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Photo by Chris Bethell

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Some people can be incredibly, inexplicably nasty to rough sleepers. "Can't get a job, mate?" they laugh, at 4 AM, 11 rum-and-cokes deep, skirts tucked deep into their going-out pants. "Have to pitch up in the street, do you? I tell you what I'm going to do: I'm going to kick your shins and rip your sleeping bag away because that'll be a proper fucking laugh."

Clearly, however, it is not a laugh. It's also not how you should treat any human being, regardless of whether or not they live in a house. Unfortunately, some people clearly haven't grasped the very basic tenets of not being horrible, because, depressingly, this kind of thing does actually happen semi-regularly up and down the UK.

Mind you, the majority of us don't behave like that. The majority of us are split into two distinct camps: those who normally give some change if they're asked, and those who don't because they assume that literally anyone sleeping on the street is trying to trick them into handing over their hard-earned coppers by lying about needing a sandwich, when really they're definitely, 100 percent always going to use it to buy crack cocaine.

Again, there are some very obvious problems going on there. Some problems that could do with remedying. So in a bid to do that we asked a number of London's rough sleepers to pass on some pointers. (While it's quite a bleak indictment of humanity that such a guide needs to exist, it's probably clear from this first point that it very much does.)

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Photo by Chris Bethell

DON'T PISS ON PEOPLE

You'd have thought it would be quite an obvious one, this, but it's something that came up several times.

"The nights are the worst times," says Ed, known locally as Mr. God Bless because he offers a "God bless" to every pedestrian who passes him by. "Sleeping isn't safe—people get attacked, urinated on, spat at... and all the streets are the private property of the council, so you might get asked to move on and carry all your stuff away at 2, 3, or 4 AM."

It takes a unique type of scumbag to piss on a homeless person, but it happens. "I've had a few drunk people who think it's funny," says Stephen, a former public schoolboy who bravely perseveres living on the outskirts of the West End. The problems, he says, arise mainly from men on nights out together, running on triple shots and testosterone.

"People reckon that I do my business round here, so they think it's OK to join in," says David, a rough sleeper who's based near Embankment.

In a recent report, the homelessness charity Crisis revealed that two-thirds of homeless people have been abused publicly while sleeping rough, and one tenth have been pissed on. "People who are abusive are cowards," says Ed, "and they usually surround themselves with a few mates. But 99 percent of my interactions are friendly or, at worst, them ignoring me."

REMEMBER THAT YOU TAKE CERTAIN THINGS FOR GRANTED

"This year alone I've ripped my glute," says Ed, pointing to his ass. "And I slipped on a banana skin—would you believe it—and had to have surgery on my knee."

Unless you have a marathon or a day at the beach with your child to get out of, injuries like this aren't exactly welcome, no matter your circumstances. But, as is pointed out to me, they're considerably harder to deal with when you constantly have to lug all your worldly possessions around with you.

Another thing to contend with when you have no roof or walls to call your own is the British winter. "It's fucking cold," says David. "If I can't get into a hostel or one of the shelters, I'd rather be up on my feet at night."

David has been through many of London's shelters and accommodation services, the cost of which comes straight out of his benefits. Others, like Ed, don't claim benefits, instead relying on the money they can get from passersby. A good day might contribute £40 [$60] towards a night in a hostel; a bad day means a few hours kip wherever's dry.

GETTING MONEY IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL GAME

We live in a world where who you buy your car insurance from can be swayed by your preference of meerkats over men pretending to be opera singers. Marketing works on us when we're being asked to hand over large amounts of money, so it makes sense to employ it to convince us to donate small amounts.

"This is my camera," says Stephen. "I like to ask Japanese tourists for a photo."

Stephen is set up with a pair of drums outside Marble Arch, where a constant stream of tourists flows onto Oxford Street. I take over the drumming for a few minutes so he can grab a photo with two peace-sign-waving teenagers. His ad hoc photo business seems a nice little gimmick, except for the fact he has no means of printing or distributing the photos. "The photos are just for me," he adds, "but it's also a good way to get friendly with people."

Ed's strategy is simpler: "I say 'God bless' to everyone who comes past, and eventually you become acquaintances." Just after he says this, he blesses a woman and her young scootering daughter. "I like your helmet," he says, "I like your rosaries!" the mother replies in a thick Irish accent. No money changes hands, but there's every chance they'll return after their shop.

GO TO RICH AREAS IF YOU WANT TO DONATE MONEY

The word "homeless" is misleading, as it suggests that these are people without a home. Without a house, perhaps, but not a home. "I'm registered to vote here," says David of his plot near the river. "I know the area better than you or the people who live in those flats."

David is one of over 6,500 rough sleepers in London, and, like a high proportion of them, sticks to the more affluent areas during the day. Tourists—who are more inclined to carry large wads of cash and can misunderstand the value of our funny, colorful money—are the most valuable punters.

"You get hundreds of Asians and Germans coming through every day. That's why I stick to my patch outside McDonald's," says David.

Related: Watch our film about the housing crisis, 'Regeneration Game'

INTERACTIONS ARE GOOD FOR EVERYONE

"For some of the old ladies, I'm the only interaction they'll have all day," says Mr. God Bless. "So I'm positive with them and I get a positive reaction back."

Ed's positivity means he offers hundreds of greetings every day, even when people ignore or avoid him. "We've got very frightened of social interactions," he says, "unless they're with a smartphone."

Pretending not to notice that you're being asked for money is common, because it's a lot easier than awkwardly stammering, "Sorry-I've-only-got-a-card," with your eyes fixed to your laces. But you don't need to. "A smile or a nod of a head—that's all really nice to receive," says Ed, pointing out that simple human contact is a kind of currency in itself. "All I can give in return is a 'God bless,' so that's what I do."

NOT ALL HOMELESS PEOPLE ARE THE SAME

Again, you'd have thought most rational Brits would realize this, as—like any single human—homeless people vary from person to person. However, it appears that a lot of us don't, and it's this kind of attitude that leads to prejudice, generalizations, and unkindness.

Stephen is an alcoholic who drinks a homemade cider (which, having tasted it, definitely doesn't involve any apples). Ed has struggled with substance abuse and became homeless after his partner of 12 years died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in 2013. David doesn't like to talk about his past.

In order to avoid incurring problems with the local police, they all avoid asking too explicitly for money, but each has his own unique methods. "Good afternoon, officers!" Ed calls to two police officers while we chat. "I've got a good relationship with the local PCSOs because I don't beg; I just say God bless."

Others are spot beggars, the type who come up to you and ask for change for a bus, or a hostel, or a bag of chips. Ed warns me not to speak to them, while David calls them "not so friendly," which seems a bit of a euphemism. "I can understand people avoiding beggars," says David, "but they don't have to be rude. I hear a lot of offensive stuff being thrown around."

"You've just got to try to make people aware of why you got out here," says Ed, peeling a caramel trifle that a woman has just given him, "I've got a degree in psychology, so I'm good at working people out. You've got to do that so that they can understand. When they see what I've gone through, people often ask me, 'How did you survive it?' But, put simply, you've got to."

Follow Nick on Twitter.

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Image via Mental Floss.

In the halcyon days of the original PlayStation, I was obsessed with a game called, simply, Spider-Man, a brawly platforming game made by Neversoft (the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater guys). In hindsight, it wasn't anything terribly remarkable, but it was a game with a superhero in it that didn't suck, and those of us who cared about such things were very happy. It was a game I beat over and over, practically memorizing every blocky inch of Spidey's CG NYC.

The secret that I would never have told my friends at time, however, is that I never beat it fair and square. I was, uh, pretty terrible at it, actually. The last boss in particular, where Monster Ock, the betentacled Doctor Octopus fused with a symbiote (a Marvel monstrosity somewhere between the X-Files' black goo and a xenomorph), chases you through the vents of his lab, was nigh impossible for me. I could not manage it.

I didn't have to, though. I knew the secret. I had the cheat codes. All I had to do was go to the password screen, type in "RUSTCRST," and suddenly, I was invincible. An army of symbiote supervillains couldn't have stopped me, and I could race on to the ending with no problem. (Spoilers: Spider-Man saves the day. J. Jonah Jameson is skeptical. Laugh track.)

Such was the power of cheat codes, and as a young, untalented game player, I loved them. And now, as a fully grown, untalented man who gets paid to play games sometimes, I miss them dearly. Cheat codes have largely gone extinct. A decade ago, they existed for almost every game, a set of secret tricks you could use to unlock all the levels, find secret characters, and make everyone's head comically oversized. Now, the only games that feature cheats are either deliberate throwbacks like Shovel Knight or permanently stuck in 2004 a la Grand Theft Auto V.

There are some good reasons cheat codes have died out. Part of the original purpose of cheat codes was to benefit the developers during playtesting, creating sets of tools to mitigate the difficulty of games developed by small teams for obtuse platforms. But now, with better tech and bigger studios, developers don't need to resort to such specialized tools to do that job. And without that impetus, and with the rise of a few other factors, such as PC modding and shared online experiences that would be legitimately hampered by someone suddenly having infinite ammo, cheats have quietly faded out of development in most circles. In exchange, we've gotten silliness like Mortal Kombat X's pay-for-easier-fatalities DLC. There used to be codes for that kind of thing.

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Want easier fatalities in 'MKX'? You gotta pay.

For a lot of players, this may not seem to be that significant of a loss. The purpose of games is to challenge you, isn't it? Besides, games are easy nowadays. Git gud, scrub. But I don't really buy it. Games aren't about challenge. They're about experience. And for a lot of people, myself included, challenge can be an impediment to experiencing everything a game has to offer. There's been an uptick in the past couple of years in games that sell themselves on being hard, largely inspired, I think, by the Souls games and by a resurgence in nostalgia for 8- and 16-bit things, when games were hard as a means of padding out experiences limited in length by their hardware. Some of these are brilliant games, but the emphasis on high difficulty forms a barrier to those of us who, well, suck.

