In the archive center of the Becontree housing estate in Dagenham, east London, 92-year-old Bob sits in a greatcoat and smart brown shoes, sipping a coffee and leafing through a stack of multi-colored rent books that mark the 87 years he has spent on the estate.

"It was 15 shillings and four pennies a week," he says, picking out one of the oldest and gently chuckling. "Around 70 pence. You wouldn't get it now. It was a good thing them days."

When Bob moved to Becontree with his parents and two siblings back in 1929, he was just five years old. His father had been transferred from Battersea Power Station to Barking Power Station, so his family left south London for the suburbs of Dagenham. The area they moved to was one of the most impressive public housing estates ever built in Britain. From 1921 to 1934, 29,000 homes were constructed in Becontree as part of a housing program designed to reward soldiers returning from the First World War and stave off the threat of Bolshevism, which was a pressing concern for the inter-war British elite.

The repetitive rows of pebbledash terraced houses with front and back yards are hard to miss. In terms of population it was, and still is, the biggest public housing estate in the world.

"It was something totally different," says Bob, who has spent nearly his entire life on the estate and married his neighbor in 1947. "Something nice and fresh and new. It must have been a blessing for mum and dad because they weren't used to that sort of thing: a nice house to go to and live in, decent toilets, decent facilities, a roof over their heads. People had never been so well off... they lived in slums before."

Bob. Photo by Jake Lewis

On January 12, with the public's attention focused on the junior doctors' strike, an innocuously named piece of legislation called the Housing and Planning Bill was passed through parliament after a third reading. According to the government, the new bill will help tackle the housing crisis and transform "generation rent into generation buy." Hidden within a long document full of technical jargon are policies that could, some say, spell the end of public housing altogether.

A new system called pay-to-stay will force tenants earning above £30,000 in London) to pay full market rent for their property, purchase it under right-to-buy or leave altogether. Lifetime tenancies, the right to live in the same place for life, will be scrapped. Homes considered to be high-value will be sold off once they become vacant and the proceeds given to housing association tenants, who will be offered their homes under right-to-buy.

Put together, the new policies have been described by Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, as a "grand theft of the public realm" and "another nail in the coffin of the post-war settlement." By the end of the 1970s, 42 percent of the population lived in social housing. It was, for many, an achievement comparable to the National Health Service. Today, just under 8 percent rent from the state. The era of government-provided, affordable housing that offered people like Bob the chance of building a better life has been gradually replaced by a new housing crisis with endless waiting lists, a dysfunctional private rented sector, and a society obsessed by a dream of homeownership that for most will never come true.

Hurley House on the Boundary Estate. Photo by Jake Lewis

It's midday and the sun shines down on the pitched roofs and red bricks of the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch, east London. Just 150 feet from the busy high street, things are remarkably quiet: a few locals mill around the community launderette and a few others sit in the estate's small, raised park.

If she cranes her neck from the window of her ground floor apartment, Jean Locker can just about make out where the residents of a slum called the Old Nichol would once have lived. For the 67-year-old nursery worker, it's a point of deep personal significance. She moved to the Boundary Estate as a tenant over 30 years ago, but it was only recently she discovered her great-great-grandmother, a Huguenot clothes dealer, had actually lived in the slum over 100 years earlier.

"They called it the 'blackest streets' because of the high crime and high poverty," she says referring to a map by Charles Booth that used black as an indication of poverty. "A lot of the problems here were caused by the deteriorating housing, the slum landlords, the Rachminites of the Victorian time, who let their houses go into a decrepit state."

Completed in 1900 by architects at London City Council (LCC) over a slum known as the Old Nichol, the Boundary Estate was the first public housing estate to be built in Britain. Prior to this, the only real attempt to rehouse the urban poor had been inadequate attempts by private philanthropists and social reformers such as American banker George Peabody.

Arnold Circus bandstand, built from the rubble of the Old Nichol slum. Photo by Jake Lewis

We're sitting on a small bench next to a green and brown band stand built from the actual rubble of the Old Nichol slum. Looking at the arts-and-crafts-influenced blocs fanning out from around us, it's striking just how good the Boundary Estate looks after all this time. What is it like, living in a place of such social significance?

"I'm proud of the fact that I live somewhere a little bit unusual," she says. "I really want to know exactly where things were. I'd like to be standing on that same spot (she was)."

Locker came from an old house in Hackney with "no toilet inside, no hot water, a leaking roof, and no bath," so moving into the Boundary estate was a stark improvement. But back in 1900, when the trailblazers moved in, not everyone was so lucky. Despite an early commitment to the idea that society should house those in need, the universal aspect that came to be associated with mass public housing was yet to exist. The Boundary Estate—much like Becontree—was designed for the 'deserving poor,' those from certain trades and professions that could afford the rents being set. Only a tiny fraction of the Old Nichol's residents were actually allowed to live in the estate their slum had been cleared for. Mass public housing still wasn't on the cards. It would take another war to change that.

The Aylesbury Estate. Photo by Jake Lewis

In his 2012 book Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain, John Grindrod tells the story of British public housing during its most interesting, exciting, and intense phases. During the Blitz, two million homes were destroyed by German air raids, many in the same industrial cities where housing conditions for the working class were already bad. In response, the 1945 Labour government, led by Clement Attlee, showed a commitment to building public housing that surpassed anything before it. By 1951, over 900,000 homes had been completed.

Grindrodgrew up in New Addington, a large post-war housing estate in Croydon, but it never really occurred to him to find out what this period of history entailed until he left the area at age 30.

"It's kind of impossible to overstate how optimistic, excited, and proud people were to be doing that work at that time," he tells me from a pub in Forest Hill, not far from where he grew up. "When I interviewed architects and planners about it they would melt a bit. They would get so misty-eyed and immediately slightly heartbroken, having seen that attitude disappear. There was this sense that they'd been talking about building and planning this stuff for ages, but they'd only been able to tinker around the edges, and now they could actually do something proper about these problems. They really were trying to create a better world."

Over the next three decades, local authorities responded to the country's housing needs with a staggering array of different ideas and architectural styles. There were modest pre-fabricated huts built as part of a temporary, emergency building program. There was the New Towns Act in 1946 that aimed to tackle overcrowding in inner cities by building 29 entirely new areas. There were high-rise concrete apartments, streets in the sky, and competing styles like New Brutalism and New Empiricism.

"The idea that post-war council housing is all the same is just total nonsense," Grindrod says. "Where I grew up, there were semi-detached houses, low-rise flats, a couple of high-rise flats, early permanent two-story prefabs. Everything was going on in that place. I'm constantly surprised when I go and visit places at how different they are from one another."

Politics got in the way. "There was this race between the Tories and Labour to build more housing as quickly as possible," says Grindrod. "That meant everyone cut corners and nobody did proper checks. They just wanted to get the numbers up and reach the targets they had set. The only way they could do that though was to build things with prefabrication and unskilled labor."

On the May 16, 1968, a gas explosion at Ronan Point in Newham killed four, injured 11, and exposed just how bad some of the shoddily constructed prefabricated towers erected in this period were. Though responsibility for what happened lay with dodgy building companies and corrupt local authorities, the implications were felt far and wide. According to architecture critic Edwin Heathcote, the investigation that followed Ronan Point's collapse caused "irreparable damage to the image of public housing, the construction industry, and to modernist architecture itself."

Fast-forward a few decades, and under New Labour, there was an image problem facing British public housing. Tower blocks became sink estates and tenants became lazy, rude mooches. It was no longer about the odd badly designed building—the whole idea behind public housing was being systematically discredited.

One man who remains particularly vocal in his criticism of what got built in the post-war period is Nicholas Boys Smith, founder of Create Streets—a controversial social enterprise that campaigns for low-rise, terraced housing and apartments. In 2013, Boys Smith—formerly a managing director at Lloyds Banking Group—co-authored a report with Alex Morton from the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange that blamed high-rise estates for a litany of social problems including juvenile delinquency, crime, poor relationships with neighbors, and even suicide.

"Though well intentioned, many post-war developments—council housing or otherwise—were very poorly set out," Boys Smith tells me over the phone. "Big buildings cost more to run, are less flexible, tend to be less environmentally friendly and have high charges involved in their management. They were also built in a way we now increasingly understand means less good wellbeing outcomes for residents. They created very physically disparate estates which, pretty quickly in most cases, started going wrong."

The solution, according to Boys Smith and Morton, is the "replacement of London's multi-story housing... with real houses in real streets."

"The research is pretty unambiguous," Boys Smith says. "On the whole, living in a house or a smaller building nearer the ground with a front door to the street, a bit of private space and access to green space in a way that you can control—these things tend to be correlated with being happier with where you live, lower crime, and better social links between neighbors. It's also quite popular and therefore achieves high values."

If there's one estate that would seem to exemplify this idea of "urban decline" it ought to be the Aylesbury Estate in south London—the largest system-built estate in the city, constructed with vast grey slabs of prefabricated concrete. By the time Aylesbury was completed in 1977, the damage to the reputation of post-war modernism had already been done. Two decades later, Tony Blair made his first speech as Prime Minister on the estate, in which he referred to its residents as "forgotten people." Filmmakers would regularly flock to the area for its "gritty" aesthetic and journalists would use it as shorthand for inner-city crime and poverty.

