arrogant, but got results, allowing him to earn a good reputation in the late 90's until he got into a fist fight when a fellow officer, who referred to black officers as “you people”. Unexpectedly politicians stepped in and he was promoted rather than fired. Setting up the “Black Officers Council” which was supposed to be a support group for black officers who were the victims of racial abuse. Unfortunately it didn't work that way and instead inflamed racial tensions with over-sensitivity to abuse and overshadowing other less powerful minorities. The BOC imploded a few years ago when some of the members were caught in a bribery sting. Leaving Stew (who was not involved in the bribery) openly bitter about it, especially as one of the (white) officers responsible (Richard Bucknell) recently came out as being gay. After the collapse of the BOC, he was reassigned to the 13th Precinct with Wade as his new partner. As mentioned above, they seemed surprisingly capable of working together. Although Stew is much more subtle about his racist, sexist and homophobic views than Wade is. For years, he insisted on wearing a Malcolm X cap when off duty to annoy the white officers. A few months back, someone who works at the 13th stole it from his locker as a prank, to his barely concealed consternation.
Sgt. Richard Bucknell, Night Shift Evidence Lockup Officer[]
Description: Richard is 37 years old and very good-looking, with blond hair and piercing blue eyes. His uniform is always immaculate. When off duty, he favours semi-casual attire, with chinos and nicely pressed shirts. In conversation,
Reputation: Richard (a 12 year veteran of the MPD, 6 of those years spent in charge of the Evidence lock-up) came out of the closet about 4 years ago when people tried to blackmail him into making evidence disappear. Rather than give in, he informed his superiors resulting in him coming out as gay in public. However he defies most stereotypes, being very conservative in both his politics and his attitudes. Richard is highly literate and professional, but quite conservative in his views on every topic other than sexuality. Even there, Richard is dismissive of what he considers the sex-obsessed lifestyle of most gays, and he longs for a steady monogamous relationship, complete with a civil union (as opposed to a same-sex marriage, which Richard opposes). He enjoys bowling (on the precinct team), hunting and fishing.
Sgt. Sammy Atkinson, K-9 Officer (and his Dog Kita)[]
Description: Sammy is 41 years old, having served for several years with the National Guard and with the Washington County Sheriff’s Department before moving to the MPD. He is a bit overweight and somewhat out of shape, but not so much as to fail to meet MPD standards. Sammy has a wide face with an infectious grin, and his sandy brown hair is only just starting to gray. Sammy’s po-lice uniform is slightly small for his expanding frame, and he insists that the uniform “shrank in the wash.” When out of uniform, Sammy favors blue jeans, work boots and comfortable flannel shirts. He almost invariably wears some kind of cap, whether an MPD K-9 Unit cap or any one of a dozen or so baseball caps.
Reputation: He's known to be divorced, with two young kids that his ex-wife Beth has custody of. He's smart, but not well educated, leading him to be a bit obtuse about cultural differences, sometimes saying offensive things seemingly by accident, but is quick to apologise if he makes a mistake. He enjoys bowling (he's on the precinct team) and goes duck-hunting occasionally with Richard Bucknell.
Father Paul Nelson Calhoun, Alana Bailey, Lance Schachter and Janessa Burch
Janessa Burch, Vice Squad Sergeant[]
Description: Janessa is an extremely attractive, 33-year-old African American female with long, black hair and regal features. When undercover, she is dressed as a typical street hooker, with a shirt that shows off abundant cleavage and borderline obscene shorts. When not undercover, she is considered a plainclothes officer, and she usually dresses professionally but very stylishly and fashionably (or at least as fashionably as she can on a cop’s salary). Her off-duty attire is usually the same as her plainclothes attire. Janessa is about five foot seven. She is in superb physical shape, and she has been studying kick-boxing for the last eight years.
