Chapter 1420: A Wave of Resignations and Newbies
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Luke watched everything quietly.
This was his most “civilized” operation so far.
Apart from using the power of the Internet, media, and public opinion, he only used his superpowers of hypnosis and control in his hunt for clues.
The rest of the confrontation was carried out on TV and on the Internet.
However, he didn’t really like this sort of behavior. When it came down to it, it was a little boring.
Nevertheless, it was pretty fun that a few sc.u.mbags who he couldn’t kill personally with his own hands were socially executed by the public.
After this storm pa.s.sed, the real purge would begin.
By then, what awaited some bigshots wouldn’t be social death, but physical deaths.
It would take at least two months or longer to clean up everything.
So, if the people on Luke’s blacklist were lucky, they could still live to see the next year.
This was sad news for the system. After all, this was a huge amount of experience and credit points.
In contrast, Luke’s days were much more relaxed.
Since Batman and Black Cat were at the center of attention, they could only cancel their regular exercise of cleaning up gangsters every two days.
When they did act every now and then, they couldn’t reveal their faces, nor could they use their signature “bone-breaking” moves.
Selina and Gold Nugget only went out a few times to empty out illegal drug caches before handing them over to Luke to destroy.
That way, he didn’t make too much of a loss in terms of experience and credit points, and he didn’t have to do much.
The only reaction that New York’s underground had to everything was that the price of illegal drugs shot up again, to 5 to 10 times what it had been a few months ago.
Luke and Selina didn’t feel guilty about that.
If drug users couldn’t afford it, they might as well quit. It was good for their health, for others, and for society.
The situation in NYPD had also changed significantly.
Chief Nelson had already been confirmed as the commissioner, and was only waiting for October to officially take office.
But it would be a rocky start for him.
NYPD officers were quitting on a large scale, and new recruits were performing poorly.
The number of dead officers during the attack had indeed frightened too many people.
The police officers weren’t scared of armed gangsters, but they weren’t confident that they could deal with weird monsters.
Less than 3% of officers died in the line of duty during this incident, but including those who resigned, NYPD lost 10% of its workforce.
Chief Nelson had no choice but to ease up on rules for recruitment and reduce the education requirement to junior high school and the age to 17.5 years old.
That was because at 17-and-a-half, a person could undergo three months of training at the police academy and become a probationary officer, and by the time they turned 18, they could become formal officers.
With that, the police department was finally able to get back on track.
For many young people, being a police officer was more dangerous than being unemployed.
Apart from praying that they wouldn’t run into similar attacks in the future, most people had no other choice.
Attacks didn’t happen every day, but the constant pressure to live never stopped
Thus, Luke and Selina couldn’t say anything in Walter’s office about needing to take “newbies” under their wing.
Looking at Luke’s grudging expression, Walter scratched his head. “Don’t… Don’t look like that. I can’t do anything about it. Everybody in the Detective Bureau has to look after newbies, and John and Joe have even been split up. Also, it’s hard for the smaller divisions to recruit any more newbies.”
Luke could only nod.
He and Selina really had to thank the power of money that they hadn’t been split up.
Nelson, who had just received a large donation, didn’t dare mess with Luke.
Brad was unlucky, and with Nelson in charge, Walter had an even clearer view of Luke’s position.
He himself had been reinstated, and might even be promoted. That was also at Luke’s suggestion.
Walter was just a little more blunt in nature; he wasn’t an idiot.
So, while John and Joe had to split up to take care of newbies, Luke and Selina would look after two newbies together.
After they left the office, Luke and Selina looked at the complicated expressions of the two newbies outside. They didn’t try to act like seniors, and shook hands and introduced themselves very naturally.
Selina told them what to pay attention to in the police department.
Things like who to look for when it came to miscellaneous tasks, gathering information, combat support… Hm, look for Sergeant John McClane.
Maggie Holtra was a 25-year-old woman who had been transferred from the 26th Precinct.
Brett Mahoney was a 26-year-old African-American man who had been transferred from the 15th Precinct.
Blake’s expression was clearly even stranger than Maggie’s, because he had met Luke and Selina before. Back then, he had only known that they were detectives.
He never thought that after he was promoted and transferred to HQ, he would become a “newbie” under these two.
Was HQ already so radical that they would use such a small detective as their main force? This thought popped into Brett’s mind.
But after several days of “mentoring,” both Brett and Maggie knew that Luke and Selina were seasoned detectives, and they definitely weren’t here because of connections.
Whether it was experience, networks, methods, or things to pay attention to, they were flawless.
In fact, Luke and Selina rarely meddled in their cases. They only gave the necessary reminders, and didn’t act uppity.
Those who could be transferred to the Detective Bureau weren’t rookies.
As a sergeant, Brett would be groomed to become the backbone of the department in the future.
After all, this guy had been one of the few good police officers at the 15th Precinct. He hadn’t colluded with the other dirty cops, and had even helped Lawyer Matt several times. He was a “seedling” who had caught HQ’s attention, which was why he had been transferred.
Maggie was also a second grade detective. If she performed well, she might become a lieutenant soon.
There was no helping it.
Seven or eight colleagues in the police department had also resigned after the wave of officer deaths.
Being a police officer in New York really was a job with high risks. New York had one of the highest levels of consumerism in the world, but the police officers here didn’t earn as much as in LAPD.
Fewer people were willing to risk their lives when they couldn’t get enough money for it.
Although Chief Nelson said that he would try his best to think of a way to increase their wages, there were tens of thousands of police officers, and increasing their annual pay by several thousand each amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
The New York City government certainly didn’t have such a big budget for NYPD to squander; it was more likely to dismiss employees and abandon most areas that weren’t “profitable.”
Given the current situation, it was hard to say whether Chief Nelson’s promotion was a good or bad thing for him.
Nevertheless, the donation from t.i.tanium Phone Company was an annual thing. Luke didn’t care who took office; in any case, they wouldn’t dare do anything to stop the flow of money.
Given the low chance of finding donors from City Hall, NYPD was reliant on contributions from magnates.
Whether or not NYPD had enough to eat every year was decided under the pens of these bigshots.
As Luke and Selina looked after the “newbie” officers, September arrived, and the sun appeared less and less as New York cooled down and the weather turned overcast and rainy once more.
Selina, who had enjoyed the sun for a while, had to say goodbye to her bikini.