Aysen Dennis. Photo by Philip Kleinfeld

But talk to people who actually live there and the picture gets more complicated. In 2001, 73 percent of residents voted against plans to demolish the estate.

After a walk around the edges of the estate—cut off from the public by a spiked fence designed to keep out protesters—I'm sitting in the neat, two-bedroom, fifth-floor apartment of 57-year-old Aysen Dennis. Dennis is wearing a black T-shirt with the words "No Social Cleansing" written in red block capitals. She describes herself as "the official face" of an anti-gentrification occupation that took place here last year and rejects outright the stigma that has surrounded her community.

"These were all fabricated things to make the estate look bad," she says, matter-of-factly. "I witnessed the children grow up in front of my eyes and turn into decent young adults. I live here as a woman and I've never come across anything that wouldn't happen elsewhere. This is the place I've felt the safest anywhere in my life."

Dennis' level of anger and willingness to resist the current demolition effort through direct action is striking. Given her personal circumstances it's also unsurprising. In 1988, eight years after a military coup, Dennis left her home in Turkey to escape political repression. For the next five years she moved around London, living in friends' houses, squats, and a cooperative in Camberwell which she left because of racist abuse. When her application for an apartment back in 1993 was successful, years of exhausting instability appeared to have come to an end.

The Aylesbury estate. Photo by Jake Lewis

"I couldn't believe my luck," she says. "It was heaven for me. The beautiful view, the big space. It was the first time I had a place that was truly my own. Growing up, my father was in the army, so we used to move around a lot and I was never able to stay in the same place for a long time. I always envied people that could do that. When I moved here I felt this was it: this is my place and I'm going to live and die here."

In the end, for Dennis, the estate's fall from grace says far less about the failure of British modernism and far more about the desire to release the real-estate potential of inner-city London. She thinks the estate was deliberately run down by a government that wants to cash in, and looking out through the large windows of her warm, bright apartment, it's easy to see why. To the left is Burgess Park, one of the largest green spaces south of the river, and to the right, in the distance, you can make out the London Eye slowly turning for the city's tourists.

"They think we don't deserve it," she adds. "It makes me so angry that they measure our humanity according to how much money we have in a bank account."

Related: Watch 'Year of Mercy' our new documentary about backstreet abortions in the Philippines

Last week Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, said he had an "ethical obligation" to demolish London's public housing estates, citing research by Savills that was compiled with input from Create Streets. A few weeks earlier David Cameron announced a proposal to demolish or overhaul 100 so-called "sink estates" and replace them with low-rise housing. Sitting on a 17-strong panel that will work on that proposal and develop a "national estate regeneration strategy" is none other than Nicholas Boys Smith.

Meanwhile, helping Cameron devise his wider housing strategy after leaving Policy Exchange to work as a Downing Street special advisor is Alex Morton. Many of the policies outlined in the bill including the forced sale of housing voids appear to have been lifted directly from Morton's other work with Policy Exchange.

While the new legislation will have implications far beyond the capital, according to research by Shelter, it's in central London where the impact on housing stock could be felt the worst. In Camden, for example, 11,714 homes, nearly 50 percent of its total stock, fall above the bill's "high value threshold." And that's in a borough with a waiting list that was, until a recent change to its housing allocation policy, 30,000 people deep.

Dorian Courtesi. Photo by Philip Kleinfeld

From 48-year-old Dorian Courtesi's lounge on the third floor of Barrington Court in Gospel Oak, you can hear the loud sound of construction work on a private new-build across the road. Just a stone's throw from Hampstead Heath, Barrington Court is right in the middle of some of Camden's most valuable land. Should any of the estate's more expensive two- and three-bedroom street-level apartments become vacant, Courtesi fears they will be sold off in an instant.

"I think it's atrocious," he says. "We've got families on waiting lists. On this estate, we have a woman and a partner with two young daughters under the age of five living in a one bedroom property."

Barrington Court. Photo by Jake Lewis

Even more worrying are the new pay-to-stay rules, which Courtesi estimates could affect between 25 and 30 percent of the residents.

Back and neck problems mean he can only work part-time at the moment, but should his circumstances change, he too could be affected. "Say my pay rate went up from £38,000 ," he says. "I would be in a situation where I was paying more out in rent as a social housing tenant if my pay grade goes up. How does that incentivize me to improve my circumstances as a person in the labor market?"

The housing bill passed through Parliament, but resistance is beginning to build. In March, peers in the House of Lords published over 100 amendments including plans to block pay-to-stay, the end of secure tenancy, and the sell-off of housing association property and high-value homes. A vote on that will take place in March. Meanwhile, a new campaign called Kill the Housing Bill—Secure Homes for All has been set up by a coalition of different groups, including Camden Assembly of Tenants, of which Courtesi is a member.

Whether it will be enough to affect the content of the bill remains to be seen. Just before Courtesi leaves his apartment to join a group of activists planning a large demonstration in central London, I ask him whether he believes the purpose of the bill really is to destroy public housing once and for all. "Yes I do," he says, without a second's hesitation. It's a question which could seal the fate of places like Becontree, Boundary Estate, and Aylesbury.

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Who are Donald Trump's people?

The photographer Simone Lueck—a product of St. Paul, Minnesota, by way of Brooklyn—wanted to find them. So she rode a Greyhound bus deep into the Southern Tier of New York State and got off in the city of Binghamton, which she read had a high percentage of Trump supporters. She found these people by placing an ad in the local newspaper, which itself became amplified into something of a news event ("Local Trump Supporters Needed for Photography Project" read the ensuing headline).

In Lueck's complex pictures, Trump's supporters don't give us what we expect. We see Flo, a 90-year-old woman in horn-rimmed glasses and tweed trousers, with ambivalent hands, a majestic body wave, stray hairs on her cardigan, and a sympathetic wattle. "I still have a hard time understanding that there are Jewish Republicans," Lueck says of Flo, who further confounded the artist by asking if she could deliver a message to the candidate, and endeared herself by driving Lueck to see Binghamton's ornate and defunct Amtrak station. Flo lamented that Binghamton, which used to have three department stores, now has none. That was back when it was a manufacturing center (cigars, computers, shoes, flight simulators), before the end of the Cold War and the ensuing loss of defense-industry contracts.

Lueck's photographs convey that decline, but at the same time, they capture a sort of optimism—a word not usually associated with the candidate. They show that Trump's people are not monolithic, but they are a group with individual quirks: They wear neckties to gather at a bar called Sam's Place on Saturday mornings, and they ornament their homes with stuffed tigers and antique swords or clippings of the Dalai Lama and Yoda. One of them, a bald lawyer with notched lapels and a pink tie, stands in his office before small photographs of neoclassical architecture that embody the sort of muscular grace we assume he seeks to offer clients.

–Words by Eric Konigsberg. See Simone Lueck's photos below:

"After reading Shelley's 'Frankenstein' in high school... I realized monsters can be human and humans can be monsters." Illustrations by Michael Hili

Ever since elementary school I've felt that being a Muslim is like being part of a big family. Sort of a club with a set of values that use humility as the basis for feeling indebted to one another. When kids asked me where I was from, hearing me pronounce Afghanistan always got a chuckle. All that abruptly changed when I was in my first year of high school—the year after 9/11.

These days I'm a college student who sometimes writes for VICE. This is why, after the San Bernardino shootings and the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris, the guys at the Melbourne office asked for my thoughts on the lure of extremism. I had a think about it, and I asked some of my own friends. They're a mixed group of second-generation immigrants. We grew up in the Melbourne suburbs to become students, trade workers, and occasionally thugs. I know for a fact some of them have dabbled in extremism, mostly in the form of online reading. So I asked around. Why does radical Islam appeal to so many young men?

First of all, you need to know that it's often hard to feel accepted when you're labeled a migrant. Iqbal, a law student from Coburg, quipped that some Australians seem to think "our purpose is to replace their lifestyle with strict, oppressive, and unappealing regimes in pursuit of satisfaction from a god that doesn't exist."

Of course, this isn't the case, but it's the sort of opinion that brings out the worst in everyone. Every time the television flashes news of collapsing buildings, murder, suicide, an attack or a siege, our first reaction isn't grief. It's sad that all we want to know is whether the antagonists were Muslims, again. We nervously hope they're not, paranoid that again we'll be caught in the headlights of bigotry.

Iqbal sparks a Winfield Blue, holding it inward behind his back, afraid his father might catch him before Maghrib. "It angers me every time a Muslim does the wrong thing," he says. "In some ways, it's always my responsibility to publicly condemn their actions."

Earlier this year, on April 18 at 3:30 in the morning, 200 police officers executed multiple raids across Melbourne as part of Operation Rising. Neighbors in Hallam stood dazed on the side of the road as the Victorian Police Special Operations Group yanked teenage boys out of bed and marched them into bearcat military vehicles. They'd allegedly planned an "act of terror," or a revenge attack for the death of one of their friends, Numan Haidar, who was shot as he attacked two police officers with a knife.

