hi i was at the same jobsite as last time so i remembered my question! in some cities one or more industries are fronts/side business for organized crime (ie: garbage, construction, movers); is it safe to assume that pretty much everything but fire/police/medical is a front for crime? is even the post office corrupt??
it’s safe to say that if a service or business exists in west salem it is probably involved with organised crime. not necessarily willingly--there are some people out where who are just trying to make honest livings, but their businesses couldn’t survive without dealing with a gang or two. that was basically the point of case 1. that restaurant was a family-owned place that tried not to associate with any Bad Guys until it was in dire straits, got fucked over when they did, and then the place was accidentally destroyed by a tiny dumbass robber anyway so none of their efforts mattered in the end. also, the daughter now has a bald spot on the top of her head like a monk. the only person who “won” in that situation was mace, who got to keep the robber’s severed arm eventually.
i can’t say more about the police because it’s spoilers aside from the fact that there are definitely crooked cops. the deputy chief tries to keep them out of her division (or at least away from the important jobs) but she is not always successful because there’s just so many and they are not always easy to detect. i guess it’s ok to say that the police, fire departments and hospitals are some of the few openly municipal services though. others like ambulances and trash pickup are privatised and the main companies are pretty territorial about who is allowed to operate in what neighbourhoods during what time, and the territories completely coincidentally tend to line up with gang territories for some reason.
the post office is notoriously awful in corvus. they probably are here too but i don’t have any plans to include any mail-related things at this point. the problems in corvus are more like the guys who are trusted to keep mail safe from highwaymen sometimes turn out to be highwaymen themselves. in west salem it’d be more like gangsters send out a package to a rival labeled “definitely not illegal cow intestines with a trigger tag that activates when someone open the box” and the mail guys are like “alright sounds legit” and deliver it, but they also snoop around in harmless mail and “lose” packages they want to keep themselves.
you’ll see trash collectors in a case though. until now you have only interacted with figuratively garbage people, but you will eventually meet the literal ones.