Reputation: Raised in a rough neighbourhood she studied her way out and tried to get into law school, instead ending up in the police. She's single, friendly and open when off-duty, but work has been wearing her down recently. She's considering re-applying for Law school again so that she can get a promotion out of the Vice Squad and its demeaning undercover work. She enjoys martial arts, basketball and dancing.
Description: Lance could have stepped out of a recruiting poster. Tightly curled blond hair frames a handsome, boyish face with deep blue eyes and a disarming smile. His patrolman’s uniform sports a worn set of aviator’s wings over the nametag.
Reputation: A former coast-guard helicopter pilot who did a lot of work out of the Gulf of Mexico, unfortunately his career was cut short when his family had some medical problems. So he came home to Midway where the police were all too happy to have him fly their Air Support unit. His parents died, but he remained with the MPD and got a promotion. Some people make mistakes. In his case it was crashing a valuable helicopter in an urban area, breaking his legs and killing his partner in the process. For this he was disciplined, demoted, stripped of his flight authorisation and permanently grounded. These days he's almost always stuck on traffic patrol duty. He's a bit bitter these days, and tends to carry a digital camera when on duty.
Fernando Raia, Emmet Pritchard, Harriet Stockwell, Tyrone Sevy and Marshall Purdum
Sgt. Fernando Raia[]
Description: Sergeant Raia is a solidly built Hispanic man in his late 50s with close-cut, graying hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. His uniform is spotless, every crease razor-sharp, shoes polished to a reflective shine that you could comb your hair in. He keeps his posture ramrod straight, even in civilian gear. Off duty, Fernando goes for jeans and buttoned-down shirts. A crucifix tattoo covers his left bicep, and both of his hands are covered with tiny scars.
Reputation: He has been a cop for most of his life. He did apply to be a detective, but finding it unsatisfying, came back to being a patrol cop. He has transferred around a lot, giving him a lot of experience from all over the city. As his retirement comes up he's transferred here, to the busiest and most interesting station in the city. He's been married twice (once divorced the other killed in a car accident.) and has some distant family ties. A lapsed Catholic, he enjoys talking to people (particularly the Chaplain) an is an insatiable gossip around the station. He's had some bad experiences as a result of racism (he was in Precinct 1 when the BOC imploded and hated seeing the fall-out). He's a good cop, but has something of a weakness for beautiful women and flirts with anybody.
Ambulance 130:[]
Midway Fire Department Ambulance 130 is a 1997 Ford Econoline 450 chassis with an Ultramedic III ambulance body, painted in the white-on-blue EMS scheme. The ambulance has a handful of nicks and scratches from years of service, but the big turbocharged diesel engine is in excellent condition and the rescue equipment on board is state of the art. The ambulance and her crew are assigned to Precinct 13 after a civil service study showed that more than 80% of overnight ambulance calls required police presence or investigation.
Harriett Stockwell, Paramedic team leader[]
Description: Just past her 30th birthday, Harriett is in terrific physical condition. She keeps her long, black hair tied back or tucked under a cap while on the job. Her dark blue BDUs are covered with patches displaying her lifesaving qualifications, as well as the insignia of the MFD and the infantry unit she served with while in the Army. Away from work, she prefers a softer, dressy style.
Reputation: She's an ex-army medic, very professional, although allegedly she carries a pistol on duty which she shouldn't do, but nobody's going to give our guardian angels a hard time over that. She's quite talkative and friendly off duty though.
Marshall Purdum, Paramedic[]
Description: Blond, muscular and handsome, Marshall could pass for Lance Schachter’s brother. Marshall is fit and maintains a dedicated workout regimen. He wears a flexible brace on his right leg.
Reputation: He was a big football star for the Midway Moles, until he got a nasty knee injury. Unable to play anymore he joined the Fire department as an Emergency Medical Technician. Charismatic and popular, he often appears at speaking events, visiting schools colleges and recruiting fairs for the MFD. He's married to a cop from another precinct. He's still something of a celebrity even after several years since he last played football.