One of the accused is a friend of mine. He compares his memory of the raids to shellshock. He recalls the image of his cuffed father, helpless on the floor as a policeman kneed him in the back, demanding with his M16 an explanation of what the Arabic poster on the wall meant. He was later released without any charges.

When asked why he thought young Muslims are sometimes angry, my friend explained, "If we speak out about our concerns , they think we're just complaining. We're told that we should just accept whatever misguided opinions people have about us, even though we were born here."

Being treated as an outsider, despite coming from the same country, might be a defining factor for a lot of young Muslims. The FBI has revealed that the San Bernardino shooter, Syed Rizwan Farook, was a first generation Pakistani immigrant born in Chicago. French investigators also believe that the mastermind of the Paris attacks was a Belgian national. Both of the Charlie Hebdo attackers were born in Paris, and three of the attackers in the 2005 London Bombings were British-born Pakistanis. It is also estimated that roughly 4,000 people have left their homes in the West to join ISIS.

This is not to say I'm blaming Western culture for making young Muslims feel vilified. Far from it, I believe a lack of stronger leadership within Islam is part of the problem. Harsh criticism of violent interpretations such as Wahhabism need to be brought to the forefront of our own conversations. We're lacking this voice, and the public instead hears from self-proclaimed leaders who don't represent the views of the majority.

I believe it's our lives, not our beliefs, that make us monsters or humans.

We also hear overwhelmingly from the radical media machine. I was told that in radical Islamic lectures, often organized privately in the outer suburbs, the role of the internet and media are usually the principal tools used by "clerics" to desensitize and exploit young believers. Unfortunately, there is a continuous influx of horrific footage pouring in from Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It's slick, incessant, and it gives everyone—and especially young kids—the impression that Muslims everywhere are being attacked and their only way to help is through violence.

After reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in high school, or watching David Lynch's Elephant Man, I realized monsters can be human and humans can be monsters. Now, having spoken to my friends, and having thought about the backgrounds to these tragic events, the work of psychologist Albert Bandura seems most appropriate. As he explained, "It requires conducive social conditions, rather than monstrous people, to produce heinous deeds."

Philip Zimbardo's infamous Stanford experiment reinforces this social argument through the eerie similarities that were replicated in the gross abuses of power at Abu Ghraib prison. The soldiers weren't solely responsible. Instead, it was their total social make-up, history, and their environment that sculpted their ideals and decisions. For any young aggressor, I believe it's our lives, not our beliefs, that make us monsters or humans.

My friend Mohammed isn't a monster, but maybe he's a juvenile delinquent. He migrated from Sudan in 2005 and has recently committed himself to Islam in order to redeem a past shaped by war and a chaotic block of Footscray flats. When asked about his view on radicalization, he explained, "A lot of the young people only know a few verses, out of context, and they use these verses as a basis for their actions." But like the others he also agrees, "If these kids were properly accepted into society, they wouldn't become radicalized. We feel the hate that the public has towards us."

When you're young, all you really want is to feel accepted. The general vibe from my conversations seemed to be that dispossessed immigrant Muslims often feel marginalized, ignored, and rejected by society. While the media is still obsessing over ISIS, the brand has deteriorated like a passé fashion trend amongst religious circles in the suburbs. Yet despite this, engaging in jihad still seems like a romantic fantasy. Some imagine they'll finally belong to a utopia under a caliphate, a system aligned with their way of life according to scripture. The fantasy gives their lives a sense of purpose or an escape from suburban nothingness. It's crazy, but it's a common desire in young males everywhere, regardless of religion.

Follow Mahmood on Twitter.

Illustrations by Michael Hili

The golden era, when we owned things. Photo by Barry Yourgrau

Stuff. You know stuff, right? It's like those things that are everywhere, making up all of existence. Most stuff is someone else's, but there's some stuff we can call our own: a half-eaten pizza in your fridge, an old N64 gathering dust behind your TV, all the sweaters you never wear but refuse to throw away.

You might think that as we've become a more consumerist society, spending almost all of of our time buying things off Amazon, that we own more stuff than we used to.

Most consumer goods have also gotten cheaper as companies like Asos and IKEA allow us to buy insane amounts of things we hardly ever use. Meanwhile, our love of new tech means that we own a litany of gadgets that older generations could only dream of.

But this week, the Office of National Statistics took a break from bothering you as you're leaving baggage claim at the airport to reveal that the average Briton has around five tons less stuff than it did a decade ago. As a nation, we've gone from a peak of 889.9 million tons in 2001 (15.1 tons per person) to 659.1 million tons (10.3 tons per person) in 2013.

This reduction in "stuff" is mainly thought to be down to rapid developments in technology, as we spend more on services like Netflix and Sky than on physical media. Our appliances weigh less than ever before and most tech such as video and tape players have been replaced by a small hard drive.

So why is my room always messy? Why am I always tripping over Christmas cards from 2013 and empty boxes of Twinkies? I'm not convinced, so I've decided to speak to someone of the frontline of stuff, Chris Smith, who works for a van company and is a removal man of over seven years' experience, to see what he makes of our fluctuating human crap levels.

So it's been in the news recently that people in Britain have way less stuff than they used to. Do you find, as a removal man, that your load has gotten heavier or lighter over the years?
Well, that's a difficult question. Although in some senses people do have much less stuff, moving has become a lot harder. In inner-city moves, the housing can be really far away from the road. For example, if you have a enclosed housing community, like you do a lot of the time in London, you will have to walk a long way from the car on the road to the apartment in the buildings, past the gates, up the stairs, and so on. Also, with some places in London, you will need a lot more of you to do the job, because you need two people to move and one to watch the car while you're doing it.

You're moving stuff farther, then, but in terms of actual possessions, do people have less junk?
Oh yeah, definitely. But then again that's because people need a lot less stuff these days, especially with city moves, because most apartments are furnished and have all the appliances built-in, like a fridge and a washing machine. So people don't ever need to move their sofas, their chairs, and their tables, because they already have them in there. And most of the time people move so often that they don't even want to get their own things and everyone looks for a pre-furnished place at the estate agents or whatever.

What about places outside of cities?
Well, for example when I go to Kent, you do moves that are definitely inclusive of all the furniture and appliances, because people out there tend to move house to house rather than apartment to apartment. They definitely haven't changed the way they move over the years.

Where people do have stuff, what kind of stuff do you find yourself usually moving?
These days the only bit of furniture people ever want to move is a bookshelf. People will just have a load of bags and a few boxes with maybe kitchen appliances in or whatever, although we don't really know what's in them. People definitely seem to have more clothes, though, from all the bags we lug about.

What about tech?
The only thing we'd move is a flat-screen TV, and that's it. I can't remember the last time I moved a HiFi or one of those old big televisions you used to get. It's again just because people have everything on their phones or laptops and don't need to have a lot of technology any longer. People seem to have more clothes and less tech, definitely.

Marissa Shephard, 20, faced murder charges in court Wednesday. Screenshots via Youtube.

Marissa Shephard faced charges of first-degree murder and arson in a Moncton, New Brunswick courtroom Wednesday morning following her arrest yesterday.

Shephard, 20, was apprehended by RCMP outside a Comfort Inn Tuesday at around 12:30 PM, following a tip from a member of the public. Stephen Nagle and Krystal Toole, who were with Shephard at the time, were also arrested.

Shephard had been on the run since mid-December and was wanted on a Canada-wide warrant for her alleged involvement in the violent murder of Baylee Wylie, 18.

According to the CBC, Toole was charged with aiding Shephard while she was wanted for first-degree murder while Nagle, father to Shephard's four-year-old son, was charged with assisting Shephard, aiding her escape, and breaking a court order to stay away from Toole. Toole and Nagle are a couple, Global News reports.

Nagle reportedly cried out in court when he heard the charges against him.

"This is ridiculous I thought she was dead," he said, adding Shephard "was going to turn herself in that night."

The trio has been ordered to have no contact with each other.

Wylie was discovered dead in a burned out triplex in Moncton Dec. 17.

Shephard was on the run for more than 10 weeks; during that time RCMP released several images of her, emphasizing that she was capable of changing her looks. (She basically went really heavy on facial contouring.) While police said she could have been anywhere, she was captured just a kilometre away from where the murder took place.

Two other men, Devin Morningstar and Tyler Noel, both 18, have been charged with his murder.

Shephard's next court appearance is March 18.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Robin Hood Gardens, Poplar, east London

One of the enduring myths of public housing in the UK is that it all looks the same. Which is weird because when we sent photographer Jake Lewis to document some of London's threatened affordable homes, the photos he came back with were startlingly diverse. From red-bricked houses with porches and front gardens, to pre-fab blocks with "streets in the sky," they're the concrete residue of the now unfashionable idea that people should be able to afford somewhere to live. Much like the uniform glass and terracotta new-builds springing up all over, some of them probably looked better in an architect's sketchbook than they do now, but they seem to represent a more mixed architectural heritage than people like to give them credit for.

Read more about the death of public housing in London.

Follow Jake Lweis on Twitter.

