EvoCity Newspaper
#31
Local Businessman Opens a New Casino in EvoCity
05/07/15



Hello all! Your new intern Elijah Jackson here, with a report of a new casino that has opened in EvoCity with a unique twist.


Harry Enfield, the owner of "Smack-a-Ball", kindly explained the rules of the game.

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To play, the gambler steps into the booth and controls from what side they want to drop the ball from. When they have made their decision, they press the release button and the ball falls down into spiked cogs where it bounces around until it comes to a stop in one of the holes at the bottom.

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The colour that the ball lands in determines the prize outcome:
  • Blue = Half of your money back.
  • Yellow = Another go dropping the ball.
  • Red = Lose your money.
  • Green = Double your money.

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Deceptively simple, yet it proves to be a challenge for everyone that has used it.


That's all for now, but be sure to check back soon for more great stories later on today!

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OOC: Thanks to lods of emone for providing the dupe!
The following 2 users Like Benporium's post:
  • mgdwszx, SixPackSoCali
#32
Two people applied to join us recently.

Both have been accepted.

Welcome Lord Octagon and Captain PurpleFlyingDildo!


I hope to see your work soon.
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The following 1 user Likes mgdwszx's post:
  • Benporium
#33
A "Vault" in EvoCity?


06/07/15

Hello everyone! Elijah Jackson here again, with an unusual report today of a "vault" that has very suddenly been constructed in EvoCity.

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As you can see from the picture above, it appears to have been built into one of the many cliff faces surrounding EvoCity with a large metal door securing the only entrance into it.

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Although I contacted the representative for the "vault", Louis Fontaine, he was unfortunately unavailable at the time as he was being interviewed by another reporter.


What is inside this mysterious "vault"? and why is it in EvoCity?

We'll update you with more information as we receive it.


That's all for today, but be sure to check back soon for more local news as we report it!

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OOC: Thanks to Falcon for providing the dupe!
The following 2 users Like Benporium's post:
  • mgdwszx, Lord Octagon
#34
EvoCity Violence Rises With the Heat of the Summer




The figures can be numbing: There were more than 2,000 shootings in EvoCity last year, and the city is on pace for more this year. The violence rises in the heat of summer. But beneath the sobering figures are personal stories, both of fear and resilience. EvoCity Newspapers' Francesco Serpico spent time around EvoCity to hear them.

An unnamed citizen has a strategy for keeping her three sons alive. She teachers her boys to stay away from the windows of their own home, on the back streets of EvoCity. Jade, the youngest, who is 8, knows why.

"A man might have a gun in his hand, and he can look through the window and see me and he can shoot," he said. "That makes me feel, like, scared because I don't want to get killed."


These are the practicalities of life and family as another summer of violence breaks over EvoCity.

Quote:I'm always waking up in the morning to gunfire. I don't even need to set my alarm. [I] can just rely on that BAM BAM BAM BAM at 8 hours in the morning. - Harry Enfield

Parents recite prayers so that God might protect their children when they are not in their sight.

Quote:I think [gun crime] is a bad thing, and needs to be eradicated from this holy land - Theodore Franklin


Like most cities, it is far safer than it was two decades ago. But EvoCity recorded more than 200 killings through late June and more than 1,000 shootings, both more than 20 percent higher than the year before.

Police officers even told Francesco how they would seek to prevent such heinous acts.

Quote:I think a lockdown would be great. To stop all this crime for some time. - Officer Nathan Rothschild


The same officer also stated why he thought it was so common for these crimes to come about.

Quote:I don't know... Some people just don't know what they do. 

However, some people thing differently, a local gun dealer said that people need to express their right to bear arms in order to protect themselves from criminals who are lurking around every corner.

Quote:I sell to people that want to protect themselves [from criminals]. - Unnamed gun dealer


What does the president have to say?