Tyrone Sevy, Driver[]
Description: Well into his 50s, Tyrone is an elegant and handsome man. His hair and mustache are both neatly trimmed and graying, and the lines in his face lend character, rather than show signs of advanced age. He has a booming laugh that comes on unexpectedly and quickly infects those around him.
Reputation: Good friends with Fernando Raia, an ex-army driver, happily married with kids and with a strong love of racing (both street and track) and keenly interested in social issues. Though he sometimes has a bit of a temper.
Civilian Police Staff:[]
Father Paul Nelson Calhoun, Episcopal Chaplain (Volunteer)[]
Description: Paul is in his early 30's slightly above average in height and thick bodied, and has brown hair trimmed close to his scalp. When not in his chaplain’s garb, Paul prefers slacks, comfortable shoes and dress shirts, often with the emblem of his seminary or Midway university embroidered some-where. He keeps a Palm PDA with several translations of the Bible and eBook versions of spiritual and counselling texts close to hand.
Reputation: A very devout man, he's married to a young lady from his nearby parish where he works as an assistant pastor. He applied to be the Midway police chaplain and his superiors granted his request. He now visits the various precincts and makes himself available to officers who need somebody to speak to and regularly visits crime scenes to give advice and assistance to those in need. He's not very evangelical, especially as he works in somewhere so full of grief. Very patient and understanding, he quite often just lets people talk and always retains peoples strict confidence.
Emmet Pritchard, Station Janitor []
Description: Anyone who actually paid attention to Emmet would see a tall, almost regal African American with piercing eyes that betray a lively intelligence. He is somewhat thin, but his janitor’s uniform conceals wiry muscles that are stronger than one might expect. While on the job, he invariably wears a brown shirt with the G&V logo, blue jeans and comfortable shoes. Off duty, Emmet dresses casually.
Reputation: Emmet is genial and good-natured to those who pay any attention to him and is something of a homebody, but he hates having to clean up bodily fluids from the prisoner suites and continually bemoans the state of the cells.
City Hall Staff:[]
Erik Blattner, Eve Kanagy, Katy Garriga and Jamie Biren
Eve Kanagy, Assistant District Attorney[]
Description: Eve is sharp-featured. She dresses in fashionable suits that compliment her figure. She is prone to quick movements, and in the courtroom is almost predatory in manners.
Reputation: She got lucky in an early case and was promoted faster than expected, unfortunately success went to her head and when a case fell apart based on evidence she came down to the precinct, ranting at the officers concerned, convinced that they had sabotaged her case. Eve is a volatile ally, driven as much by ego as by a love for justice. She demanded flawless police procedure in her cases. Omission of even the tiniest facts was evidence of incompetence and corruption within the police force. A handful of officers have refused to work with Eve, even under threat of suspension or termination. Thankfully she's rarely used as the chief prosecutor these days and is frequently tied up with paperwork.
Katy Garriga, Public Defender[]
Description: Katy dresses well and takes great pains to put forth a professional appearance. She is neither attractive nor unattractive — she’s “normal” in an unremarkable sort of way. Because of long hours and stress, she usually has dark circles under both eyes.
Reputation: Passionate and idealistic, but overwhelmed by the constant flow of minor criminal offences, has forced her to get a reputation for effective plea-bargaining.
The Midway Tribune:[]
The online and print versions of the Midway Tribune have close to a half-million readers every day. The newspaper considers itself an advocate for the city’s citizens, and sometimes taking on unpopular positions in its editorials. The news staff has a reputation for being aggressive and determined. The Trib is well regarded in the national journalism community, with a half-dozen Pulitzer Prizes or nominations (Mace Calhoun’ among them; see the Prologue) and scores of lesser awards to the newspapers’credit.
Erik Blattner, Crime-Desk Journalist (Midway Tribune)[]
Description: Handsome and outgoing, Erik could have had a successful career as a television news talking head. He dresses conservatively, with a nod toward film noir detective styling. His shoulder bag shows the effects of years of hard use, and is always stocked with notepads and pens. His Toyota Matrix is very nearly a mobile office. A laptop computer and police-band radio scanner are almost always on board, and the front seat is home to city maps and a phone directory.