Cheat codes didn't care how good you were. Cheat codes short-circuited the straight-line connection between skill and play, opening up new dimensions of game worlds and morphing the experience fundamentally. With the proper codes, anyone could play, and they could do so in unexpected ways. Inputting the Konami Code (pictured, main) into Contra gave a player 30 lives with which to experiment and learn and struggle, creating breathing room and the freedom to fail, neither of which existed in the original experience. An invincibility code could turn the hardest game into something like a walking simulator, re-contextualizing the game's world and letting players see things they might otherwise never notice.

Related: VICE's documentary on competitive gaming, eSports

God Mode turned DOOM from a brutal power fantasy into an absurdist romp through a hell where no cyberdemon could so much as annoy you. Some codes even let you access debug modes and other aspects of a game's code that you could get at in no other fashion. Calling it God Mode wasn't just a bit of rhetorical flair—cheats elevated players to the level of minor digital deities, given access to the same tools the developers had, breaking games just to see what they look like when they fall apart.

Games are systems, and part of the fun of systems is just that—being able to break them. I remember playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas with my friends, some of them video game people and some of them not, and the best time we could have was when we turned on all the weirdest cheats. We'd spawn in tanks, make them fly, and go to war with the jets over Area 69. (Yes, that's really what it was called.) We'd put in cheat after cheat after cheat, breaking rule after rule until the game inevitably crashed. It gave an insight into the way the game worked on the most basic level, what rules were most important to the system's continued function. As Carolyn Petit mentioned in her VICE piece onAxiom Verge, breaking a game is a way of "interacting directly with the ghost in the machine," digging deep down into the fiery center of the thing and watching its flickering light burn.

And all you needed was an issue of Nintendo Power, or an internet connection, or a savvy friend. Anyone could do it with a bit of patience. Cheat codes were populistic, playful and generous. I'm not typically one to get all caught up in nostalgia. But the halcyon days of the cheat codes are worth missing.

Follow Jake on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE Colombia.

The Ludlow-Santo Domingo (LSD) Library is the world's first collection of drug-related literature and paraphernalia. Following the death of its creator, Julio Mario Santo Domingo Jr., the extensive collection was removed from his private residence and given to Harvard University as part of a long-term loan.

Julio Mario Jr. was the firstborn son of Colombian patriarch Julio Mario Santo Domingo Pumarejo—a man valued in his day at $8.5 billion. Like his father (and his grandfather before that), Julio Mario Jr. was one of the richest, most powerful people in Colombia. Thanks to his lineage, many unwanted obligations were thrust upon him, but if Julio Mario Jr. could have had his way, he likely would have lived the life of a modern day Rimbaud and a literary beatnik.

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A book of photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki—one of the most controversial artists of Japanese erotic image.

His interest in all things subversive began on the west side of London's Berkeley Square, in an antique bookstore called Maggs Bros. Being a lover of poets and 19th century writers like Rimbaud and Verlaine, Julio Mario Jr. would visit Maggs Bros every time he traveled to England for business. He would wander about the store for hours, getting lost amidst the books, usually leaving with gifts for family or friends.

"He would occasionally ask for a specific title, or suggest themes," the store's owner, Carl Williams, told VICE. One day, when Williams asked what he was interested in, Julio Mario Jr. simply replied, "drugs."

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A spread from Eugene Smith's 'Cocaine Blues', a work exploring the everyday dilemmas of three different American working class communities and their drug users.

The first "dosage" that Williams gave him was a manuscript by José Luis Cuevas—a Mexican artist and writer—who in the early 1960s explored new aesthetics by injecting LSD into his body.

After that, a sort of brotherly bond was formed between the two men. A graduate of Sociology and Diplomatic History, Williams became a dealer of surreal stories for the wealthy literary junkie, who was always hungry for a new tale of cannabis or acid.

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An advertisement, entitled ' Assassin of Youth,' that originally appeared on a matchbox in 1937. It refers to an anti-marijuana article originally published in'American Magazine.'

It's not hard to imagine what kind of library Julio Mario Jr. managed to put together over the years. Located at his home in Geneva, Switzerland, it was a maze of sinuous shelves, banned titles, and literature brimming with all things prohibited, extending ad infinitum.

At final count, his collection of the counterculture consists of over 50,000 books, manuscripts, pulp fiction, recordings, films, objects, records, fragments of art, and all kinds of drug paraphernalia.

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1970s erotic pop art by Thomas Bayrle.

"Santo was always a collector—he had done it since he was a child. One day he told me he had bought a travel book, a book that made him ask himself: 'What are my interests? What do I want to do?'" Williams told me. "He always liked unusual books, especially those that talked about drugs. But what really moved him was the idea of traveling. He believed that the altered states of consciousness experienced while dreaming, listening to music, using drugs, during hypnosis, or while having sex, were all ways to travel with one's mind.

"Wherever he went he acquired books and objects," Williams continued. "He would buy from vendors along the Seine banks, from hippie dealers in California, bohemian Parisian collectors of old posters, gallery owners, retro soft porn distributors in Lyon, specialists in psychedelia in Greenwich Village, the coolest shops in Notting Hill, from the basement sellers of beat books as well as the big auction houses of the Western world."

Related: 'Shulgins I Have Known and Loved'

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A photo by French visual artist Lionel Bayol-Themines, a man famed for his interest in how people masturbate.

All of these trips and the masses of bizarre paraphernalia he accumulated were treasures to him. Things like the journals of acid fanatic Timothy Leary; the first drawings of Vin Mariani; an elixir produced by French chemist Angelo Mariani; the beakers in which Alexander Shulgin synthesized MDMA for the first time; the cassette recordings of Jack Kerouac's psychiatric appointments; and William Burroughs' Scientology manuals.

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An illustration of an opium pipe.

Between 2001 and 2006, Santo Domingo procured two new collections of particular cultural significance. The first, acquired in 2001, was the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Library of San Francisco, which was a merging of the catalogs of Michael Horowitz, Cynthia Palmer, and William Dailey. Assembled in 1970, the collection contains close to 10,000 items, all relating to psychoactive substances. It was named in honor of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, the first American author to deal with the subject of drugs.

The second collection he bought was sexier. Having previously belonged to Swiss art enthusiast Gerard Nordmann, it was a sizable addition containing over 1,200 items packed full of eroticism, breasts, cunnilingus, and sodomy. According to the website of London auction house Christies, this addition cost Santo Domingo around $2.9 million.

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The cover of Tulsa, a visual account of an amphetamine junkie, by Larry Clark.

The eccentric millionaire initially dubbed his library "Phantastica." This wasn't only a nod to the wealth of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll that it contained, but also an ode to Louis Lewin's fantastic drug-riddled book of the same name. A few years later, however, he renamed the library after his beloved dog Louise.

On one occasion, Louise almost died from hanging when her leash got caught in the elevator doors of the library. An incident that, according to Williams, could easily have made Santo Domingo abandon his entire collection. The library changed its name one last time after it absorbed the Fitz Hugh Ludlow library in 2001, and became known simply as LSD—a fairly appropriate renaming on many levels.

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An isomeriser (used for making hash oil), a bong, and the complete collection of Timothy Leary's work.

The wide and varied spectrum with which Santo Domingo cultivated his taste for counterculture reflected his ability to combine pieces of the highest cultural value with items more in line with popular taste; an act which made him, according to Williams, a sort of visionary.

Not everyone felt the same though: "His father was worried about the collection. His own work had always been supremely honest and clean, and he was scared that his son's interests could ruin the reputation of the family," Williams explained.

Journalist Gerardo Reyes, the unauthorized biographer of the elder Santo Domingo, described the continuous distrust that he had for his son in Don Julio Mario: "On a personal level, the only concern that afflicted Santo Domingo was his son Julio. The boy definitely inherited the festive character of his father..." He also goes on to write: "Although he made great efforts, Julio Mario Jr. failed to balance his love for partying with the obligations his father had given him within the organization. On a couple of occasions, members of the board of the Santo Domingo Group have seen him fall asleep in the middle of meetings, both while participating in person or by video conference from Geneva. The last time this happened, in 2000, his father threatened to expel him from the meetings."

I attempted to establish contact with Santo Domingo's family. In addition to several correspondences I had with close friends of the family, I exchanged a couple of emails with English journalist Peter Watts, who's in charge of writing the official document on the bibliography of Julio Mario Jr. Initially, he agreed to talk with me, but later decided against it, citing respect for the family as his main reason.

In March 2009, at the age of 51, Julio Mario Santo Domingo Jr. died, leaving behind a group of very powerful companies, two children, multiple beneficiaries, and a huge cultural contribution, namely the world's most important library of drugs and counterculture.

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The collection is both a testament and a memory. A memory that eventually became a problem for some: "There were certain documents in the collection, that Vera, the wife of Julio Mario Jr., liked. But treasuring literary rarities was not her thing. The library became this wonderful problem that she just had to deal with. Vera sought counseling from many people, including myself, until Alexander, her half-brother, had a great idea: Harvard," Williams said.

In the summer of 2012, the library was packed in about 700 boxes and given by the Santo Domingo family to the prestigious American university, so that it could be catalogued and used for research.

When I asked him about the importance of this collection, Williams said: "The collection is comprised of popular culture—a culture that seems trivial or irrelevant to some. I, however, cannot think of anything more relevant in our time: urban guerrillas, political protest, the sexual revolution... honestly, I cannot imagine anything that can define our century better than the contents of the LSD library."

