Name: Citizens’ Alliance for Protection. Also known popularly as “cappies,” “Caps,” “the Hat Squad,” or “Hats” on the street. Most often called “the Citizens’ Alliance” or “the Alliance” by members or in formal discourse. Combatant members are often known as Watchkeepers.
Summary: A group of private citizens fighting crime through a combination of community support, patrols, and the application of nonlethal weaponry to criminals’ skulls or other parts.
Legal Status: CAP is considered a citizen's neighborhood watch program, although some public figures have decried them as vigilantes or even a gang.
In the depths of Titan City’s Dark Age, the superhuman Meridian, the magically empowered Enech, and retired U.S. Marine Julian Martinez, natives of the south side of Titan City, joined forces to take down a burgeoning gang/organized crime operation, the Bogatyri. They succeeded through a combination of straightforward face-smashing and rallying locals to their assistance. Realizing that they could continue to improve conditions in the city by teaching its citizens to stand against crime, they created the Citizens’ Alliance for Protection, a group of ordinary folk who would defend their neighborhoods through a combination of community-building and literal crimefighting. The Alliance mounts regular patrols to discourage street crime. It also runs numerous mentoring programs for the city’s youth, helps reclaim dilapidated buildings, and works with the many soup kitchens and other charitable institutions around the city.
Location: The Alliance maintains a network of chapterhouses across Titan City, with at least one in each urban district (although they roam Rhinehart Park and other mostly undeveloped areas, they don’t base there) and more in particularly crime-ridden or depressed areas. Most of these are little more than small, rented spaces with peeling paint and scuffed linoleum floors, but they are better than nothing. The faction’s main business office is attached to the Highpoint chapterhouse, the city’s largest, located in the Bauhaus neighborhood near Titan Community College.
Notable Members: Meridian (co-organizer, super suit, technician); Jarhead (co-organizer, retired Marine, combat trainer); Enech (co-organizer, brawler)
Stated Purpose/Goals/Motives: According to its mission statement, the Alliance exists to “protect and strengthen Titan City’s communities through the efforts of ordinary citizens.” They perform regular patrols in dangerous neighborhoods, which includes much of the south side of Steward’s Bay.
Not all members are warriors or even trained to fight. The Alliance also works with after school programs, soup kitchens, home construction, and other local, charitable efforts that are willing to have them (and even runs a few of its own). As the mission statement suggests, the Alliance takes pride in the fact that its members are drawn from the ranks of ordinary citizens, rather than superpowered heroes or police, though they generally bear those groups no ill will.
CAP’s trademark is, of course, the hat. The hats are always white, but take various forms, ranging from simple ball caps for ordinary members, to special helmets, to flamboyant cowboy hats for CAP's technicians, the White Hats.
Members also wear button-like badges. Aside from their badges and hats, members usually wear normal clothing. Some higher-ranked Alliance members also wear bulletproof vests with attachment points for their weapons. CAP vests are a bright, vivid blue and have the “CAP” and building logo stenciled on the back in white.
Exploits: Although over a decade in the past, Hurricane Atlas proved to be one of the Alliance’s finest hours. Alliance volunteers fought off a few looters, but they are most remembered for rescuing hundreds of people from floods and other disasters, as well as helping administer relief efforts immediately after the hurricane.
Combat Information: One of the faction’s firm rules is that they do not use lethal weapons. Despite arguments to the contrary from various civilian groups, heroes, and the TCPD, the Alliance does not see itself as a vigilante organization. Most members, if asked, would say they care only about preventing crime, not punishing it. (How true this is depends on the individual member.)
Thus, they use a variety of dangerous but generally nonlethal weapons. In melee, they wield nightsticks similar to those of the TCPD, handheld electric stun weapons (tasers), and unarmed strikes.
At range, most Watchkeepers use a pistol-like weapon. Shaped like a bulky, automatic handgun made of glossy, black plastic, this device uses proprietary New World Technologies engineering to fire rubber “mercy” bullets via compressed air.