Need for Speed War/The Patricians

The Patricians are a vigilante group of NFPD police officers posing as street racers, and the biggest force attempting to impede the player's progress in Need for Speed War.

Description
Formed in secret within the NFPD, The Patricians are what results when great disillusionment in the justice system takes hold of those that enforce it. Their numbers greater than any street crew, their tactics harsher than their offspring police force, The Patricians live and breathe justice. True, rough justice.

Traits
As a collective, The Patricians bring a lot of interesting traits to the table. Their overall goal in War is to shut down all street racers including the player in any way they see fit. From a belief standpoint, The Patricians see themselves as being above actual NFPD officers, viewing them as being inferior and ineffective at their job at bringing down suspects. As such, they have been known to take down NFPD units while simultaneously hunting down the player and other street racers.

The Patricians also have separate "police chatter" from the NFPD, with theirs being a lot more coarse than the former's. In this regard, they are similar to the Palm City Police Department (at night) from Need for Speed Heat.

Tactics
When it comes to hunting down suspects, The Patricians rely on surprise as being one of their biggest tactics. If members are involved in open-route pursuits, there is no indication of their presence save for extra racer icons on the map coming toward the activity in progress. If they become involved in races, the same indication appears along with the total number of racers in the race being mysteriously raised from 10 to anywhere between 11 and 15.

Each Patrician member will use their own vehicle as a weapon against the player, whether it be through rams, P.I.T. attempts and/or police technology. Referring to the very latter, they possess a wide range of it including spike strips and killswitches (weaponry shared with the NFPD) and EMP electronic devices and ESF strikes (weaponry NOT shared with the NFPD). Players can escape all their offensives by successfully dodging them.

Like the NFPD, players must evade The Patricians by either taking them down or outrunning their vehicles (It’s advised that players take them down rather than outrun them, as this option actually has a lower rate of success for them than for NFPD units). The same cooldown system as the NFPD also applies here for total evasion.

Members
There are several members of The Patricians, with each driving their own cars capable of keeping up with the player and other racers at high speeds. Each member has a nickname/codename that is addressed at different times in their police chatter.

* NOT an original character by LoganC22

Trivia

 * According to LoganC22, main inspiration for The Patricians came from the same named social class from throughout ancient history (specifically, Ancient Rome).
 * The Patricians are connected to The Beneficiary.
 * Cross's Corvette is a loose recreation by LoganC22 of the unused variant of his Corvette C6 from Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005).
 * Taylor Bickell (and his nickname "Killer") are references to Travis Bickle, protagonist of the 1976 film Taxi Driver portrayed by Robert De Niro.
 * Bennett "Nighthawk" Carson is a reference to Carson & Bennett and the Carson GT Nighthawk, an automotive manufacturer and car model respectively from EA's Burnout Paradise.
 * Mark "Devil" Murdock is a reference to Marvel Comics' character Matt Murdock and his vigilante identity "Daredevil".
 * Manolo Abarca's nickname "La Máquina" is Spanish for "The Machine".
 * Possibly more to be added here.