Daniel Lopatin (known musically as Oneohtrix Point Never) began an electronic label called Software in 2011. Software generally showcases experimental or minimal electronic artists, reflecting Lopatin's desire to mess with expectations and crank out unique tunes in the 2015 world of often-derivative electronica.

This track is from Software's upcoming archive album for the mysterious electronic composer Ben Zimmerman. It's a collection of songs Zimmerman produced using a Tandy DeskMate computer between 1992 and 2002. The computer had a built-in sound chord that allowed for three-voice polyphony and gave Zimmerman the opportunity to play around and experiment over a long period of time.

This album is a document of both this weird, technologically restrictive musical practice, and of Zimmerman's life, described by the label as an "abstract diary." The track itself is fractured and chaotic, representing what seems like a string of loose, but not unconnected, thoughts. This is the type of album that's immersive and takes up your full attention—it's not background music.

A couple of weeks ago, our friends at Canvas by Grolsch held a competition called "City Truths," in which photographers were asked to send in photos that summarized a city. The winner, Fred Bonatto, chose London as his setting and a man deep in thought on the top deck of a bus as his subject.

Below are some more of the photos from his series on London.

Follow Grolsch Canvas and Fred Bonatto on Twitter

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Screenshot via VICE News

Starting in June, police in the city of Gloucester, Massachusetts, will no longer arrest opioid users who come to them seeking help—even if they walk into the station carrying drugs. Gloucester police chief Leonard Campanello announced the policy in a Facebook post on Monday, writing that he and his department "are poised to make revolutionary changes in the way we treat this disease."

The disease he's talking about, of course, is opiate addiction. Overdoses have increased dramatically across Massachusetts in the past few years, from 526 in 2010 to 863 in 2013 to more than 1,000 in 2014. The problem is so glaring that former governor Deval Patrick directed all first responders throughout the state to begin carrying naloxone—also known by the brand name Narcan—a drug useful in reviving those who've overdosed. Overdoses have taken a disproportionate toll in coastal hub cities like Gloucester, which in 2015 has already had dozens of overdoses and four deaths. In a typical year it sees about 30 overdoses, which is a lot for a city of a little under 30,000 people.

Recognizing that treating addicts like criminals simply hasn't proven an effective tool, Campanello was inspired to try something new. "As a police chief you always look for ways to do something more," he told VICE in an interview. After announcing the fourth death of the year back in March, he worked with the mayor's office, health department, and the Healthy Gloucester Collaborative to try to brainstorm anything that could be done. "We came up with some ideas we thought would be well received," he said. And based on the outpouring of support for the Department's Facebook post, which has been shared by tens of thousands of people, "I think it turns out we were correct."

The idea behind the Department's proposed plan, which you can read in full here, is to essentially provide amnesty to any addict who comes to the police station asking for help. They will not be charged but instead walked through the steps toward the recovery process with the help of an "angel" or recovery-mediation expert. "Not in hours or days, but on the spot," according to the Facebook post. Two nearby hospitals and treatment centers, Addison Gilbert and Lahey Clinic, have agreed to fast-track those looking for help into recovery options.

In addition, the Gloucester Police Department has formed an agreement with a local pharmacy—and is trying to work out a deal with CVS—to make Narcan available to anyone who needs it for little to no cost, regardless of their insurance status. Narcan blocks the opioids and restores normal breathing, making it an extremely effective tool in preventing fatal overdoses. It only recently became available without a prescription in Massachusetts as a result of overdoses emerging as one of the leading causes of death in the state. For those with insurance, Narcan can be had for a nominal co-pay, but without it a couple doses can cost $50 or $60. Under the new initiative in Gloucester, the police will actually pay for it.

"I've heard from people there that literally the fastest way to get into drug treatment is to get yourself arrested." —Daniel Raymond

"The police department will pay the cost of nasal Narcan for those without insurance," the Facebook post reads. "We will pay for it with money seized from drug dealers during investigations. We will save lives with the money from the pockets of those who would take them."

"I think the impact from this is that law enforcement is supposed to be the enforcers, and we've changed that with this program," Campanello told VICE. "We are now getting on the side of cutting out the demand as opposed to the supply problem."

Related: VICE News traveled to Massachusetts to see how effective Narcan has been in stopping fatal overdoses.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ANseEroeSsg' width='640' height='360']

"This would really be the first in the country to take this approach," Daniel Raymond, policy director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, said of the proposed plan. "This is pretty groundbreaking."

In Massachusetts and other states, there are so-called Good Samaritan laws where police have said they they won't arrest people if they get called to the scene of an overdose. But this "walk-in" approach is an additional measure, necessary in part because people are really struggling to get into drug treatment programs.

"I've heard from people there that literally the fastest way to get into drug treatment is to get yourself arrested," Raymond said. "If they can really guarantee that they can make detox and recovery available, that would be huge."

One of the biggest deterrents for people seeking help with an addiction is the fear that they'll be arrested, according to Raymond: "We're still moving away from treating addiction as a criminal problem and toward treating it as a health problem."

Campanello has said he's not worried about any potential political fallout. "I'm not running for any office—let's put it that way," he joked. "The advantage of being an appointed official is I can look my enemy in the eye and speak what's the truth and the best for the community. I serve under the direction of the mayor. I'm not worrying about pushing the envelope when you have people suffering out there."

The political will to make this happen is due in part to the response to a Facebook post the police department wrote back in March, which Campanello sent out in part to test the waters. "We said, 'If you're not involved in drugs, please help us, be our eyes and ears. If you are, we said come to us and we'll try to help you, and if you're a dealer who makes money off the misery of others, we have no use for you, we're going to come get you and get you out of out city.'"

Once the city's leaders saw how people were desperate for something to be done, they signed off on the idea.

Whether people will take them up on the offer remains to be seen. Campanello said it hadn't really occurred to him that drug users might be suspicious of the department's motives and worry that this whole thing is some kind of elaborate sting.

"What was considered was what we could do to help. We were going to do everything we could to reduce the stigma and alienation between police and the community," he said. "There's a trust issue involved. It's a huge leap for us to put ourselves out there as law enforcement and say we're going to ignore what we're supposed to be doing because this is about the bigger picture.

"We as one small police department have decided to draw a line in the sand," the chief added. "We're going to change the way we do things, change our fundamental actions, and we challenge other agencies to do the same."

Follow Luke O'Neil on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

In this new series we travel around the country, from Durham to Glasgow to Peckham, to meet the new wave of young politicians and activists looking to make an impact upon the general election. With intense canvasing campaigns, some managed by the candidates' mothers, the fresh faces of British politics have swapped all the things that young people normally spend their time doing for a shot at shaking up Westminster.

"In politics, if you want anything said ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman," once said Margaret Thatcher. With this in mind, and with more than three quarters of all politicians in Westminster being men, Rebecca Coulson is hoping to win a seat at the general election as Tory MP of her constituency, Durham.

Despite the area being a Labour stronghold for years, Rebecca places hope in her "positive politics" and the Tories' claims about getting the economy back on track. An avid tennis player and a conductor of the local choral society, Rebecca has pictures of David Cameron propped all over her office. She aims to focus on localized politics and tackle everything from planning permission to potholes.

Follow Daisy and Rhys on Twitter.

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Sit down and strap in for tonight's midnight airing of a great VICE doc on City, because this episode is going to be bonkers: we're heading to North Korea, arguably the most insane place on Earth.

VICE has visited Hermit Kingdom several times, and when we discovered the North Korean government was exporting its own people into Siberian labour camps as a way to monetize their population, we went deep into the Siberian wilderness to visit a North Korean labour camp and try and meet some of these labourers ourselves.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

By the time Evolve came out in February 2015, it'd been preceded by a marketing blitz that assured us that something completely new was coming to our next-gen systems. They were right. Evolve is the shit. There's nothing like it. The uniquely competitive game features four human players working together as Hunters in order to take down a single human player who is a giant, frothing monster that wants to eat everyone.

You can see the parallels between Evolve and Left 4 Dead, a previous (hugely successful and critically acclaimed) title in developer Turtle Rock's catalogue. But where that cooperative zombie shooter shoe-horned in a competitive four-on-four, monsters-against-humans mode post-launch, Evolve was created from the ground up to be an eSport like nobody had ever seen.

And it worked, right from the beginning. Evolve sold roughly 300,000 physical copies in its launch month alone. All was going well. Like just about every game that comes out now, Evolve had a season pass available for $24.99/£19.99 that featured four new Hunters and a monster if you pre-ordered. All systems normal, until the nickels and dimes added up to so much that the community felt their backs were going to break.

If you were to buy all of the Evolve DLC (downloadable content, expanding or adding to the original game in various ways) separately it would have amounted to $136 at launch, or around $141 if you came to the title now without pre-ordering or "taking advantage" of a season pass that didn't last a season. If you arrived late to the party, you can't get a monster that costs $15 by itself. And if you don't buy the season pass, you need to drop $7.50 for each new Hunter. These are costs that players have had to face mere months after paying full price for the base game (it's currently around $45, new).

Yeah, most of the DLC is purely cosmetic. You'll never have to buy any additional skins because they won't directly affect your gameplay experience. But the additional Hunters that you aren't forced to purchase are absolutely, undeniably important to a serious team's roster. That's a big deal, because remember: Evolve is an eSport.

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Which means, as a sport (drop the "e," it's pointless), the league is broken. It's like Madden, but you only get 16 teams, with one uniform choice. You know how Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning plays like crap on the road in nasty weather? Some Hunters in Evolve aren't conducive to a positive, balanced experience on certain newly released maps. Imagine having to play as a base-release Peyton Manning in a blizzard, unless, of course, you bought the Tom Brady who can play in the snow for the low, low price of $7.99. You can swap those two players and you'll be good to go and on your way to defeating the frenzied mutant known as Rex Ryan.

