Officer Tenpenny's Contest History

Who is Officer Tenpenny?
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas can't exactly be described as having a fine plot. You rebuild the "hood"... you get chucked out, tour the state, come back and rebuild the "hood" again. Oh, and not forgetting the use of offensive-word-for-black-people-that-starts-with-n a couple of hundred times. Great!

For the few people that actually watch the cutscenes for missions, of particular note is what could be described as the main "villain", Officer Frank Tenpenny. The voice acting in San Andreas isn't the greatest, especially whenever CJ is talking. Tenpenny is the one who stands out, and there's a good reason for this. He's voiced by Samuel L. Jackson.

Honestly. Look it up in the credits. It's Samuel L. fucking Jackson. Not quite sure how Rockstar managed to hire him is beyond imagination, but he makes the best of a bad job. Upon CJ's arrival in Los Santos, he's the one who provides the welcoming party with a minor act of police brutality: taking his money which he labels drug money, taking all the goods and money he took with him, and dumping him in the middle of Ballas territory, an enemy gang. He soon pops up again, and orders CJ around to do little "errands" for him. Tenpenny is supposed to clean up the gangs of Los Santos and stop their crimes: his idea is to preserve equal strength amongst the gangs to make them wipe each other out. CJ is forced to do this: it benefits his gang, and Tenpenny. If he doesn't do Tenpenny's orders, he can throw him in prison for the killing of a cop (who had been investigating police corruption, especially Tenpenny, so CJ is an ideal scapegoat for Tenpenny's dirty work). Later on, it's also to prevent the death of CJ's jailed brother, 'Sweet'.

Eventually though, the true law starts to catch up with Tenpenny. As the game progresses, Tenpenny makes CJ do more tasks, to prevent Tenpenny from being caught: killing witnesses preparing to testify against him, snooping journalists and the like. Near the end, despite CJ's work Tenpenny gets put on trial, but is found completely innocent due to lack of evidence (surprise, surprise). Riots break out, and Tenpenny decides to use the chaos to mask his own escape, but to no avail: CJ chases him, and Tenpenny becomes a victim of an "unfortunate traffic accident".

What made Tenpenny a stand-out member was his greater-than-thou, but relaxed attitude: his threats are delivered in an almost lazy fashion (indeed, he talks to CJ whilst having his fellow corrupt officer cook up a barbecue at one point), and he treats the gangs of Los Santos as his puppet, and he generally keeps a cool temperament. To quote Tenpenny in an fairly relaxed, but still threatening manner:

"We own you. We can **** on you from such a height, you'd think God himself crapped on you." -Tenpenny

(writeup courtesy of jeevesthemole)

Officer Tenpenny's Contest History
Win-Loss Record: 0-1

Spring 2005 Contest: Jenova Division - 7 Seed

Jenova Round 1 --- Lost to (2) Liquid Snake, 15285 [20.54%] - 59138 [79.46%] Extrapolated Strength --- 32nd Place [9.89%]

Being fodder in a normal contest is bad enough, but being last place in the Villain Contest X-Stats is something else entirely. It was a lock that Tenpenny would be fodder in Spring 2005, but even after his blowout loss to Liquid most figured that he wouldn't come in danger of finishing as the weakest character in the stats. Tenpenny's only silver lining is that he may be underestimated due to possible Seph/Liquid SFF, but that's a stretch.

Then again the odds of us ever seeing Tenpenny in another one of these contests and confirming this is slim to none. Tenpenny, despite being a good character in a high-selling series, is yet another of the GTA characters that has disappointed in these contests.