I'm on a high chaos playthrough, and am running Slackjaw's missions. I'm returning after the first one, with the audio file from his informant. Every time I get near Slackjaw (the stairs right before his 'office'), the thugs turn hostile on me. Both times I've killed weepers on my way in, the ones they have locked up. I'm also taking lots of things, but that never triggered hostility before.

Any ideas?

This happened to me in one of my playthrus too. I too would speculate it happens because I started to kill the weepers in that area, before leaving to get the audio log, but who knows if it's right or not.

In any case, I restarted the mission from the beginning, didn't kill weepers, and didn't encounter it again.

EDIT: It was indeed only Slackjaw that was hostile, at first.

Hmm...It seems to be only Slackjaw himself who is hostile. He attacks, then the rest of the gang joins in.

Ahhh well...It makes a certain moral dilemma involving Slackjaw later in the game easy for me to stomach.