Reputation: A fairly well-trusted and respectful reporter among cops. He's careful to get his facts right and double-check sources. However he's rumoured to have a lot of criminal contacts that he also respects and he has been known to act as an anonymous intermediary for crooks who want to report more serious crimes. A couple of years ago a serial rapist was making the rounds. Erik helped an anonymous witness to one of the attacks give his evidence (widely believed to be a drug dealer) without revealing his identity and they were able to catch the rapist shortly afterwards based upon that information. Despite his alleged willingness to talk to criminals his editorials come down heavily against criminals in the city. He's married with children and lives in the suburbs.
Bailey’s[]
Since opening during the first years of the 20th century, Bailey’s has catered to Midway’s finest. John H. Bailey established the bar on the advice of his brother, the only Bailey to actually serve in the MPD. Originally located in a store-front building near Midway’s old city hall, the bar moved to its location next to the precinct house after World War II. Inside, the lights are low, the music is usually soft and unobtrusive and pictures of cops in every situation cover the walls. There are a couple of TVs tuned to sports and news channels. Outsiders find themselves politely but firmly excluded from the bar’s camaraderie, and anyone stirring up trouble gets a single terse warning be-fore being bodily removed from the premises. God help any uninitiated thug who decides to knock this place over for a few quick bucks. Alana closes the bar on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and any time a police officer is killed in the line of duty. After the funeral, she opens up for the night, and sombre remembrances become boisterous wakes. The bar is a second home for MPD officers, and seems to be a permanent home for others.
Alana Bailey[]
Description: Alana has wavy, auburn hair and light blue eyes. She dresses casually around the bar, favoring jeans and a buttoned-down shirt worn open over one of her many police-themed T-shirts.
Reputation: Hard working, she's run the bar for nearly 15 years and her small staff sometimes pull 16 hour shifts. Her husband is a banker who occasionally visits and is about the only non-cop you're likely to see in the bar. She's a good listener and is fiercely loyal to her patrons, but always refuses anything that could be interpreted as a favour and doesn't have so much as a single parking ticket.
Citizens[]
Jamie Biron, Citizens’ Patrol Watchdog[]
Description: Jamie dresses well. He isn’t conspicuous about his wealth, but isn’t especially concerned about keeping it hidden, either. He’s aged well, looking about a decade younger than his 56 years.
Reputation: A computer engineer, who works from home. He got voted head of a local neighbourhood watch scheme. He's fairly well off and his community watch scheme is quite successful. They organise patrols at night to help escort the young, elderly or other vulnerable people and have a hotline for minor problems, meaning that they are unlikely to raise a false alarm or a nuisance call and as a result dispatch consider their calls an elevated priority.
Prof Steven Mullen (Who was stealing credit from his students)
Naroon (Attacked in the OTBSII theft, but survived with serious injuries)
Jack (Killed in the OTBSII theft)
Mary Nunez
Peter Emson
Bhari Singh
Others:[]
Lay-Z (Gang leader)
Richard Morgan (Local Republican Candidate for State Senator) - He actually showed up to help out with the clean-up of Switchtrack Alley, but it was clearly just for a photo opportunity.
Blake Jordan (Failed Republican Candidate for Senate) - The elder and broadly more respected candidate, but reluctant to get his hands dirty with publicity stunts.
Wanahton Janus - Manager at a stationary wholesalers and practicing shaman.
Ruben Washte - Murder suspect and practicing shaman, last seen weilding a red gemstone.
Ana Zawadzki - Local private eye
Mitch Babcock - Sports Science student and devout young Christian who volounteers as a part time Verger at churches in the Switchtrack alley area.
Thomas - Local homeless man who lives down in the Docklands, agreed to keep an eye out for the abduction of homeless people and call it in (in exchange for $200)