So here we are, with a brilliant title but a fuckton of DLC that is making more headlines than the game itself. The additional maps that Turtle Rock has released are free, but we all know that these maps came out that way because they don't want to divide the player base. Or rather, what player base Evolve has left, as after a highly successful launch the numbers have dropped significantly, to a level below those enjoyed by Left 4 Dead's 2009 sequel.

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Image via.

Evolve seems to be an ouroboros of game marketing. It's not Call of Duty, even if more than a few casual FPS gamers likely picked it up. Evolve's issue is that it's a really, really hard game to get into. You will get your ass kicked, and you will lose.

If you don't have clear and concise communication between you and your teammates, or don't understand basic strategies as a monster, you will get destroyed, and losing isn't fun. Your team will never win despite someone not pulling their weight, and you'll never get lucky. It's a punishing, brutal, and rewarding experience for those who take it seriously. For others, it's an expensive skill-based game to which they may not be able to devote their gaming soul.

Evolve has a steep learning curve and its publisher, 2K, is charging a premium to experience it.

Related: Watch our documentary on the world of eSports.

Hell, you can get a golf bag, starter set of clubs, tee times, balls, and still spend less than what it would cost to acquire Evolve and its vast library of DLC. Let's face it: you'll probably be better off sucking at any other sport, "e" or otherwise, instead of dropping a stack of cash only to get eviscerated by veteran Hunters and monsters over and over. Keep in mind golfing is one of the most difficult, privileged, sports in the world—is Evolve the golf of gaming?

This is exactly the opposite of League of Legends, or Dota: free-to-play eSports that welcome all users without a pay wall blocking their entry to the game and its community. And any cash you spend on those titles will go to extra characters that enhance the experience. You could enjoy Dota 2 or LoL entirely for free if you wanted.

The fact of the matter is that it's easier with each passing day to not want to buy Evolve, and all of this would be easy to walk away from even if you already own the game, if it wasn't so badass when everything is as it should be. The thrill you get from working together successfully, or even taking down a team of Hunters by yourself, is a feeling unlike anything else in gaming. It's teamwork at its finest.

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But despite Evolve's potential for greatness, many initially satisfied gamers have left the game and aren't looking back. Why? I spoke to one of Xbox One's top Hunters in Vivid Seraph, and he admitted to wanting to leave the game before finally finding a group of three other players who could hold their own on a regular schedule. Pick-up games are a fool's errand. And even if half of your four-man Hunter team is working together, you'll still likely fall to the monster

Others feel betrayed. After all, it's the hardcore players who will spend the money on the add-ons. They're also the ones who pre-ordered and are still getting squeezed for cash. Sure, early adopters are the ones who pay a premium, but that's usually in hardware, not software. Evolve's community has been vocal about game-breaking bugs, leaderboards that don't work, lag issues, and cheating that has been prevalent since the alpha. The possibility of being brand new and then pitting yourself against a skill-capped monster is real, and annoying.

There's a reason why other eSports are free: it's because it takes time to build up a community and a fanbase that can bolster the stars of the game. Evolve is heading in the right direction with tournaments, a spectator mode that brings broadcasting to the level where it should be, and an increased focus on bug fixing, but that does little to make someone want to try out a highly competitive game that asks for over $60 just to get through the door. Call of Duty does a similar thing, but it features a single-player campaign and expansive features. In Evolve, you're playing the sport. That's it. It's not your usual triple-A shooter with a multitude of modes to inspire both solo sessions and those played with online friends.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ipSVaz6l0j0' width='560' height='315']

'Evolve,' launch trailer.

These egregious DLC offerings wouldn't make a veteran gamer blink if Evolve had launched for $20, or even as a free title. But as it is, the game is marginalizing the players it has left, and milking everything it can out of those who are standing faithfully beside it. At the same time, such business behavior is erecting a wall between the game and newcomers, those curious to play, which would make George R. R. Martin proud.

There's a lesson to be learned here, something that Rocksteady might have been wise to pay attention to before its reveal that Batman: Arkham Knight's DLC will run to $40—on top of the outlay for the game "proper." That's a very different breed of game, of course, but whether the player is a fan of first-person shooters or third-person sandbox games, chances are they don't enjoy feeling ripped off. Only time will tell if Rocksteady has gotten its DLC plan right.

If the industry is changing and allowing for more pieces of DLC, then it can also expand its philosophies into releasing a freemium game that doesn't require you to spend your hard-earned money on a sport you don't know if you can even play—or will enjoy playing, assuming you get that far. Evolve's current status shows that gaming can't have it both ways. Easy fatalities in Mortal Kombat X (not to mention its own £24.99 [$38] "Kombat Pack" DLC), horse armor in Oblivion, nipples inThe Saboteur: people have paid for this stuff, so game makers know there's precedent for their added-extras strategies. But there's only one community that can stand up to being ripped off. And chances are that you're a part of it.

Follow Jason on Twitter.

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The Deadmau5 and #ChoChill Experience™. Photo by the author

On the dark stage opposite the donut buffet, Deadmau5 pulls off his signature mouse helmet and can see clearly the crowd at this Toronto show: about 100 people in suit jackets sipping wine, beer, and what looks like giant chocolate milkshakes.

There are no strobe lights. No girls on shoulders. No guys on Molly.

Tonight's recreational drug of choice is sugar.

Deadmau5 is making good on his professed love for fellow Canadian icon Tim Hortons, playing the private launch party of its new summer drink: the Creamy Chocolate Chill. The suggested hashtag, #ChoChill, is strategically placed in front of him.

Everyone here knows it's a big deal that the superstar DJ is spinning. They just don't quite know what to do about it. One guy in glasses turns around and takes a selfie, pointing at Deadmau5 just behind him. Another brave soul raises a single hand in the air, like he just don't care. Then he realizes he does, and puts it back down.

But no matter. Any brand would kill for a celebrity endorsement like this. David Clanachan, Tim Hortons' moustachioed Chief Operating Officer, is thrilled Deadmau5 is here.

"He's been a great supporter of Tim's for a long time," Clanachan says. "It's a cool relationship to have."

Cool, but not official. Any reasonable person would think Deadmau5 is a paid spokesman for the company, with all the Instagrams of him hugging a giant inflated Tim's cup and partying with an extra-large one at a club—not to mention the YouTube videos of him taking everyone from Rob Ford to Pharrell WIlliams through the drive-thru.

But no, Clanachan says. Their relationship is "just completely out of respect for each other."

Respect, and Tim Cards.

"He gets a lot of Tim Cards off of us, truthfully. Just because of what he does."

So is he playing here tonight for one?

"I think he'd take it in anything Tim's, really, truthfully."

Last year, what Deadmau5 wanted from the coffee chain was a custom donut. He tweeted the request, and Tim's quickly created something just for him: chocolate Timbits made into his mouse mask. They even had him bake.

The love affair between Tim Hortons and Deadmau5 is sweet, sincere, and makes a lot less sense at a corporate party. As he plays this small space, everything is vibrating: the wood floor, the donuts, our faces.

"It's like bouncing off me," says a tall guy in a suit.

A plate slides off a table, and some older guests search for the exit.

Sure, a Deadmau5 crowd should probably be younger, possibly on drugs ("I can't speak to that," Clanachan says), but finding a new generation of Tim's lovers is what the Creamy Chocolate Chill, which has no caffeine but all kinds of chocolate, is all about.

They come at us on platters, filled to the brim.

I have wine, a Nutella donut, and not enough hands. I take one anyway. It tastes like a chocolate milkshake. No, a double chocolate milkshake. Even colder. Icier.

But no one here knows if Deadmau5 has actually tried one.

"He's definitely an extra-large Double Double guy," Clanachan offers.

I try to settle the matter at the end of the 30-minute set, standing strategically close to the stage exit. But it's Clanachan who gets past the security guard, shakes Deadmau5's hand, and whisks him away.

The rest of us are left with the remnants of this sugar-infused non-rave: a screen displaying the night's most enthusiastic tweets, and piles and piles of empty #ChoChill cups.

Follow Sonya Bell on Twitter.

Oh, buddy. When Alberta goes, she fuckin' goes.

It'll be hard to recapture how it felt to see the TV pundits call an NDP majority in Alberta without the help of low-dose entheogens.

The 2015 election was supposed to be boring. Tedious, even. Jim Prentice decided to flout the province's fixed-date election law because all the astrological signs pointed to an easy, uncomplicated win. Sure, a tanking economy is generally not a good time for a governing party to head to the polls, but it's not like anyone appeared ready to keep the Progressive Conservatives from racking up another monster majority government.

The main opposition—the Wildrose Alliance Party, a rural, right-wing protest party—had been decapitated a few months earlier in the largest and most outrageous floor-crossing in Canadian political history, when opposition leader Danielle Smith and all her high-profile colleagues decided they'd rather be on the winning team. Its new leader, a man named Brian Jean who rocks a bargain-bin televangelist haircut, was a virtual nobody and was at the helm for less than a month. The Liberals hadn't been a serious contender in over 20 years, the Alberta Party pretty much only exists on Twitter, and it would be literally insane to seriously believe anyone was going to vote for the New Democrats outside of some disaffected Trotskyists in downtown Edmonton.

All in all, it seemed like a pretty good time to for Prentice to pull the trigger.

And then.... well, shit went off the rails. The rest is history.

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Look at this lefty loon, former Alberta premier Ed Stelmach, talking to reporters like a damn communist. Photo via Flickr user Government of Alberta

SPOILER: ALBERTA ISN'T AS CONSERVATIVE AS YOU THINK
If you can get past the initial weirdness of the idea—that the land of Nickelback fell, Brokeback Mountain-style, for a bunch of tweedy Dippers—it's actually not as fucked up as it looks on paper.