There are two things everyone knows about H. P. Lovecraft. The first is that he's one of the most important horror writers of all time. His cosmic horror works helped shape the trajectory of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, while influencing everyone from Stephen King to George R. R. Martin. The second thing is that he was super racist. The two facts are not unrelated, as Lovecraft's racist fears are central to his worldview and appear either subtly or very, very overtly in most of his fiction (including, infamously, a cat with a racial epithet for a name). Consequentially, the genre world seems to never stop debating what to do with Lovecraft's legacy. Can his racism be dismissed as merely "of his time"? Should his work be ignored by modern readers, despite its influence? With his newest book, author Victor LaValle finds a third way to respond to Lovecraft's complicated legacy: the literary clapback.

In The Ballad of Black Tom, LaValle repurposes Lovecraft's most racist story, " The Horror at Red Hook," in a way that both pays tribute to the horror giant and repurposes his work for LaValle's own ends. The short novel follows Charles Thomas Tester, a Jazz Age Harlem hustler who sometimes transports occult material across the city for a quick buck. Soon he gets wrapped up with Robert Suydam, a rich occultist dabbling in strange powers he doesn't fully grasp. Tester is initially wary, but he is driven fully into Suydam's world by the violence of racist police.

LaValle is a tremendous writer of what might be labeled literary horror—add Big Machine and The Devil in Silver to your reading lists if you haven't already—and The Ballad of Black Tom is tightly written, beautifully creepy, and politically resonant (LaValle described it to me as "a literary mash-up of H. P. Lovecraft with a Black Lives Matter undercurrent"). But above all, the slim novel is a tremendously fun read. LaValle, who is mixed race, grew up adoring Lovecraft and it shows. Even as LaValle uses the novel as rebuttal, he makes sure to spin a thrilling Lovecraftian tale of mystery, monsters, and madness. If you've ever wanted a Lovecraft novel without the affected diction or racism, you should pick this up today.

I recently talked with LaValle over the phone to discuss his novel, Lovecraft's legacy, and Cthulhu GIFs.

VICE: Do you think we'll ever finish debating Lovecraft's legacy?
Victor LaValle: I certainly hope not. I really do think it's amazing to imagine that a spoiled shut-in from Providence, Rhode Island—who was by all accounts utterly antisocial but also charismatic—was writing this ridiculous, purely ridiculous fiction, and we're talking about him even now and will continue talking about him. That's one of the reasons I hope it never stops, because that guy really did embody so many interesting things about these large cosmic ideas, but also about America and especially white America—a particular kind of white America and its fear of extinction. I really do think that's one of the things that he was wrestling with. He posited it as humanity's fear of extinction, but I feel like it doesn't reduce it in any way to suggest that he's talking about a very specific kind of fear of extinction, not necessarily universal, the way he put it on paper.

The perfect example of that fear of extinction in Lovecraft is his story "The Horror at Red Hook." He describes New York as "a maze of hybrid squalor" and "the poisoned cauldron where all the varied dregs of unwholesome ages mix their venom and perpetuate their obscene terrors."
I really do love him, because that is a version of the private conversations that people might have at Thanksgiving with the grandparents and the uncles and aunts. You know, on some level, they actually say these things when they talk about Obama's presidency, the swell of Hispanic immigrants, or the coming Arab horde. They're talking about the same fear. He actually put it on paper and did it in a way that didn't try to hide or didn't even think, I need to hide this. Forget about thinking I should hide it—no, I should say this. This is a real concern.

One thing I really liked about The Ballad of Black Tom is that it reads like a love letter to New York and specifically the parts of New York that Lovecraft despised: the diversity and the throngs of crowds. Can you talk about how growing up in Queens influenced your writing or approach to literature?
My upbringing in Queens, and in New York as a whole, was not a homogenous upbringing. As a result, it became how I think life should look. So, for me, when I read work that doesn't seem to have that breadth of classes in it, it always strikes me as false. Because I think, How could the author not have seen the broad variety of people who existed ? Not that they need to be always central, but how could the author not have noted, if not different races, then different cultures within a race, whether that's class-wise, religion, whatever it is. When that lack of diversity is not noted in some way, I always think it's fake. I always think the book has missed something. And if the author in the book has missed something, I start to be skeptical about what it is he or she could actually have to teach me or surprise me with. I think that all of this comes from being raised in this unbelievably mixed community, and being racially mixed myself. I have a black mom and a white dad. My mom is also international—she's an African immigrant. My dad is a white guy from upstate New York. So the idea that worlds always collide and shape each other is in my DNA, literally. And I would argue in everyone's.

That is like the shaping worldview of my life. Whereas Lovecraft's life was in many ways the absolute opposite. Raised in Providence, Rhode Island—and Providence presumably has always been in some way diverse and mixed, even if it was all white people, which I'm sure it wasn't. From the fishermen to people like his family, who were sort of old money who'd fallen on hard times. But then Lovecraft was trapped inside this house with his mother and his aunts, and all of them have sort of agreed to keep out the world for the preservation of that family's ideals to themselves and the world, and that's what "The Horror at Red Hook" is. It's almost a manifesto of how important that is, and so it made sense for me to say, "Well, here's my counter-manifesto."

Lovecraft has a really distinctive style, which is alternatively loved or mocked by readers, even fans. All the "Cyclopian horrors of the unknown writhing their ancient Stygian tentacles to drive people to utter madness" stuff. How did you approach Lovecraft's style and language when you were writing this counter-manifesto?
I knew that the kiss of death is to mimic his style. It seems like he was very inspired by a writer named Lord Dunsany, who was a high-fantasy writer who came before Lovecraft. In many ways, Lord Dunsany and Lovecraft are both writing from a place of great nostalgia—for places and times and sort of ways of living and cultures that probably never existed. It's sort of high-church language. I'm Episcopalian, and I know when we end up at a high Episcopalian church—or my wife's Catholic and if we end up at an almost Latin mass—it's like a time machine. I just get thrown into this time warp, listening to this service. It's the same reading Lovecraft.

The inspiration for the voice of the book was actually Denis Johnson's Train Dreams . It's an astoundingly good historical novel, and what Johnson figured out was how to write something historical without sounding arch. It's perfect, it's almost invisible, but it pulls you along. I felt like if I told my version closer to the Denis Johnson voice, but unaffected, then you would have room to just think about Harlem in the 20s and how interesting that place was. Queens in the 20s. Brooklyn in the 20s. Race relations then. What I see as the shortcomings of Lovecraft's cosmic indifference philosophy. All of that is so interesting. I don't need to add a layer of really noticeable style.

I think you did that really well, and at the same time, you also kept in the core Lovecraftian way of telling horror where it's kind of obscure and invading the text from the fringes. Sometimes, someone will do an homage to Lovecraft, and it's just like, "Oh, here's a tentacle monster rampaging killing things," instead of, "Here's the madness of the cosmos that you can't even fathom."
Certainly Lovecraft was well aware of how inference was much better than straight-out explanation. I always found it interesting that Cthulhu has become the great Lovecraftian monster, when he is one of the ones who is most hidden and dormant in Lovecraft's work. Literally the only time, if I remember correctly, that you get a sense of him is in " The Call of Cthulhu," when he rises. The idea is that he's trapped at the bottom of the ocean somewhere in the South Pacific. He rises from the bottom, in this one story, and for like one brief moment, the sailor spies this hideous tentacle being, and then no sooner has that happened, the tomb of the ocean or whatever the hell it is snaps shut and Cthulhu goes back to the ocean's depths.

Right, you just see like the top of his head or something. Unlike the drawings, he's not standing astride a mountain and bellowing weird things. And in fact, there are other Lovecraft gods who are more active in some of his stories.

And then there's something weird about Lovecraft's influence on popular culture, where Cthulhu has been taken out and recycled into what some people I know call "Cute-thulhu." Those joke-y images of Cthulhu as Hello Kitty or mash-ups of tentacle monsters dancing with Taylor Swift GIFs or whatever.
But again, whether intentional or not—probably intentionally—he smartly left so much mystery to Cthulhu that people could reinterpret him. Like earlier generations only viewed him with horror and disgust. I remember my introduction to Cthulhu was, reading the books, obviously, but then Metallica had a song called " The Thing That Should Not Be" on the Master of Puppets album that was about Cthulhu. It says like, "Not dead, which eternal lie / strange eons death may die." Straight-up quotes from the story, and it was still kind of eerie. But maybe enough time has passed that he's entering the culture. Because once he enters it fully and really, then he becomes a thing of play, as opposed to pure terror. But that just suggests how deeply he's embedded in our culture.

I mean, just think about serial killers. The idea that there are people who have joke-y GIFs of Charles Manson. Like joke-y, funny—he's just a wacky guy with a swastika on his head. Only because enough time has passed, and enough generations have come after the horrific murders that he orchestrated. The terror of him is no longer important. It's just that he is a part of the cultural framework. So, here's Hello Kitty Charles Manson.

Well, the book came out great. What's the next book and when is it coming out?
That one is gonna come out in the spring of 2017, barring any crazy delays. It's basically about how posting pictures of your children on Facebook is you helping this group of underground people steal your children from you. Something that will be really disturbing to people. I'm really praying. Because it's disturbing to me.

Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo. Photo via Flickr

Read: El Chapo Might Go on Trial in Brooklyn

Infamous Mexican drug cartel boss El Chapo may not sleep 'til Brooklyn.

When Joaquín Guzmán Loera was recaptured in January after famously escaping prison last July, his lawyers vowed to fight extradition to the United States, where he faces federal cases in several states. But now the Sinaloa cartel boss's lawyer Jose Refugio Rodriguez says he's trying to negotiate with the American government amid reports that guards at the Altiplano maximum-security prison in Mexico are interfering with his client's sleep.

According to the Associated Press, Mexican officials have copped to waking El Chapo up every four hours for a head count—which is to say really dicking around with the dude's REM cycle. The sleep deprivation and some new visitor restrictions apparently have Guzmán ready to take his chances in the American legal system, and the early indicators are that he'd most likely fall under the jurisdiction of the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn—Attorney General Loretta Lynch's old stomping ground.

While the extradition was originally expected to take well over a year, El Chapo's lawyer says it could take less than two months if he and his client play ball. But the attorney also told Mexico's Radio Formula on Wednesday that they won't drop the appeals in Mexico without a formal plea agreement, which would likely require American prosecutors' promise not to seek the death penalty. (Capital punishment is illegal in Mexico.)

Also on the tunnel maven's wish-list: a lighter sentence at a medium-security prison.

Follow Lauren Messman on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Read: Donald Trump Moved One Step Closer to Taking Over the Republican Party

Ben Carson wanted to be president the way a preschooler wants to be an airplane when he grows up. It's an endearing dream, but at some point, you have to concede that you are wingless, earthbound, and a couple of jet engines short.

The retired neurosurgeon sort of admitted that on Wednesday, when he said he was pulling out of Thursday's GOP debate and did "not see a political path forward" after he won a paltry three delegates on Super Tuesday, putting him at eight total—far behind Donald Trump's 319 and Ted Cruz's 226.

Carson's sleepy style and shaky grasp on what was happening in the world made him more of a sideshow than a serious candidate. During one debate, he said, "Putin is a one-horse country: oil and energy"; at another, he paused for a long, strange minute before walking out on the stage, an incident one body language expert chalked up to stage fright or sedation.

For the past couple months, the press has been openly asking why he's running, especially given the mass exodus of his campaign staff in January and his utter lack of support. Carson was never able to argue, unlike some other second-tier candidates like John Kasich or Jeb Bush, that his experience entitled him to be seriously considered for president, and he never had the popular support of Trump or Cruz. He was just a famous guy who decided that he should be president, then found out not many people agreed with that.

Look at Stephen Maurice Graham's website, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

Photo by the author

When Bill C-36—a law that criminalized the purchasing rather than the sale of sex—came into effect in Canada in 2014, ripples were felt throughout the sex work industry. The bill was heavily criticized for putting sex workers in danger, despite the former Conservative government promoting the bill as being sex worker-friendly (by targeting clients instead of escorts). The Trudeau government, while pledging that they'd reexamine the issue, has yet to do anything concrete.

Screenshot via Amazon.

Regardless of whether or not you're actually American, you're probably paying close attention to the shit show that is the US presidential race right now.

Entertainment-wise, there's little to want for—racism; sexism; blatant lies; shockingly incoherent endorsements—this thing has it all. Up until now though, there's been one thing notably missing in American politics: homoerotic fan fiction.

That changed today, when Sam Shiver, Canada's most prolific political gay erotica author, released her latest work, Can't Stump the Drumpf: An Erotic Tale.

Shiver, the writer behind classics such as Serving the Prime Minister: A Canadian Romance (accidentally brought to you by VICE Canada) and Foreign Affairs: A Diplomatic Romance, sent me a note (more of an apology) Wednesday afternoon linking to the GOP-based novella on Amazon.

"I had to do it, and I am so SO sorry. Enjoy," she wrote.

I'm sorry too, because I read it—all 11 or so pages—and Foreign Affairs: A Diplomatic Romance it is not.

While Shiver's previous books were more or less based on sexy, taboo affairs, this one is decidedly more sinister (and old and saggy.)

The main character, Ronald Drumpf has his sights set on being president of the US, but he first needs to take out his main opponent—Ned Cruise.

"The thought of Cruise's melty face sent a shiver of rage down between Drumpf's legs," writes Shiver, who tells the story mostly from Drumpf's point of view.

Drumpf sets up a private meeting between himself and Cruise in a sub-standard Texas hotel room. Beforehand, he muses about some incriminating photographs he has of Cruise, about knowing "Cruise's dirty little secret."

Once in the same room, the politicians begin having an increasingly hostile exchange, in which Drumpf makes not-so-veiled threats by alluding to what he did to another GOP candidate, Mario Delgado.

"I fucked him. I fucked him right up the ass. He was crying so hard his makeup was running. Why do you think he's got that bald spot? I was pulling his hair so hard, I was afraid I was going to rip it right off . That clown was sucking more than a water bottle when I was done with him. He fucking loved it. Everyone loves me."

Cruise replies, "You're a sick man, Ronald."

Without spoiling too much, the situation escalates into a rough and greasy encounter.

There's also a uniquely Canadian plot twist for all you erotic hosers out there but again, spoilers.

If I had to pick my favourite parts of the book I'd say they were the descriptions of Drumpf and his "quivering jowls," "stubby fingers," and "wet plasticine"-like skin.

The story finishes with a bit of a cliff-hanger, leaving room for yet another sequel. If you are into geriatric porn, stay tuned, I guess.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Donald Trump speaks after being introduced by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie at a Super Tuesday campaign event in Florida. EPA/RYAN STONE

Following Super Tuesday, one of the most important days so far during the American primaries, there was a spike in the search term "move to Canada" on Google in the US as it became clear that Donald Trump could very likely be the next GOP presidential candidate.

The data editor for Google, Simon Rogers, even tweeted about it: "Searches for 'how can I move to Canada' on Google have spiked +350% in the past four hours." The official Canadian immigration government website was also experiencing delays last night, though it's unconfirmed if this was because of the ridiculous amount of traffic (for a government website) it was likely getting during that time.

As someone who did actually move to Canada in part because of how much I disliked the politics of my home country (admittedly, the other reasoning was I met a hot guy on World of Warcraft), I have a few words of advice for fellow Americans who might find themselves fleeing the Trumpocalypse.

You Can't Just "Move to Canada"

In my initial attempts to come to Canada legally nearly five years ago, I realized the assumption that some Americans seem to make—that you can just come here at the drop of a hat if you fucking feel like it—is completely wrong. Though Americans have the privilege of being able to come to the Great White North for up to six months a year as a visitor without having to file any special paperwork if we have a passport or extended license, that doesn't mean you can work here or go to school during that time—actually, it's super illegal to do those things and you can get deported for doing so.

Unless you have a pile of money lying around somewhere to support you while you stay here during those months, you'll have to find other bureaucratic means of coming here legitimately. For me, that meant going to university here—if you have been accepted to a school for a degree program, you can apply for a study permit and stay here year-round while you are in school full-time. Also, tuition is a lot fucking cheaper here than American schools, even when figuring in the fact that you'll have to pay international student rates, so I'd highly recommend doing that if you want to go to school anyway. However, beware that you'll still have to get student loans through the US.

If you don't want to go to post-secondary school up here, then getting a work permit is really fucking hard unless you have experience and qualifications in very specific industries—like in engineering or medicine—or have a job offer up here already. (Hint: these are very hard if not impossible for foreign nationals to get in unskilled labour markets. Sorry, millennials.)

You can also marry a Canadian citizen, which I did end up doing (admittedly somewhat prematurely) since I fell in love with one on an MMORPG, but that does not grant you citizenship or even the Canadian equivalent of a green card (a permanent resident card) immediately. If you want to go that route—known as spousal sponsorship—it will currently take you over two years and thousands of dollars and stacks and stacks of paperwork. I wouldn't recommend it until Canada repairs the program, which was altered under our last Conservative government (a complete fucking George W. Bush-esque disaster btw) because of fears of marriage fraud schemes.

READ MORE: I Got Married to Keep My Girlfriend in Canada

The Canadian Dollar Is Actual Trash Right Now

At this very moment, the Canadian dollar is worth 74 cents on the American dollar. In Canada, we're going through an economic downturn in part due to the massive abortion that is the Alberta oil industry. It's actually good news for you if you want to come here and have some money put away. If you're like me, though, you might have tens of thousands of dollars in American student loans that need to be paid, and if you start working in Canada and making Canadian dollars, you're going to be in the deep amount of shit that I'm currently sinking in. You could always become a debt dodger, but that means not going back to the States again, which arguably sucks if you have family or friends there. Just remember that Trump is only going to be in office for a maximum of eight years, but fuck-ups of that caliber on student loans could be everlasting.

Canadians Fucking Hate You

And they're not shy about telling you so. I cannot count the number of times Canadians have responded to finding out I'm American by using it as a platform to vent their seething hatred for my home country. I usually react by looking them directly in the eyes and whispering calmly, "You do realize that if I moved here, I feel the same way, right?"

