Judge Dredd: Plain clothes surveillance??

[Anonymous]

Can anyone help me out here?
My judge characters keep wanting to call in plain clothes surveillance on suspects/contacts/those in protective custody. I see no mention of this in the rules or source materials. Do you think judges do this themselves? (My feeling is that street judges like to keep their uniform on). Or is there a specialist unit? Or what?
Wally squad is deep cover, so its not them....

Thanks for any ideas/thoughts

 

[AndrewW]

Can anyone help me out here?
My judge characters keep wanting to call in plain clothes surveillance on suspects/contacts/those in protective custody. I see no mention of this in the rules or source materials. Do you think judges do this themselves? (My feeling is that street judges like to keep their uniform on). Or is there a specialist unit? Or what?
Wally squad is deep cover, so its not them....

Thanks for any ideas/thoughts

There's the COE Judge in Judge's Handbook:

The Covert Operations Establishment (COE) is responsible for intelligence gathering relating to any potential threat against Mega-City One, both foreign and domestic.

Though the COE Judge probably isn't handling routine surveillance.

Covers Wally Squad as well and doesn't mention deep cover for them but that's generally not surveillance duties.

Could be there are some street judges that specialize in this without needing a specific specialist unit/division.

 

[Anonymous]

Can anyone help me out here?
My judge characters keep wanting to call in plain clothes surveillance on suspects/contacts/those in protective custody. I see no mention of this in the rules or source materials. Do you think judges do this themselves? (My feeling is that street judges like to keep their uniform on). Or is there a specialist unit? Or what?
Wally squad is deep cover, so its not them....

Thanks for any ideas/thoughts

There's the COE Judge in Judge's Handbook:

The Covert Operations Establishment (COE) is responsible for intelligence gathering relating to any potential threat against Mega-City One, both foreign and domestic.

Though the COE Judge probably isn't handling routine surveillance.

Covers Wally Squad as well and doesn't mention deep cover for them but that's generally not surveillance duties.

Could be there are some street judges that specialize in this without needing a specific specialist unit/division.

Thanks. The main rule book mentions Wally as deep long term cover operations.
COE is mentioned too, but as you say it seems to have a more political/larger scale remit.

They keep asking how they can do a stake out on an appartment or something with their uniforms on.....

 

[ned-kogar]

PSU - Public Surveillance Unit.

As well as street cams, spy-in-the-sky remotes, etc, there's no reason why they couldn't also assign PSU operatives to tail perps in some circumstances... But their usual technological means seem more Dreddy.

The main rulebook does also state (p. 67) surveillance detail can be part of a Street Judge's duties.

Ned

 

[havercake lad]

I would agree that COE is well outside easy access of Street Judges and they have their own Spook projects.
PSU might help. If enough clout exists then possibly a discreet remote cmera ( one disguised as a fly is used in one strip ) might be operated.
Odd Wally Squad operatives in-between deepcover missions might get temporarily assigned to a case if a Judge can persuade his superiors.
In a major emergency dozens of them seem to have been available or dropped current assignments to infiltrate Sin City at short notice. Likewise a large amount were used in Silver's period of office at short notice to sabotage the Democracy March.
Judge White

 

[Shokker]

PSU would certainly be a Street Judge's first port of call. He/she would first need to find out if their was any surveillance in the area (PSU tech can be found densely scattered throughout the entire city).

It has been known for Street Judges to go undercover, I think the first instance of this happening within the pages of 2000AD was in the Judge Dredd story The Face-Change Crimes, but this would happen on only the rarest of occasions and usually just as a tool to propel a story forward.