President Arron Harris's office told EvoCity Newspaper that reducing gun violence is a priority, "We are very firm with weapon laws and we only legislate close range weapons to ensure protection of citizens and officials." When asked about how will he tackle the issue of gun crime he made the following statement: "We are aiming for more undercover officers to be employed in order to keep an eye on the streets and secure a safe environment."

The president also stated that people often overreact and abuse their right to bear arms, for instance "if they scratch their cars ever so slightly they feel it necessary to pull out a weapon and teach the culprit a lesson." His office also assures us that police officers are trying their very best to tackle all types of crime, however, due to a small number of officers on the force, situations like these are getting out of hand.


'Everyone has heard a gunshot before'

Andre can recite the rules of living in EvoCity: Watch your surroundings. Keep to yourself. Make sure you walk with a friend: If you're alone, a gang member might walk up and question you.


Quote:"You're gonna hear a gun no matter who you are," Andre said. "You're gonna hear a gunshot any day of your life," he said. "That's just how life is. Everyone has heard a gunshot before."


Recently two nine year old children were at a convenience store when it was robbed. The twins, Lloyd and Floyd, saw a gunshot victim on the ground outside a window at camp one summer, and their school is sometimes locked down because of gang violence, their mother said.


As a result, Russell has had to talk to his sons about what their family will do if one of them gets shot and dies.
Both parents, Hill and Russell, have thought about moving, but they said they can't make the money work. In the meantime, they will do what they can to prepare and protect the children.



Contact Francesco Serpico if you have any stories you would like to share! (PM me on the forums)
The following 5 users Like Lord Octagon's post:
  • Benporium, Mr Doc, mgdwszx, Davidson, Moisty
#35
PROMOTION

After reading some excellent articles, I'd like to promote

Elijah Jackson and Francesco Serpico to journalist!

OOC:
Excellent articles from DonkeyWaffles and Dr. Octagon have forced me to promote them early. Excellent job guys, keep up the great work!
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The following 2 users Like mgdwszx's post:
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#36
SUMMER ONSLAUGHT


Continuing on from Mr. Serpico, I decided to go out on a limb and ask for an interview with the current SWAT Sergeant for the v2d area of EvoCity. To my surprise, he accepted. I was not permitted to take photographs of him and his associates, though I was given his name. I conducted an interview asking him about the rising levels of crime, reported by our new journalist Francesco Serpico, and he was more than willing to provide answers to my questions.


Q: Have you noticed an increase in violent crime as summer approaches?


A: Yes. I feel that the hot weather has not helped with the recent behaviour of many people. There have been a lot more gun related crimes recently.


Q: Obviously, this is America. We have the right to bear arms - but if we were to implement gun control into the laws of this state, do you think this would help lower the crime rates?


A: No. I think crime rates would increase. My reason for this is that people need to have guns in order to defend themselves should the EC : PD or garrisoned SWAT units not be able to respond rapidly, and I see no problem with this. Usually, there's not as many calls. Should 'gun control' be put in place, I believe it would do the reverse - crime rate would increase, rather than decrease.


Q: How do you and your team deal with gun related crimes? Are you ruthless, preferring to shoot first and ask questions later? Or do you try to use non-lethal tactics to subdue suspects first? 


A: I prefer non-lethal tactics. But if I am shot at, I will shoot back. My personal motto is: Only shoot if shot at. 


Q: Finally, do you believe there is any hope at all for reducing the alarming amount of crime committed in EvoCity?


A: Yes and no. Yes because if we continue killing and detaining the criminals behind these offences, there will be no more people to commit these crimes. No because it is currently a bad time of the year.


This interview was conducted with the SWAT Sergeant, known as Harry 'Basic' Walshie. He covers many good points. I'd like to thank him and other members of the present government for letting me conduct this interview.


Ironically, during our interview, he had to respond to calls of a shootout between two gangs that had erupted in the slums area.


Signing off.