By the time you go back to America after living in Canada for a while, you'll realize you drank the maple syrup. Growing up, I was able to put up with the alarming conservative politics of certain American friends and family members, but when I went home for Thanksgiving last year and my step father told me of his adoration for Donald Trump and promised to vote for him, I felt the mix of hormone-pumped turkey and high-fructose corn syrup-laced cranberry sauce coming back up my esophagus.

After internalizing hatred for yourself and your American friends and family, you'll realize your nationality is kind of a cool party trick. You get to answer questions about processed cheese, America's special brand of racism, and mass shootings. Since I'm from upstate New York, I get the added benefit of listening to drunk Canadians blabber on about how much they love Manhattan, blatantly unaware that there's an entire state attached to America's largest city. Really, it's thrilling.

READ MORE: Canada's Foremost Gay Erotica Writer Does the Donald

Health Care is Not Absolute in Canada

You don't automatically get it just by being here, and even if you do have it, the holes in coverage are plenty: none for prescriptions, dental, and eyecare, for starters. Granted, if you are permitted to work here and get a full-time job, it's pretty standard to get great benefits packages that include partial or full coverage for all these things.

If you're sick as fuck and decide to go to a clinic but aren't registered for health care in the province you're in, you have to pay out of pocket just to see a doctor, usually $50-$100 depending on where you go. And in my experience, many of the doctors I've gone to here have sucked, probably because many of the good ones go to the US where they can make more money (thanks again, America).

If you're here as a visitor, you won't have coverage, and even with the work permit I have had since fall of last year, I'm still trying to figure out how I can become registered for the standard provincial healthcare coverage that Canadians enjoy.

Crossing the Border

Over the past half decade, I've crossed the Canadian-American border countless times in my car and have had some horrifying personal experiences. I've had my relationship ruthlessly criticized by border guards, I've stood outside in a blizzard with no jacket on while my car was X-rayed for no apparent reason, and my husband was essentially strip-searched while a border guard shouted in his face: "You're Canadian, you smoke weed don't you? Admit it!" when he came to visit me in the US once. An American friend of ours was asked to unlock his phone and had the contents of it searched when crossing the border.

Whether it's going back for my grandmother's funeral or to attend my niece's birthday party, I have to ready myself for the special hell of interrogation and panic attacks that is border crossing, despite the fact that I have no criminal history and that all of my paperwork is in order.

The impending Trumpocalypse is far from the first time Americans have threatened to move to Canada—and it wouldn't be the first time they actually have (see: Vietnam War draft dodgers). But if you're going to come this time around, please bring Bernie Sanders.

Follow Allison Elkin on Twitter.

Donald Trump. Photo via Flickr.

US NEWS

Koch Brothers Won't Block Trump
The nation's most powerful Republican donors, Charles and David Koch, have no plans to fund any efforts to stop Donald Trump, according to their spokesman. The Koch brothers spent $400 million in 2012, but reportedly believe any money spent attacking Trump would be pointless. —Reuters

Alabama Cop Charged with Murder of Black Man
A white Alabama police officer has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Greg Gunn, an unarmed black man. Smith shot Gunn as he was walking home on February 25. Police initially said Gunn was carrying a stick, but it's unclear if he was holding anything. —CNN

Former Clinton Staffer Given Immunity
The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Clinton's private email server. The FBI has reportedly got Bryan Pagliano to cooperate with its investigation into Clinton's emails, with immunity a sign possible criminal wrongdoing is being probed. —The Washington Post

Google Gives $1 Million to Zika Battle
Google's philanthropic arm Google.org is giving a $1 million grant to UNICEF to help combat the spread of the Zika virus across South America. The internet giant has also assigned a team of data scientists to help UNICEF analyze weather and travel patterns.—USA Today

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

North Korea Fires Missiles Into Sea
North Korea has fired six short-range missiles off its coast and into the sea, according to South Korea. It is being seen as an act of defiance, coming hours after the UN imposed tough new sanctions, including inspections of all cargo going in and out of the country. —AP

Russian Atheist Faces Year in Jail
Viktor Krasnov faces a potential year-long jail sentence after he was charged with "offending the sentiments" of Russian believers over an internet chat in which he wrote "there is no God." The law was introduced in 2013 after Pussy Riot performed in Moscow cathedral. —The Guardian

Australia to Test Possible MH370 Debris
Malaysia's transport minister has said there is a "high possibility" that debris found off the coast of Mozambique came from the same aircraft model as the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The meter-long chunk of metal is being sent to Australia for testing. —Reuters

Socialist-Led Coalition Rejected in Spain
Spain's Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez has failed to form a government after two centrist parties voted down his attempt to form a coalition. Pablo Iglesias, leader of the far-left Podemos party, has urged Sanchez to try to form a left-wing government instead. —BBC News

You now have to be 21 to smoke in San Fransisco. Photo via Flickr.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Refugee Team to Compete at Olympics
The International Olympic Committee has announced that a team of refugees will compete at the Rio games this summer. A total of 43 have been identified as prospective candidates to take part under the flag of the Refugee Olympic Athletes (ROA). —CBC News

San Francisco Raises Smoking Age to 21
The city's Board of Supervisors has voted to increase the legal minimum age to buy tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, from 18 to 21. It is supposed to discourage young people from turning into lifelong smokers. —NBC News

Erotic Fiction Has Trump and Cruz Hate-Fucking
Sex writer Sam Shiver's new book is called Can't Stump the Drumpf: An Erotic Tale and features hot and heavy hotel encounters involving leading Republican candidates. "I had to do it, and I am so SO sorry. Enjoy," says Shiver. —VICE

Dairy Farm Charged With Beating Cows
One of Canada's largest dairy farms is facing 20 counts of animal cruelty. The charges come two years after video showing workers kicking and punching cows, and cows being hoisted up by the neck. —Motherboard

Done with reading today? Watch our new video 'Confessions of a Bartender'

Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan McGregor, and Ewen Bremner in 'Trainspotting'

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I was far too young to watch Trainspotting when it first came out. Mind you, that didn't stop it from penetrating the bubble of my pre-pubescent world. It was the film my friends and I would talk about in class, the film whose promotional posters we'd want to buy with our Christmas HMV vouchers, the film we lied about seeing right up until the point of actually seeing it.

In the late 90s, pre-internet, in a small English town in Yorkshire, Trainspotting provided us with a lot of firsts. It was a portal into an adult world we'd never seen before, in real life or onscreen. Tarantino had given us a glimpse at sex and drugs, but under a heavy gloss of style. Trainspotting added the weight of reality to that world, and in watching it as a 12-year-old it made you feel more grown-up, somehow more experienced. Or at least it did for me.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the film, so to celebrate I spoke to three of the main players: Ewan McGregor, who played Renton, Kelly MacDonald, who played Diane, and the author of the original novel, Irvine Welsh, whose new book The Blade Artist—out this April—continues the story of Trainspotting's Begbie.

Kelly MacDonald and Ewan McGregor in 'Trainspotting'

THE BOOK

Kelly MacDonald: It was on my radar, but I hadn't read it. I bought it after the first audition, so I didn't have much knowledge going in.

Ewan McGregor: Danny Boyle gave me the script to read, and I'd never read anything like it. I mean, it seemed to me to be the best role I may ever read. I was aware of the novel and the kudos it had already accrued, but I hadn't read it yet. So I was sort of blown away by it, and I made it my mission to persuade that I was the right guy for the job. Then, when I read the novel, I loved it very much—I found it incredibly moving. Irvine Welsh is an incredible writer; he can take you from the depths of filth and despair and human baseness to being incredibly moved in the blink of an eye. Being a Scottish guy and it being an intrinsically Scottish novel, I felt I was very connected to it.

FROM BOOK TO FILM

Irvine Welsh: There was loads of interest; everybody seemed to want to make a film of Trainspotting. Initially I sold the rights to the wrong person—back then I was a bit of a naive gunslinger who had sort of stumbled into this mad vortex of different people having an interest in what I was doing. I finally got a screener from Danny Shallow Grave, by which point I'd sold the rights to the other producer. I thought, Bastard, I've fucked this up big-time, because that kind of energy and filmmaking with my characters would have been a perfect match. I really had a sinking feeling thinking that I'd ruined it, but fortunately we were able to resolve the situation.

To me, if you get a film made of your book, it's a complete win-win situation. If the film's shit you just disassociate yourself from it and say, "They fucked up." It's brilliant. I talk to some writers who view it as their book being desecrated, and it's not that at all—your book's not being touched. Nobody is ripping out pages or changing words; all they're doing is transferring your storytelling into a different medium. I was asked if I wanted to be involved had. I looked at John Hodge's screenplay for Shallow Grave and thought, There's nothing I can teach this guy about screenwriting. I needed to keep a distance from it and let people get on with it.

AUDITIONING

KM: I heard about the film through these little yellow flyers; I was working in a restaurant in Glasgow and they were being handed out. I was beginning to wonder what I was going to do with my life, and my interest was piqued as I was secretly thinking about drama school. I remember walking in and making eye contact with Danny, and that felt quite momentous. I don't know why, in retrospect. I definitely felt something.

I was so young when I got the role. I'd just turned 19 and was just totally unaware. I was flipping between the excitement of being around these boys I was hanging around with—because they were all so cool and charismatic and had lots of stories—and then being an absolute nervous wreck and hiding in the toilets.

