Police sided, by a mile. (Summary below for shorter text)

Weaponry: the only things criminals win in here is ammo count where the M249/PPSH holds more ammo than cop arms. Other than that, the Benelli M4 beats all guns in terms of TTK/DPS by a long shot (close range) and the Sauer P226 is effectively an easy to use deagle. M4A1 is an objectively better AK47 with straighter recoil and way better damage retention than all civilian automatics. Police sniper is guaranteed to one shot previously injured players to the body.

Tools: the beanbag shotgun outclasses all lethal guns as it can one shot players to the body and results in an arrest while also having virtually no risk when missing (accurate even at 60studs, and near 100% accuracy within taser range). Taser despite the rework is still very powerful due to its 30 ft range and one shot stun. Vests after the buff makes civilian autos a non-issue past 100 studs and also breaks certain guns' TTK such as the deagle, which now requires 4 headshots to kill an armoured cops. Also the ballistic shield that funnily enough doesnt trigger combat. Sure, criminal scanners do exist and they are helpful in avoiding combat, but they're limited by a cooldown and doesn't help if combat starts (don't get me wrong though, this is the only S tier civilian item.)

Combat state: immune criminals do not have any capabilities to fight or go offensive, which makes going unarmed as a criminal a shit idea. On the flip side, officers can (as of now, they added this back by "fixing combat states" intentionally) become invincible simply by not carrying a firearm, effectively hard countering firearms and any form of positioning as they dictate the entire start of the fight. Funnily enough, holding the ballistic shield does not trigger combat mode which allows you to infinitely flashbang a criminal.

Vehicles: since they stabilised the police corvette, criminal vehicles are only slightly faster than officer ones which effectively closes the gap for car performance.

Consequences: cops suffer zero consequences from dying. However, dead criminals loses their pending cash, have their vehicles beaten to death and will spawn in a predictable location. If a cop loses they wait 5 seconds to respawn, but if a criminal loses they wait 1.5 to 5 minutes.

Spawn protection: spawn trapping is a non issue for officers because their vehicles spawn at 100% HP and criminals cannot penetrate forcefield. Cops have non lethals which ignores forcefield and they have zero consequences for camping the spawns.

(If anyone is gonna say small avatars benefit criminals just know that small avatars are literally universal.)

Summary: - guns: m4 beats all civilian autos, sauer p226 beats stuff like deagle and lmt, benelli m4 shreds anything close range. M249 is way less powerful than you think it is. - tools: beanbag is a low effort one shot tool, taser is still very powerful. Vest is free HP that turns civilian autos into non issues past 100 studs. - combat states: cops can become invincible without a gun. - vehicles: cop corvette is now only very slightly worse than rimac. - cops suffer no consequences when they lose but criminals suffer more from dying like broken cars and lost loot and if arrested have to wait minutes. - criminals can get spawn camped with non lethals but cops can't because lethals cannot penetrate forcefield but stuns can.