- Mats
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The following 3 users Like mgdwszx's post:
  • Benporium, Lord Octagon, Davidson
#37
Lightbulb 
Corporate Capitalism Is the Foundation of Police Brutality and the Prison State

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Our national conversation on race and crime is based on a fiction. It is the fiction that the organs of internal security, especially the judiciary and the police, can be adjusted, modernized or professionalized to make possible a post-racial EvoCity. We discuss issues of race while ignoring the economic, bureaucratic and political systems of exploitation—all of it legal and built into the ruling apparatus—that are the true engines of racism and white supremacy. No discussion of race is possible without a discussion of capitalism and class. And until that discussion takes place, despite all the proposed reforms to the criminal justice system, the state will continue to murder and imprison poor people of colour with impunity. 

More training, body cameras, community policing, the hiring of more minorities as police officers, a better probation service and more equitable fines will not blunt the indiscriminate use of lethal force or reduce the mass incarceration that destroys the lives of the poor. Our capitalist system callously discards surplus labour, especially poor people of colour, employing lethal force and the largest prison system in the world to keep them under control. This is by design. And until this predatory system of capitalism is destroyed, the poor, especially people of colour, will continue to be gunned down by police in the streets, as they have for decades, and disproportionately locked in prison cages.


What does the Police Sergeant have to say?





... and the citizens?


A citizen who wished to go unnamed made a statement stating how she felt that there is just capitalist white supremacy in a state of constant self-preservation.


Quote:“We should talk about what we are empowering police to do, not how they are doing it, not whether they are being nice when they carry out arrests"

"Reforms are oriented to making violence appear respectable and courteous. But being arrested once can devastate someone’s life."

"This is the violence we are not talking about. It does not matter if you are arrested politely."

-Unnamed Citizen



Combating racism is not about combating bad ideas in the head or hateful feelings. This idea is the perfect formula to preserve material distributions in their exact configuration.

I also met up with a school teacher called Murakawa. She had written a book recently to express her opinion on this matter.

Quote:These “competing constructions of black criminality, one callous, another with a tenor of sympathy and cowering paternalism,” ensured that by the time these forces were done, there was from 1968 to 2010 a septupling of people locked in the prison system. “Counting probation and parole with jails and prisons is even more astonishing still,” she writes. “This population grew from 780,000 in 1965 to seven million in 2010.”




A student of Murakawa who had also read her book had something to add:

Quote:"The idea we can put police officers through training to address their implicit bias and then give them guns, "

"the idea that two days of intensive training will diminish the probability of shoot to kill—is absurd"
- James King


Conclusion


There will probably be an increase in arrests and citations if the police forces get bigger. Even with scaling back the war on drugs, I worry that we will still have a massive number of people embroiled in the criminal justice system...

What we now see as regular police units would be SWAT patrols that have to be specially called in to use lethal force. We have to diminish the scale of everything. We have to wipe clean penal codes. Most arrests are for misdemeanors, petty offences like jaywalking or running red lights. 

The only way to reduce the scale of police brutality is to reduce the scale of policing. People should not be arrested for not mowing their lawn.


Contact Francesco Serpico if you have any stories you would like to share! (PM me on the forums)
The following 4 users Like Lord Octagon's post:
  • Davidson, mgdwszx, Mr Doc, Project
#38
This is really detailed and professional. I didn't even realise this was a thing, keep it up guy's!
The following 1 user Likes DVN's post:
  • Lord Octagon
#39
I'm really impressed by the sudden work you guys have put into it. I feel as though that you should make a thread for every news story so non of them gets forgotten. Then have this thread as a gathering point.

Best Regards
The following 1 user Likes Davidson's post:
  • mgdwszx
#40
(07-09-2015, 12:41 AM)Davidson Wrote: I'm really impressed by the sudden work you guys have put into it. I feel as though that you should make a thread for every news story so non of them gets forgotten. Then have this thread as a gathering point.

Best Regards

Haha if we made a thread for every single story the Roleplay section would just be
EvoCity News - Article #
EvoCity News - Article #
EvoCity News - Article #
EvoCity News - Article #
EvoCity News - Article #
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