THE MOST MEMORABLE SCENES TO SHOOT

KM: The club scene, coming out of it. I think it was my first day filming. That was a whole day and night shoot. All the boys were quite naughty and were drinking, so I was drinking. It was Shirley Henderson who pointed out to me not to do that. I'd been in the pub for hours with various people who weren't filming scenes, and she was the one who said, "You might want to stop drinking." She was totally right. I think I was actually hungover by the time I did the scene. I didn't know how to stand on a marker, I was all over the place, I didn't know how it all worked. The sex scene was obviously quite nerve-racking. I was very sexually inexperienced at that stage and limited in that area, so it was all a bit embarrassing. I was so unthinking and so naive and young that that was the day I invited my mum and my brother to the set.

EM: There were so many, because the scenes were so well-written and the other actors were so great. I remember the underwater sequences. I loved that. It's so un-busy and quiet, and you work with the camera in a very different way. I love that sequence—I love the idea of it and the sereneness of it. I loved all the scenes with Kelly. I loved the nightclub scene and outside the nightclub scene where trying to get off with her and gets in cab and all of that stuff. Snogging Kelly MacDonald in the back of a taxi, that was fun—I liked working with her very much. Kelly wasn't really an actress at that point; this was her first thing and she turned up and blew everyone away. The withdrawal scene was an incredible thing to shoot, with the extending room and Jimmy Cosmo playing my dad. The park scene with Jonny Lee Miller, shooting the dog—that was good fun. We didn't really shoot a dog, though.

IW: The scene when "Perfect Day" is playing and he sinks into the ground—I think that was a great way to have that overdose, the way that you're lulling towards death. The second half of that scene, there's a relentless energy of it, and it's set piece after set piece. It struck me, as I've seen the way people can die not remotely dramatically on drugs, but just by slowly fading away and going to sleep, essentially. They can actually enjoy that sense of being taken, in a way, and sometimes they pull out of it and sometimes they don't. That scene summed up both the horror and the appeal of heroin to me. The deathly caress of it. I think that was a fantastic scene. There are very few visual directors around better than Danny Boyle; he knows how to tell a story in pictures, and he knows how to say something visually in a set piece.

Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan McGregor, Kevin McKidd, and Ewen Bremner on set

THE FINISHED FILM

IW: They booked a screening room in Soho, so I brought along people who really loved the book and would be very, very critical of the film if it wasn't any good. I brought along Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes from Primal Scream, Jeff Barrett from Heavenly Records, people who were friends who were really into the book, basically. People who would say it was shit if it didn't capture the spirit of the book. I was watching them more than I was the screen, to be honest, and there were a few comments like, "Is that meant to be Begbie? Is that meant to be Sick Boy?" And then it just stopped. Once the characters were embedded in their heads it took over and they were transfixed. They were all stunned speechless at the end of the movie. When they did find their voice in the bar afterwards it was fucking amazing—they were blown away and they thought it was fucking brilliant. I knew then that it was going to be absolutely massive.

EM: I was completely speechless. I was bowled over by it, really. I remember coming out into the street afterwards and not quite being able to gather my thoughts about it. It was everything I'd imagined it would be and a hundred other things as well.

KM: What I recall most about seeing the film for the first time is more Bobby Carlyle's reaction to the film, because I was sat next to him. He was almost crawling on the floor with embarrassment. Every time he came on screen he would dip lower in his seat, which I thought was interesting. That's how I feel too, though. I think it's fairly common. I didn't like watching myself. I still don't.

THE MUSIC

IW: Where I think I came into my own a bit with helping on the film was the soundtrack. Because I knew a lot of the musicians personally, I was able to put them in touch directly so go?" That helped us secure the rights for a low cost, and sometimes no cost. There is no way we'd have been able to get such a soundtrack normally. Danny had worked with Leftfield on Shallow Grave and I think he knew New Order from Manchester as well. There was such a great vibe about it that it spread to these musicians too, who gave us a bunch of stuff that would have normally cost us a fortune.

I reference most of the artists in the book: Iggy, Lou Reed, Bowie, and a lot of the house stuff I was into at the time. But what I didn't get was the Britpop thing. Primal Scream and Damon Albarn were friends, and I knew Jarvis Cocker, but I didn't really see the Britpop involvement. I didn't see how it would work, but I think it was Danny who decided we needed that contemporary feel, which was a masterstroke, because Britpop was kind of the last strand of British youth culture and it helped to position the film as being the last movie of British youth culture.

Begbie throwing his glass into a crowd of people

REACTIONS TO THE FILM AND ACCUSATIONS OF DRUG GLAMORIZATION

IW: You had Bob Dole—the presidential candidate in the US—criticizing it, but he'd never seen the film. Cinema does inherently glamorize everything: It has actors, there is a stylization there. One of the things I loved about the vision that Danny had for the film is that it wasn't going to be a pompous 1970s social realism film that would shame the bourgeoisie and policy-makers into spending on the inner cities and all this kind of crap, because that ship has sailed and it's never going to happen. If you can't shame policy-makers into spending money on resources, all you're doing is making rich people feel better that they're not poor people. For me, I wanted it to capture the excitement and verve of being young in quite a potentially hazardous environment, but still with that idea that there are all sorts of possibilities ahead, even if your current circumstances aren't particularly brilliant. It was the first film that said about drugs, "This can be really good fun, even though it can be really dangerous." I think you have to do that. "Just say no" doesn't work; you have to show both, the highs and the lows. You have to show why people get involved in that in the first place. To me, it's self-evident why people take drugs.

KM: I'd moved back home with my mum after the film for a bit. I'd been into town and I got back and there were two Daily Mail or Daily Record journalists in the living room talking with my mum, which was a bit weird. I did a quick interview and got them out. Then, in the next few days, there was this front page story about a Trainspotting star's drugs nightmare. I thought: Oh man, who is it? and it was me, because they'd asked if I'd ever taken drugs, and I was a bit of a naive plonker and said, "Yes, I took a hash yogurt once and I was very ill."

THE SEQUEL

IW: John , but it's also evolved. We've had to evolve past that, because the actors would have been ten years older when Porno came out, and now they're 20 years older. It has to take into account that reality. It's very much telling a story about Edinburgh as it currently is. The main element to the story is basically Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy, and Spud getting back together again, and it tells the story of them getting involved in the vice industry in a very innovative way.

I think it has some fantastic set pieces and great opportunities for the actors to knock it out of the park, so I'm very excited. I just know that Danny will come up with this amazing visualization. I think it's going to be excellent. The thing that's going to be interesting is seeing how the young kids in the multiplex cinemas get on with it now, because they're older guys—it's not going to be a youth movie like Trainspotting was. It could be like watching your uncle dance at a wedding. Hopefully it will be fun and crazy enough. It's got the potential for some great, incendiary performances from the actors.

EM: It's going to be incredible. It's a very beautiful, brilliant script—and it needed to be; I don't think any of us would have wanted to be involved in something that wasn't going to live up to the first film. That's the danger with any sequel, but especially this one and after such a long period of time.

KM: I'm in talks. I've read the script. I don't know how much I can talk about it, to be honest. It would be so interesting to work with the same people, and everyone will have changed, but I definitely know how to stand on a marker now. Trainspotting was my weird beginning, and I'm so grateful for it because that could have been it, but it's not, and now I'm actually getting to do this job that I really love and I'm not hiding in the toilets so much any more.

Special thanks to VICE Canada for their assistance with this article.

Follow Daniel on Twitter.

Manhattan, New York City. Photo via Flickr user Aurelien Guichard

Starting Monday, police officers in Manhattan are supposed to stop arresting people for minor crimes like pissing and drinking in public and instead give them criminal summonses. The goal is to reduce the backlog in Manhattan Criminal Court, which officials told the New York Times could drop by about 10,000 cases per year.

To be sure, pissing in public, along with making unreasonable amounts of noise and littering and other petty offenses targeted by "broken windows" policing, remains illegal. But instead of being arrested, most violators will now be asked to appear before a judge and answer questions. The judge can then decide whether to dismiss the case or impose a penalty.

The joint decision between the New York Police Department (NYPD) and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance preempts a broader proposed change to policing in New York. In January, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito unveiled the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2016; if passed, it would give cops the discretion to hand out either civil penalties or (criminal) summonses, as called for under the new Manhattan policy, for low-level offenses. The law would require agencies like the Parks Department to amend the way it deals with violators within its jurisdictions.

Either way, this new trend in NYC policing should allow officers to focus more on serious, violent crimes and less on paperwork for minor, goofy ones. But critics say summonses can be overused–– partially because they are so easy to hand out––and disproportionately affect poor communities that are over-policed. After all, under both the new Manhattan policy and the proposed city-wide law, if you have a warrant out for your arrest, you will still be detained. And critics say many people of color get slapped with warrants after failing to appear for petty BS raps.

Instead, some police reformers hope the city-wide conversation about criminal backlog will lead to wider, more systemic changes when it comes to who gets pegged for, say, illegally riding a bike on the sidewalk.