For starters, no one has actually liked the PCs since King Ralph retired from his illustrious career of burning down the public sector and kicking homeless people. That was almost a decade ago. Ed Stelmach sparked the Wildrose counter-revolution because, for many Albertans, simply suggesting that maybe oil companies should pay the province marginally more in royalties is basically one step removed from Stalinism.

Albertans were ready to jettison the Tories in 2012. But then they discovered that the only thing worse than another four years of living in a one-party state would be to bring in a government full of people who earnestly believed climate change is a Communist hoax to outlaw trucks and that The Homosexuals are corrupting our children. In the last few days before the vote, scared shitless that all the polls were showing a Wildrose victory, Albertans held their noses and rallied behind PC leader Alison Redford. She promised to rein in the creeping corruption that comes with 40 years of the same governing party, and then it turned out that she loved blowing public money on stupid shit that would make North Korea blush.

So you can understand their hesitance to believe Jim Prentice this time around when he said that no, really, things will be different this time, because reasons. Welcome to the 2012 Election: Part 2.

The longstanding conventional wisdom is that Albertans are so deeply, inherently right wing that the only party that could replace the Progressive Conservatives would be some straight-up regressive ones.

But the fact that so many people came to Redford's defense in 2012 shows that most of contemporary Alberta doesn't actually want to live in a redneck libertarian nightmare world. People have been looking for an out from the Tories for a while, and suddenly the NDP have provided one. It helps that Rachel Notley is terrifyingly sensible compared to her competitors—and that she's the daughter of former provincial NDP leader Grant Notley.

Alberta fucking loves its political dynasties. If the name "Trudeau" wasn't a curse word west of Saskatoon, they'd probably vote the shit out of Justin, too.

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William "Bible Bill" Aberhart, Social Credit party hero. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

A BRIEF HISTORY OF FUCKED UP ALBERTA POLITICS
In the last 110 years, Alberta has changed its governing party three times. Prior to its establishment as a province in 1905, it was part of the North-West Territories, and its legislature had no parties at all. Most people wanted to keep this non-partisan system in place. But early 20th century Canada being corrupt as shit, Wilfrid Laurier wanted the new province to be run by local Liberals, which would make keeping it as a compliant resource colony for Ontario and Quebec that much easier. That ploy worked great, until the federal government changed and the provincial Liberals were left shut out from all that sweet, sweet patronage money.

Before long, rural farmers got tired of being fucked over by Central Canada and their nonsense party system. So in 1921, they handed a massive majority to the United Farmers of Alberta, a co-operative group that had decided to turn itself into a political party to set up a government by farmers, for farmers. This kept the trains running on time until premier John Brownlee resigned in disgrace after a bizarre sex scandal in 1934.

The Great Depression didn't really help either. Alberta was actually a hotbed of communist activity in Canada in the 1930s. An agitated mob of card-carrying Reds fought the police in the Edmonton Hunger Riot of 1932. A southern mountain town named Blairmore actually elected a whole slate of communists to their municipal council in 1935. Scratch hard enough and I bet everyone in the Rockies can belt out the Internationale.

In 1935, a Calgary schoolteacher/angry radio preacher named William "Bible Bill" Aberhart promised he would end the Great Depression by giving everybody in the province $25 a month if they elected the Social Credit party. Despite the fact that this makes no fucking sense, Bible Bill won a huge majority and spent the next eight years fighting the Canadian banking establishment and printing his own money (no one would actually get their $25 until 1957, long after his death in 1943). His successor, Ernest Manning, led the province through 25 years of oil prosperity and also got really upset about medicare, liquor, and smutty Hollywood movies.

By 1971, Alberta was no longer the same place it was in the '30s or even the '50s. Social Credit and their doddering old fart of a premier were turfed in favour of lawyer and former CFL player Peter Lougheed and the Progressive Conservatives. The social and demographic revolutions of the '60s upended the fundamentalist Christian society Social Credit had come to stand for and by the early '70s, the Baby Boomers couldn't take it anymore. What Lougheed was selling was a fresh take on how to run a modern petrostate, and it resonated with Flower Children.

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Jim Prentice, the last in a 44-year line of PC premiers. Farewell, sweet prince. Photo—and lead photo—via Flickr user Dave Cournoyer

DIE A HERO, OR LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO SEE YOURSELF BECOME THE VILLAIN
But the SoCreds didn't collapse in the '71 election. They still pulled in over 40 percent of the popular vote. The Tories never even expected to win in '71. They eked through a good chunk of districts on razor-thin margins, in some cases by less than 200 votes. Social Credit was still powerful and well-respected across the province, and none of the internal rot that was eating away at the party would become obvious to the public until well after they lost power.

This is vastly different from the situation in 2015. The signs of sickness in the governing party are everywhere.

Candidates publicly broke rank with the party line, backroom drama is being aired in public, campaign managers are quitting, flagrant corruption is coming to light, and one candidate is facing allegations of domestic abuse. As the campaign wore on, the whole enterprise took on an air of panic. Without a hint of irony, five corporate suits (who were also PC donors) issued an awkward press conference on International Workers' Day complaining that marginally raising their taxes would implode the country's economy and that they'd stop donating money to a children's hospital in retribution for anyone voting NDP.

There's "tone deaf," and then there's whatever the fuck the Tory campaign was doing. The 2015 election was the story of an NDP government going from "impossible" to "improbable" to "possible" to "probable" in the course of four weeks. The PCs were stodgier, more tired, and more out of touch than anything their propaganda team could have dreamed up about the SoCreds in 1971. Meanwhile, Jim Prentice can now add "fucking up a four-decade dynasty" to his long list of political failures. He also immediately resigned his seat before they even finished counting votes, making him look like one of the sorest losers of all time.

Despite what the PCs would have you believe, the NDP are not a troupe of socialists. They're barely social democrats. They'll raise corporate taxes to pay for health and education, and they've publicly mused about raising the province's abysmal minimum wage, but that's about as far as it goes. Notley is pro-tar sands development and pro-pipeline (she just prefers Energy East over Northern Gateway or Keystone XL). Even when she raises the prospect of reviewing oil industry royalties, she's no more a socialist than arch-Tory Peter Lougheed was.

The truth is, Alberta isn't that right, and the provincial NDP isn't that left. The NDP is a breath of fresh air in a province that desperately needs it. But once they take office, look at the books, and start playing the long game, I'd give them two years max before they start going around breaking hearts like every other provincial NDP government of the past 25 years.

But I don't want to understate how profound an NDP victory is. Its psychological impact is huge. If the NDP can win in Alberta, they can win anywhere, and we have to rethink a lot of the conventional wisdom about Canadian politics. And I'll be damned if I didn't get a little emotional when she offered to treat the province's indigenous peoples with dignity instead of as mere obstacles to setting up oil factories. If nothing else, it will at least put to rest the myth that Alberta always has been, and always will be, a monolithic conservative heartland.

The longest-lived political dynasty in Canadian history has been swept away after 44 years. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Edmonton to be born?

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

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Orson Welles. Photo credit: Popperfoto/Getty Images

The last time I was on a bus coming home from New York City in the middle of the night, things got a bit dicey. A number of drug deals were going down around me, and these two chunky felonious types behind me kept talking about the best way to rob people. I had been awake for 36 straight hours for work, but it seemed best to keep alert. So, as a kind of auditory smelling salt, I turned to Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre troupe and the first radio program they did, an audio staging of Bram Stoker's Dracula, one of the most horrific and transcendent presentations of sounds I've ever experienced.

Welles would have been 100 today, May 6, and his films— Citizen Kane (1941) in particular—are being lionized once more, with people finding a reason to revisit The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958), and, I hope, the perpetually overlooked Chimes at Midnight (1967). But for all of Welles's filmic artistry, he was equally accomplished at radio and live-action theater works. It was as though Welles was himself the force of art: All he needed to do was simply learn up on any medium, and then he would quickly master it.

The Welles who put the Mercury cast through their Transylvanian paces on the night of July 11, 1938, was all of 23, already a Broadway world-beater, cherub-faced, not yet obese, his voice less baronial than it would grow to be in his later years, when he was reduced to hawking, infamously, Paul Masson wine. Back then his voice was fluid enough to assume a broad range of roles and serve as a veritable sounding board of the human condition. At one moment, he could be effervescent with cheek, as in the Mercury's production of Booth Tarkington's Seventeen. Other times his voice could slide into jazzy blue notes, like in the adaptation of the little-known polar nonfiction saga Hell on Ice. Still other times he could sound hopped-up and simply radiant while telling a potboiler of a story, as with the charming staging of Dickens's Pickwick Papers .

The full recording of Orson Welles's 'Dracula'

The Mercury crew normally had a week to put together their broadcasts, and they followed the same pattern, with everything being tweaked up till the last minute. Welles and producer John Houseman would come up with a book, compose a script (or else hire out the writing), and then Welles would tear the sucker up at the eleventh hour, swear at people, launch all sorts of items, and imbibe copious amounts of coffee, whiskey, and pineapple juice. He was a busy man, racing from one gig to another, and hit upon the idea of hiring an ambulance to ferry him around Manhattan, and would open the door to his hotel room in the nude, because, hey, who had the time to put clothes on?

Related: Watch the Real 'True Blood'

When listening to Dracula, one has to remember that radio was as big as entertainment got at the time. Few people had televisions, and reading—then, as now—was regarded as fairly boring. You could sit around the radio with your family and enjoy a program together, and most people could afford one. As you might expect, there was a lot of tripe on the airways— Fibber McGee and Molly, anyone?—and Welles and company weren't keen to do their version of any of that. Their highbrow goals were made clear right from the keening notes of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto of that initial broadcast—Welles was going to try to do what Welles, in my view, was most about: appealing to both masses and schoolmasters at the same time. He aimed to produce works that would satisfy the groundlings while giving something professorial types could savor, study, and revisit later.

