Except you did criticize him. You said that "I don't think that doing things in a way that limits your exposure to RP is really RP". Thus criticized his RP. You then simultaneously say "Cops have limited time and should do things in a way to limit their exposure to investigative RP by not dusting for finger prints, checking for tires, and chemical signatures". Which is it?
No, you're characterizing it as a criticism knowing that it's not. At no point in time did I say that his RP was bad, which is what you're trying to imply here. I don't pretend that when I'm doing deliveries or sitting by myself on a street corner I'm RPing. As I've said, I don't consider things done in a vacuum to be RP. If you want to try and paint it as me saying Moon2 is a bad RPer then go for it, but a liar is a liar is liar.
And I said it does provide RP, but the cops choose not to pursue it. We're just going in circles here. You believe RP requires a subjective and undefinable amount of direct interaction with other players. I believe RP just requires role playing.
OK. I disagree, but I can't force you to feel a certain way. I don't think you would agree with that statement, however.
No you really haven't. The closest you came was 'If the game mechanics they have at their disposal to find evidence show that there is no evidence to find that's in no way meta.' which doesn't address my point. You're saying "they checked for dna using the mechanic and the dna said 'no dna' case closed". I'm saying DNA isn't the only type of evidence police use and it would be metagaming to know that and let it affect your character.
I did not say that, but alright. Also what you've said there about using other kinds of evidence is definitively incorrect and powergaming as I've explained many times already. Keep saying it, and I'll keep telling you the same thing as I have from the beginning.
Hell you even agree that they could RP it and choose not: "Could they do it to kill time and throw out some /me and find fuck all? Absolutely. But that's going to get old the first hundred times you do it, if you even make it that far with that routine." Choosing not to based on the out of game knowledge that there is no mechanic for it which is metagaming, but it's 100% acceptable metagaming. No one wants that from players to viewers, so it's acceptable metagaming that they use their out of game knowledge to skip boring and tedious RP. Just because it's acceptable metagaming doesn't mean it's not metagaming.
There's a difference between doing something for effect, and doing something for fun. What you're saying is that cops should actually do these things. You're saying they should break the rules, and that they should do things they're not trained to do.
And no, this is in absolutely no way shape or form metagaming. You can keep trying to come up with explanations to justify your argument, but at the end of the day it's actually, factually not that. Ironically your argument itself actually is metagaming, because you're suggesting players do things their characters wouldn't know to do based on OOC knowledge.
For the same reason soda would offer a cup of coffee to his employees even though there isn't a single coffee machine in the entire game. For the same reason when green gang kidnapped kevin they told him to give them a bottle of wine every time they're in green territory despite bottle of wine not existing in game. Same reason Jacob smells women even if there is no smell mechanic. Because it's roleplay.
There actually are coffee machines in the game as props, and soda vending machines. There are vineyards, dumpsters, flies, and so on. So even just in regards to the examples you're providing, these concepts do definitively exist within the realm of this game. Even putting that aside though, the things you're describing in regards to police definitively DO NOT exist in RP. There's no room for ambiguity whatsoever in this matter, it just doesn't exist, and it doesn't exist because it would be powergaming. Again, this isn't real life, and it isn't trying to be a simulation. You're suggesting cops do things that they know definitively cannot be done in this realm.
So now we've escalated. Not only are cops in your argument powergaming, but they're metagaming as well by your own logic.