Truth be told, the Mercury Dracula is practically orgiastic in its deployment of sound.

The Mercury Theatre program pulled in only about 4 percent of the nation's radio audience, and the broadcasts made few attempts to dumb down their material. We often think of Dracula the novel as some creaky antique that just happened to give us one of literature's most lasting characters, but if you have occasion to read it again, note what a modernist primer it is. It's a collage novel composed of journal scraps, ciphers, bills of sale, sound cylinders, letters, and what Welles terms "memoranda" in his intro to the Mercury broadcast. Welles plays Doctor Seward, acting as the de facto narrator, and also takes on the title role, giving the vampire an unexpected aura of disturbing sexuality.

The public of 1938 mostly associated Dracula with the 1931 film with Bela Lugosi in his classic role, or else the stage play, also starring Lugosi, that predated it. I love the Lugosi film, but it's a real creaker, so Welles's adaptation already had a built-in shock factor—audiences weren't expecting something so raw to come out of their radios. (Welles was a lusty guy; there's even an in-joke in the broadcast when a sailor throws himself overboard and is given the name of one of Welles's romantic rivals.)

Truth be told, the Mercury Dracula is practically orgiastic in its deployment of sound. For instance, normally, musical cues and sound effects were positioned after some dialogue or a scene had concluded, but Welles—with no less a composer than Bernard Herrmann overseeing the music—has mattocks fall on earth as people talk. Wolves bray in unison with Dracula's slightly metallic-tinged lines. Waves pound against scuppers as perfervid outbursts of fear and desolation overlap.

Welles's Dracula becomes more sensually aggressive as the broadcast goes on; he's creepy at first, but he becomes more and more venturesome, with Welles going into chanting mode, just about, with a rigor suggesting the steady pace of masturbation as the Count intones about "wing, tooth, scale, tissue of flesh." His refrain, an eldritch leitmotif of "flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood," is exactly the sort of corruption of Christian iconography that Stoker was after, and I have no doubt that Welles had instructed the production's Lucy and Mina (the latter played by no less than Agnes Moorehead) to sound like they were climaxing after he got through with it. ("Make like you did last night," I imagine him saying.)

You have to wonder what Ma and Pa Middle America made of all of this. The chanty hoodoo of the production would resurface in Welles's on-the-cheap cinematic mounting of Macbeth (1948), and the two works have always struck me as cousins of a sort. Macbeth is haunted by a greater-than-usual presence of the Weird Sisters, whereas the very soundscape of Dracula is like something escaped from a cauldron to do some dark bidding. Only here, that cauldron is a radio.

Colin Fleming's fiction appears in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Boulevard, and Black Clock, and he also writes for the Atlantic, Rolling Stone, and the Boston Globe. His next book, The Anglerfish Comedy Troupe: Stories from the Abyss, comes out in August from Dzanc, and he's also a regular contributor to NPR's Weekend Edition.

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Mug shots via LA County Sheriff's Department

In what is either the exposing of a secret, shadowy cabal that has governed the planet for 3,000 years or a simple case of a few weirdos, three alleged members of a bizarre organization known as the Masonic Fraternal Police Department were arrested last week in Los Angeles.

According to an LA Times story published on Wednesday, Brandon Kiel, a member of California Attorney General Kamala Harris's staff, was among the trio locked up under suspicion of impersonating cops. The other arrestees were Tonette Hayes and "Chief" David Henry, and all three were released later that day, the paper reported.

So, what exactly is the Masonic Fraternal Police Department? That's a tricky question. The group's website claims that it was created by the Knights Templar in 1100 BC, and that they are "the oldest and most respected organization in the 'World.'" It also says the group has jurisdiction over 33 states and Mexico.

The homepage features pronouncements apparently written by Chief David Henry, such as the following, which appears to have been pulled straight from a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap:

I Most Solemnly & Sincerely Promise & Swear to Protect & Serve & Uphold The Constitution & By-Laws of That Grandmaster & That Sovereign Jurisdiction So Help Me God Amen, Amen, Amen Fraternally Faithful, Absolute Supreme Sovereign Grandmaster Henry 32° 33° X°

Accounts that appear to be linked to Henry on Google+ and YouTube refer to him as "Illuminati Grandmaster Henry X," a mystical eccentric who poses for photos looking like someone who might guard the Tower of London in the year 3000.

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Image via Henry X's Google+ page

Other posts feature masonic-themed jewelry and a photo of Jay-Z and Denzel Washington doing the the "Merkel Diamond" hand gesture. Then there are pictures of "officers" in Henry's "police force" posing in real-looking police uniforms.

And that part seems to be the problem: In addition to playing adult dress-up and probably having a great time, the group is alleged to have broken the law by mailing letters to police chiefs all over Southern California back in January declaring Henry their chief. Afterward, Kiel—who works for the California Attorney General—called around and tried to schedule meetings with law enforcement officials. That triggered an investigation into whether their activities constituted an impersonation of police officers, which is a no-no and can result in six months in jail and a $2,000 fine.

Related: For more on the Illuminati, watch our documentary about David Icke.

Not only are they not real police, the Masonic Police don't appear to be actual Masons. Chris Hodapp, a Freemason and avid writer about all things Freemasonry, told VICE in an email, "Obviously, legitimate Freemasons are shocked and appalled by these impostors. They don't even belong to a regular, recognized lodge. They seem to be more of an internet figment of their own feverish imagination."

In response to an inquiry about Kiel, California Attorney General Kamala Harris's press secretary told VICE, "He works at the Department of Justice but is on administrative leave. We cannot comment on the ongoing personnel matter or criminal investigation."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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Last month, the New York Times Editorial Board ran a piece titled "The Perils of Smokeless Tobacco." The roughly 600-word piece was meant to highlight the dangers of teen vaping, reminding readers of the potentially harmful effects of smokeless tobacco in light of the recent uptick in teenagers abandoning traditional cigarettes for vapes. The article also noted that Swedish Match, the leading manufacturer of the smokeless tobacco product snus, had "applied to the F.D.A. to replace the warning label on its product that says it is 'not a safe alternative to cigarettes' with a new label claiming that 'this product presents substantially lower risks to health than cigarettes.'" The Editorial Board was staunchly opposed to the change, stressing, "F.D.A. should not approve any change in labeling without much stronger evidence to support the company's assertion," citing snus's potential to cause pancreatic cancer, affect pregnancies, and lead to heart attacks, not to mention the possibility that snus users, once hooked on nicotine, might turn to cigarettes to get their fix.

Libertarian-leaning Reason.com took issue with the Times's position, citing a study that notes rates of cancers associated with cigarettes have seen significant decline in Sweden, the country in which snus is most commonly consumed. Mocking the paper's position that snus warning labels shouldn't be changed to concede that the product is indeed safer than cigarettes, the Reason article argued "the paper's position is that the government should censor truthful, potentially lifesaving information because it's not sure what people will do with it."

A more succinct version of this spat can be found from Darcy Compton, co-founder and face of the portable smokeless tobacco spittoon company Mud Jug, who said in one of his vlogs: "Warning labels, kiss my ass."

The clip, titled "WARNING LABELS, KISS MY A$," is nearly 12 minutes long, and it's the sort of engrossing, fascinating piece of media that, if you were to show it to an alien as a representative sample of humanity, would cause them to think that we were all totally insane. "We got some good shit to talk about today," he says, following an intro that features Compton making fun of Obama, shooting guns, and stuffing massive amounts of chewing tobacco in his mouth, all backed by a soundtrack of aggressive metal. The "good shit" he alludes to includes the announcing of a new Mud Jug product (high-quality reusable tops for dip cans), his opinions on various NASCAR drivers (Kyle Busch, he says, is "fuckin' ugly" and should be "kicked in the balls and called a woman"), and saluting various soldiers serving overseas. In his videos, he comes across as the smokeless tobacco industry's answer to Kenny Powers: lewd, completely politically incorrect, decidedly right-wing, and all the more endearing for it.

Compton is not the type of guy who trusts the media. I know this, and not just because he literally says it in this video. When I approached him about an interview, he first asked if he had to pay me for Mud Jug to receive coverage on VICE. After I told him we don't accept payment for coverage, he agreed to speak with me on the phone the following day.

For those not in the know, Mud Jugs are colorful pots painstakingly designed to be spit into while consuming various smokeless tobaccos—chewing tobacco, dip, etc. Compton started the company in 2004 along with a friend, Jeff Welch, following the realization that consumers kept spilling or drinking from tobacco juice receptacles, commonly referred to as spitters. "The old bottle, cup, or can thing was kind of getting old," Compton told me over the phone. "Most people, even if they're not dippers, know someone that's either drank from or spilled a spitter."

Related: How to Sell Drugs

And so, with a flourish of expectoratory zeal, the Mud Jug was born. Today, the company offers two models of reusable spitters—the "classic," made to resemble the upturned bell shape of an old school spittoon, as well as the "roadie," with a cylindrical shape meant to fit in the cupholder of a vehicle. Additionally, they offer accessories such as window decals, reusable dip can lids, and, quizzically, rubber "Dipstrong" bracelets which resemble yellow LiveStrong bracelets.

Compton, who claims to personally run through a can of dip per day, credits his company's growth largely to popularity on social media and YouTube, where the company maintains a robust and occasionally mortally terrifying presence. The company rarely advertises, Compton told me, explaining that the cost-to-benefit ratio just wasn't worth it. "We've tried advertising in several magazines. We've sponsored several NASCAR races and the rate and return on investment on that type of stuff is just pathetic. We don't do any of that anymore because it hasn't proven to be effective." Instead, social media is the domain of Mud Jug. "To a certain extent, we're granted a whole entire dipping community," he said. "Social media is free."

The Mud Jug YouTube channel consists mostly of vlogs featuring Compton himself. Its greatest hits includes the aforementioned "WARNING LABELS, KISS MY A$," the anti-Obama rant "AMERICA!.. LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT," and "CONFEDERATE FLAG - SOUTHERN PRIDE HISTORY&SPITTOON," which features Darcy (who according to Mud Jug's "About" page, is from Alberta, Canada) explaining why Mud Jug features products with Confederate imagery.

The company's social media is handled by a guy named Chris, whose handle across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram is chrisdips1. A non-zero amount of his job, he told me, involves making "dip memes." Dip memes? Dip memes. "Current dippers," he said, "all have very similar things that we experience. Like, people who think dipping will cause your jaw to fall off, I'll make a meme based on that. Or when somebody spills a dip can—the feeling one experiences of heartache or whatnot."

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Image via Mud Jug's Instagram.

It's arguable that at this point, Mud Jug's internet presence is something of a self-sustaining machine. Their biggest marketing push came when the Athens, Georgia redneck rap crew Jawga Boyz released a song entitled "MUDJUG (Dip in My Lip)" in 2011. "We didn't pay them anything for it," Compton said. The track, built around an Atlanta snap track and anchored by gnawing electric guitars, currently has over 4 million views on YouTube.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Yr9QG-ctphA' width='500' height='281']

Compton is something of a dip evangelical and abhors cigarettes. "Imagine standing over a campfire 25 times a day, inhaling the smoke. Cigarettes are worse than that, because there's more than 3,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke when you burn it." Dip, he claimed, "is way better for you than smoking cigarettes. I've been on a mission to help educate people about the facts on smokeless tobacco," continuing, "That helps sales of course, but I'm a dipper and I know thousands of dippers, and I don't want people worrying about the health effects we've been brainwashed to believe." Though the Center for Disease control warns that smokeless tobacco can lead to cancer of the mouth, esophagus, and pancreas, Darcy claims, "You're no more likely to get cancer as a dipper than you are as a non-dipper."

All of this leads to the question: Who's out there actually buying portable spittoons? "Everybody says, 'Oh you must get a lot of people from the South.' Well actually, no," Compton told me. Instead, he claimed the majority of online Mud Jug sales come from the state of Texas, with Ohio and Pennsylvania trading the second and third spots. Surprisingly, also in the top ten are California, where Mud Jug is based, and New York. Smokeless tobacco has a strong presence in the military as well, where physical fitness, as well as the risk of a trail of smoke giving away a soldier's position in the field, are at a premium. "We do our best to support the troops," he told me. Indeed, the company offers a 25 percent discount for active military personnel.

All of the histrionic vlogging, dip memes, and anti-smoking rhetoric seems to be paying off. Mud Jug sales, Compton said, doubled from 2013 to 2014. "This year," he said, "our goal is to do about 25% increase from last year." Meanwhile, the hashtag #mudjug has nearly 80,000 posts on Instagram, with #mudjugarmy enjoying nearly 17,000. The company continually rolls out new designs for its products and retires others, making Mud Jugs something of a collector's item. And if smokeless tobacco keeps trending upwards, that means more tobacco juice, more Mud Jugs, and more people who Darcy Compton can tell to kiss his ass.

Drew Millard is on Twitter.

Apartheid is often cited as a catalyst behind Cape Town's gang culture. When South Africa introduced the Group Areas Act of 1950, black people were expelled from the inner city to live in overcrowded parts of the Cape's periphery, where resources and territory were sparse, leading to fights and the eventual formation of gangs. By 2013, the South African Police Service estimated that there were 100,000 gang members in the Western Cape area alone.

One of the more notorious Cape gangs are the Americans, known for pioneering the local meth trade as well as their penchant for all things American. They're currently the largest operating gang in the Cape Flats and subsequently, one of the most violent.

We wanted to know what it's like to be in the Americans. So after a bit of internet work we tracked down a guy named Neil Moses. He was a member for 12 years, until he eventually wound up in Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison. Here's how he described living in a gang with a literal death wish.

VICE: What was your childhood like growing up in Cape Town?
Neil Moses: I was brought up in an area called Mitchell's Plain. My mother never allowed my brother and I to go past the front gate so of course we got a lot of hidings. But when I got to high school it all started. A friend of mine was sitting at a light post and another group shot at him, for no reason. So I told him if he needs me for anything, I'd be there.

So he needed you to fight?
Sort of. He was part of a group called Da Boys. They liked to drink, smoke weed, and go out clubbing, but then they started fighting other rival groups. So I told myself, No man, if I'm going to do the wrong things, I'd rather join a real gang . So in 1996 I joined the American gang. I was 21.

How did you approach them?
It was a Saturday. Me and my other friend, we went to the gang leader's house where they sold drugs and told him we wanted to become Americans. But he told us to come on Sunday. That's the day they sit kring (hold meetings).

"The day I got my tattoo they told me, 'This is the day that you sign your death wish. You could die today, tomorrow, you could die anytime.'"

What was it about the Americans that you liked?
I loved the American flag. The colors. And you can say it was an area thing because the Americans were the biggest in our area. When I was in primary school there was the Knife-Time gang and I used to draw their gang slogan on the walls. But then the Americans took over, so I started to like the Americans instead.

What's their philosophy?
It's all about the American flag, the Statue of Liberty, the White House. It's like a whole long story. For an example there are six white stripes on the American flag. Well the six white stripes represent the 26 gang, which means money. And the seven red stripes, they're for blood. And the blue is the police. It's a whole big story, a long story.

For more on gangs, watch our doc 'Inside a Biker Gang Full of Former Nazis':

Was your time with the Americans happy?
There were good times and there were bad times. I was happy with them because they were my family. But there were bad times too. There was an incident one night when a rival gang hit my friend and his head was covered in blood. So we had to retaliate and go get his blood back. But none of the Americans wanted to do it and I was standing there crying. I'd put my heart into the gang but they wouldn't help him. If a rival gang shoots me, or stabs me, then my blood is flowing right? Now we must go do the same to the rival gang, their blood must also flow. That's how we take the blood back. The day I got my tattoo they told me, "This is the day that you sign your death wish. You could die today, tomorrow, you could die anytime." And I was ready for that.

Did you ever kill anyone?
Yes, I killed someone with a knife. I feel bad now because who am I to take someone's life? But at the time, you just did it. When you're on drugs you don't feel anything. It just happens, and then it's finished.

I was on drugs every week. Maybe I wasn't on drugs two days a month. The times I didn't do drugs were when the body needed to recover. I was on meth, Mandrax (downers), dagga (weed), cocaine, and I did heroin once but it wasn't for me. I loved uppers because they keep you awake. When you're in a gang you must be awake. You must always be alert, that's the thing.

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You were eventually sent to Pollsmoor prison. Why was that?
That was in 2000 for armed robbery. I got two years.

What was your day-to-day experience at Pollsmoor?
For me, it was all about survival. At Pollsmoor, the way you are outside, you must be on the inside. So I was with the 26s and 27s, who are called the Sonop, the Sunrise People. They told me, what's mine is mine, and I just kept strong.

So the 26s and 27s are part of the infamous Numbers Gang in Pollsmoor. Can you tell me about their role?
The 26s are the money gang. To join you must show them that you're a skelm (thief). You must steal, and you must climb into someone's head—you have to change their whole mindset to get something. It's a psychology gang. Then the 27s, they are the blood. If you want to join the 27s gang you must stab a warden or someone in prison. And the 28s, ah, how do I say this? The 28s sleep with men. I was with the 26s and 27s. To survive in prison, you must belong to a numbers gang. That's the only way.

What was the moment you decided you wanted to leave gang life?
The reason was because my daughter never knew me. I left my daughter when she was four months old. This year she will be ten years old, and she doesn't know about my past life. When she asks me about my tattoo, I tell her that one day I'll explain everything.

What would be your advice for kids who look up to gangs in Cape Town?
I would always tell people that to join a gang at this time would be stupidity, because it's not the same. Years back, the gangs used to stand with each other. But today's gang members have got no respect for big people. Meth is taking over Cape Town. Americans are killing Americans; your own brothers are killing each other. The way it is now makes my heart ache.

Illustrations by Michael Dockery

Interview by Charlotte Yates. Follow her on Twitter.

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About one month has passed since Snapchat has changed its friend-rating system and it's ruining more lives than ever before. If you are an avid snapper, then you understand the joy, struggle, and paranoia behind the emojis scattered among your contacts. In this new and exciting selfie-addicted era, snap-fiends have also had the time to learn the deeper meanings behind the symbols and it's terrifying.

You probably also secretly miss creeping your crush's best friends, but those days are behind us. Get over it.

Yellow Heart

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What it means: You are each other's #1 best friends.

What it really means: This is the person you send and receive the most snaps from. You've been snapping this person the most arbitrary, mundane things and it's finally paid off: you got the heart. My best friend has had this heart for a while, probably a result from sharing outfits, stupid faces, and drunken snaps I can never get back.

When to freak out: Your boyfriend has had the heart for the past few weeks. The heart has just disappeared and things are getting weird. Give it a day or two. Maybe he's just been busy. Maybe you've been over budgeting your snaps to your other buds. OR MAYBE HE'S BEEN SNAPPING SOME OTHER BITCH! WHO IS SHE? WHAT'S HER NAME? WHERE DOES SHE LIVE?

Grimace Face

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What it means: Your #1 best friend is also their #1 best friend.

What it really means: This is a little awkward. Basically, someone has some explaining to do, because you're being played. Your best friend IRL has the grimace beside their name. Does this call into question your real friendship? What kind of best friend isn't also your virtual best friend? You've had the grimace face for a good few weeks now. Maybe it's time to accept the truth. Maybe it's time to look for a new BFFL. Question everything.

When to freak out: Do you still not have a best friend? Still immersed in the almost-best-friends-but-not-quite situation? You could freak out anytime soon, I guess. Or conspire with this friend to avenge yourselves and overthrow your "superior." Up to you.

Smirking Face

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What it means: You are one of their best friends, but they are not one of yours.

What it really means: You win. You're the meanest of the mean girls. Feels nice scrolling down and seeing all the people who are inferior to you, doesn't it? They love you—they really love you. Enjoy it while you can, because soon that girl who thinks you're friends after that science project will come up. Or that creepy, annoying guy you met at the bar will show up with that same smirk. You can see you're his best friend and now you just want to get rid of him. They pushed their way to get your snap info and now are forcing their way to attempt to be your #1 best friend.

When to freak out: You should have started feeling uncomfortable when you accepted that friend request. You put this upon yourself and I can't help you. You might want to hide your phone from them.

Smiling Face

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What it means: Just another good friend.

What it really means: The smiley face is probably the least controversial of the Snapchat reform. This is a close friend who's probably seen the real side of you on Snapchat, that freaky version, sent to a select few for a private viewing. No way this would make it onto your story. This is also kind of the bitch emoji: you don't know if you're just the bitch or if you are genuinely just good friends. There's a good chance they've got the smirking face on the other side, meaning you are just the side-snap bitch.

When to freak out: Look at all the happy faces, they're all lies. Look at them, smiling at your discomfort.

"Cool" Sunglasses Face

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What it means: One of your best friends is one of their best friends.

What it really means: You guys don't know it, but you should chill sometime. Your friends are friends, so maybe you should start snapping each other too. This emoji can get a little depressing when you don't have a #1 of your own. Just floating in the abyss of the Snapchat world, wondering if you will ever find a #1. My coworkers all have the sunglasses face. Does this mean they're best friends and I'm just the loner with sunglasses? I bet they've all been streaking for like, six days (see: Fire "Streak").

When to freak out: These are valid concerns but you aren't alone. Put on some cool shades to hide the pain. Maybe start to consider getting rid of this goddamn app.

Fire "streak"

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What it means: You have been snapping back and forth daily.

What it really means: You've been on a streak with this person—you are on fire (good one, Snapchat). Has it been only been three days so far? This is nothing to be impressed by yet. Once you get to that ten-day streak you can consider yourselves accomplished. The fire streak is also usually paired with the smiling face (see above). The streak concept gets weird when you've been on "fire" for about two weeks and you still aren't each other's best friends. Are you putting in all this effort for nothing? You've also just realized how much time you're spending on Snapchat.

When to freak out: How about you take a break from Snapchat for a bit? You're streaking with about five different people and you're starting to believe that your life is actually interesting. Stop.

BONUS

"Needs love"

What it means: This person could use some snap-attention.

What it really means: You most likely haven't sent anything to this person in a while, and they could use some intel on your life. Honestly Snapchat, fuck off. Is this app is actually trying to tell me that my ex-boyfriend needs some snap love? Who the fuck are you to judge who needs my affection? Does this mean my name has been showing up on his "needs love" section? Does he still have my number? He's probably been creeping my Facebook.

When to freak out: Now. Now sounds good.

Follow Sierra Bein on Twitter.

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Darrell Cannon addresses the media after the Chicago City Council voted to give reparations to those who, like him, have been tortured by the police. Photo by the author

After decades of denial, Chicago is officially coming to terms with its notorious history of police torture by creating an unprecedented reparations package for survivors. Passed unanimously by the City Council on Wednesday amid sobs and a standing ovation, the hard-fought, sweeping deal includes a formal apology, a $5.5 million fund for torture survivors, and other assistance ranging from counseling services to free city-college tuition for survivors and their families. As part of the new package, the city will also create a memorial and build or designate a counseling center on the city's South Side.

"We can never bring total closure," said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the largest gathering of the city's torture survivors—15 men, representing scores of other known victims—and their families. "We will be there for as many tomorrows as you need as we try to heal as one city."

But for Darrell Cannon, a torture survivor who spent two decades behind bars after falsely confessing to murder charges in 1983, the opportunity for compensation is not the most important victory. Instead, topping his list is the requirement that Chicago Public Schools teach eighth and tenth graders about the city's history of torture.

"Finally, this ugly, dark chapter in the history of Chicago will now be analyzed by a lot of potentially brilliant minds," Cannon told VICE. "This is the kind of conversation that needs to be in school."

Cannon is among the more than 100 people, mostly African American men, who were violently detained and interrogated by a gang of rogue officers serving under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge. Detectives tried to suffocate Cannon, performed mock executions by stuffing a shotgun in his mouth, hit him with a rubber hose, and shocked his testicles with a cattle prod. These sanctioned tactics and the trauma they brought to survivors, their families, and their communities are among the most egregious cases of police misconduct in American history.

"It's a disgusting history in Chicago, but it's important that we don't forget about it," said Chicago alderman Joe Moreno, co-sponsor of the reparations ordinance. "This happened in our city—not in Iraq. In Chicago."

Making history, as the defamed Burge has done, is one matter, but writing history—especially one about torture, to be learned by Chicago teenagers—is another. An implementation team with Chicago Torture Justice Memorials will work with the city to ensure all aspects of the reparations package are met, according to Mariame Kaba, a CTJM advisory board member who also works with Chicago Public Schools on school-to-prison pipeline issues.

"History has always been a potentially radicalizing force that allows you to look back in order to look forward," said Kaba, who helped develop the 2013 pamphlet Historical Moments of Police Violence: Jon Burge and Chicago Police Torture.

A Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said in an emailed statement to VICE that the curriculum will teach eighth- and tenth-graders to make a connection between the facts surrounding the Burge torture era and the protection of civil liberties as defined in the Bill of Rights. The high school students will also "delve deeper into the Burge case, examining the implications of police accountability."

In practice, however, teaching these lessons alongside the realities many students face is fraught with systemic challenges.

"The big obstacle here is teachers aren't trained to confront these kinds of issues, and they're uncomfortable doing so," said Maureen Costello, director of Teaching Tolerance at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). On top of this, when it comes to civil rights education, Costello said, "There is no uniformity whatsoever and virtually no accountability. Nationally, standards vary from state to state."

According to the 2014 SPLC "Teaching the Movement" report, fewer than half of US states today include in their main curriculum any information on Jim Crow laws and only 11 states included mentions of the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan (Illinois was not one of them). In some states, curriculum is left entirely to local districts. Other states have minimal to zero content standards for social studies curriculum.

"Marginalized students need to understand why they're marginalized, and if you pretend that they're not, and you think we haven't engineered a society in which they're marginalized, then you have no credibility," said Costello, who taught high school history for 18 years.

In Chicago, some high school kids have direct experience with law enforcement as part of their daily lives, whereas in other neighborhoods, teens are largely unexposed to police. For the latter group, the Burge torture is just a history lesson, but for many of the city's kids, the legacy of brutality isn't exactly abstract, as evidenced by the city's latest payout of $5 million to the family of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who police shot 16 times last October.

"There are certain dangers of teaching about egregious human rights violations by the police in the past tense," said Jamie Kalven, director of the Invisible Institute, which recently pioneered the Youth/Police Conference at the University of Chicago. "This history of this horrible saga of police torture in Chicago—it has to be paired with contemporary realities."

The rift between Chicago Police and communities of color—in part caused by the Burge torture and the city's repeated disavowal of it—will only deepen by teaching kids about what police did to their neighborhoods, according to Art Lurigio, a psychologist and criminal justice professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

"That's the last thing we need in the African American community," Lurigio said. "Your identity and views are in formation as a teen. It's going to add to anger and resentment."

But if teaching about this history causes mistrust among youth, it's well-deserved, says former investigative journalist John Conroy, who first wrote about the Burge torture cases in a Chicago Reader piece titled "House of Screams."

"The city has done nothing to stop police officers who abuse suspects from continuing to abuse suspects, not over weeks, but over years and decades," Conroy told me.

VICE talked to three Chicago high school juniors who are in the middle of their US history courses. All three testified to the lack of depth in some of their civil rights lessons. They also saw the merits of learning about the city's history of torture, but with caution.

"I feel students will respond terribly and be horrified," said Nancy Ngo, 16, of Lane Technical College Preparatory High School. "I already know how harsh police officers can be."

Gabriela Perez, 16, who has four uncles and two family friends who are Chicago Police officers, said, "They should have a high school for [the police] instead of us. We are the people that are facing the problem, and the cops are the ones that are doing that. It's not the people, but it's the cops that should learn about it."

At the only all-girls public high school in Chicago, which has a predominately African American student body, 17-year-old Gloria Purnell said, "If you're forced to learn about it, it would definitely open your eyes. I don't think the girls from our school would act differently toward the police, but they definitely have an animosity toward the police."

Illinois earned a "D" in the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Teaching the Movement" report for how it teaches the civil rights movement. Racism and resistance to the civil rights movement is not included in major curriculum documents. Failure to confront these difficult lessons is a problem, as is casting them as tales of oppression without a sense of civic engagement, according to the SPLC's Maureen Costello.

Still, as Cannon sees it, this is a major shift toward greater law enforcement accountability.

"Anytime you on the right side of the law, it feels good," Cannon added. "Now it's a new day and we will say 'Never again.'"

Follow Alison Flowers on Twitter.