"We would like to see police policies changed to eliminate the disparate treatment of communities of color," Seymour W. James Jr., the attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, told the Times.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

In a uniquely candid conversation with VICE Autobiographies, A$AP Ferg talks about his father and how their relationship catalyzed his growth as an artist. VICE follows Ferg to Harlem to watch him paint and work his magic in the studio.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck at the 2014 Kingdom Day parade in Los Angeles. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Image)

This story was published in partnership with the The Crime Report.

Now in his seventh year in office, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Charlie Beck has both built and expanded on the reforms initiated by his predecessor and mentor William J. Bratton, who was LAPD chief from 2002–2009. In the process, Beck has become something of a rising star in the reformist wing of American policing—in large part due to his innovative community policing work.

Last October, he went to the White House with 130 other top law enforcement leaders to meet with President Barack Obama. The topic was the future of criminal justice reform, and Beck was chosen to speak with the president on the group's behalf.

But Beck has also come under attack in Los Angeles for, among other things, his handling of controversial officer-involved shootings—which almost doubled in the city in 2015—prompting the local branch of Black Lives Matter to call for his resignation. In dealing with the media, Beck has been deliberate in not making the LAPD about himself—a rare occurrence in a department ruled for more than 40 years by thin-skinned chiefs. As a result, there have been few in-depth interviews with him.

In late January 2016, Joe Domanick interviewed Beck for over two hours. Their free-wheeling discussion covered a host of issues facing him and police executives nationwide, post-Ferguson. Below is an abridged and edited version of the interview.

Joe Domanick: You use the term "community efficacy" when talking about community policing. What do you mean by that?
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck: We have to recognize what a strong factor the police belief that they are in charge of their own destiny, and can make a difference in how and where they live. I believe that is the next revolution of policing.

How do you do that?
Our bureau chiefs, area captains, and senior lead officers are all involved – that's about 300 people. They are responsible for crime to issues like abandoned couches—for everything in one piece of turf 24/7. And our area captains, through community policing, have total authority to affect quality of life and the way people feel about safety in their commands.

I'm proudest of our community safety partnerships in our housing developments, where officers are assigned not to make arrests but to build community. We pioneered that, and it's spreading throughout the city. Officers make a five-year commitment to stay there to make a difference in quality of life. And they are not judged on arrest numbers. They are judged on public safety overall, and on community cohesiveness.

We are going to start doing community surveys—not only city-wide, but community surveys in the various divisions, so we can compare and contrast and measure progress. So on crime numbers, but on how people feel about us and public safety.

Are there any changes, or any training you've been doing, to try to keep to the bare minimum officer-involved shootings and other police abuses?
The organization has changed its philosophy dramatically—its internal philosophy, not just its external stated philosophy. This past summer, we put our entire operations force through 10 hours of preservation-of-life training. The focus was to reinforce the necessity to preserve human life as our primary objective. We are following that up now with many hours of scenario-based training, about 32 for the entire force. We did the philosophy, and we are now doing the application.

We now select people for success within the structure that we have created. I've been the chief almost seven years now, and Bratton was the chief for seven years before me. Literally, we have got two generations of cops. The vast majority of patrol cops were hired by me, all they have ever known.

How has the police academy training changed in terms of your desires for community policing. As you know, Bratton gave a lot of officers, including yourself, kind of carte blanche to start to think about these things.
We have changed the training in the last couple of years to be more all-inclusive. We don't silo our topics. We include de-escalation of force training and communications skills and everything that they do. I have a civilian employee with a doctorate in education that runs my academy. She is absolutely focused on making sure that we do as inclusive a job as we can with our recruits.

We've also begun to bring the academy classes later in their careers—at their one, two-and-a-half and five-year points for more in-service training on the exact topics we've been talking about. We believe that is the most effective way for them to learn, because they already are in the same learning group, with shared interests and experiences.

They already have a pecking order, and their social group is already done. In any kind of training, all those things have to get resolved before any learning occurs. So we are bringing them back and their academy cohorts for training on this exact topic. That is called the LAPD University. We are totally redoing the way that we look at in-service training, in order to apply the right kinds of lessons at the right time in their careers.

One of raps against you from some within the LAPD is that your discipline is inconsistent. Do they have a point?
Sometimes folks forget discipline is not solely based on the act. There are termination offenses no matter what kind of record you have. But discipline is certainly influenced by an officer's history. A person who makes a mistake over and over is going to receive much harsher discipline than somebody who makes it for the first time.

What do you mean when you talk about a "mistake of the heart" and a "mistake of the head"?
A mistake of the heart is malignant. Doing something with evil intent is very different than doing something because you made a poor decision with good intentions. A mistake of the heart is planting dope on somebody. A mistake of the head is miscounting narcotics when you book it and Mistakes of the heart, I can't tolerate. Through training and reinforcement, a lot of the mistakes of the head can be rectified so they won't reoccur.

Aren't there are some "mistakes of the head" that need to be strongly disciplined as an example to other officers?
I do fire people for mistakes of the head. Drinking and driving is a mistake of the head. It is not because you have a malignant heart. I fire people for that to set an example. Not the first time but certainly the second time.

In 2015, there were a number of LAPD shootings of the kind where you sit up on your TV couch and say, "Wow! I can't believe they just shot that guy." Recently, you've sent to the DA the case of the fatal LAPD shooting of Brandon Glenn detective, and as chief, I've aggressively prosecuted police officers. Usually, that's not for actions conducted while on duty, (but) sometimes it is. Recently, we had a case prosecuted where an officer kicked somebody unnecessarily. That was captured on video. It didn't result in a death. I don't shy from that. I don't like prosecuting cops but that doesn't stop me from doing it.

Nevertheless, the LAPD has a high rate of officer-involved shootings, compared to other police agencies.
We make many, many contacts, and have maybe the most gang violence. There are consequences to that. When you have the most interactions and the most radio calls and the most arrests, you are going to have the most opportunities for shootings. You can't compare us to an agency half our size and say, "Why do you have more shootings?" Of course we have more shootings. We have more of everything.

Then the other piece is we have a geographic or demographic that is more violent than others. Police are going to come in contact with that violence. And you are going to have an increase in police use of force.

Why do officer-involved shootings take so long to adjudicate? One just took 13 months. Your critics say you're just taking your time until public outrage has settled and the incident is off everybody's mind.
Should we adjudicate it before the autopsy is done? Autopsies take three to four months. Should we adjudicate them before all the witnesses' statements and everything else is done? We do homicide level investigations on every one of these and multiple other uses of force.

Which part of this scenario do I skip? It was designed by the control. And we follow it scrupulously.

Does the Los Angeles DA ever investigate LAPD officers without the recommendation of the department first?
We present every officer-involved shooting to the DA for review. Every one of them. Others don't do that. No matter how good they are. They all go to the DA for review. And the DA responds as a roll out tape that goes to every officer involved shooting scene at the time it occurs and has for years.

Before, if the LAPD didn't send it over to the DA's office, there wasn't any investigation. It's not that way anymore?
No. We send every one of them over there, and they are invited—we have DAs assigned to each one of the investigations.

So if the DA wanted to, she could initiate—after you send it over—her own investigation and indict, even though the department is not asking for the indictment?
Absolutely.

If I were a police chief, I would talk about violence among poor African-American young men every day, and why nothing is being done except more repression and mass incarceration, in terms of long-term investment to remedy the situation.
You're absolutely correct. A small minority of the population commit—and are victims of—the vast majority of crime. Much of that is tied to circumstances of birth and race and many other things. about changing that dynamic. It's the hardest thing to do in policing. But if you create a sense of social efficacy and a belief that a community is in charge of its own destiny, you can reduce violence and crime.

I always struggle with how hard I am going to lean on the fact that 42 percent of our homicide victims are African Americans, .

But people don't understand that. It's been hard for many, many white people to grasp.
Well, it's very true . We have to have the conversation about what is killing our youth—because that is what this is—our youth. We all have to recognize that some of our communities are much more prone to violence than others. And we've got to find a way to fix that.

But everybody that treats people badly in the wrong situation.

Well, I have come to understand that you've had to bring the troops along. And police unions are a powerfully resistant political force.
Of course. That's why I get frustrated with my union when it goes hard right on some of these issues. I need the members to believe in , because that's how we'll get better, and maybe we'll become an example for America. Maybe.

Is your department still doing roughly the same number of stop and frisks?
Well, I hate that term, of course. Our detentions are reduced, and our overall arrests have been part of a continuing decline. A lot of that is due to a de-emphasis through the courts and through law and even internally toward narcotics arrests and some other lower-level types of arrests that have caused those numbers to go down. Our stops have declined on a similar level, but we still make a lot of stops. There are still multiple hundreds of thousands of year.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck—who is wearing a body camera—at a press conference about the rollout of the agency's body camera program in September 2015.(Photo by Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

In our previous discussion for this interview, you were talking about how "explanation" in policing-stops goes a long way toward easing the tension during a stop. Your ability to articulate why you stopped somebody has a lot to do with how people feel about it.
One of the great things about the body cameras and the in-car video is that supervisors are able to review that period, and see how effective their officers are at it, and make adjustments. One of the reasons that we look at biased policing complaints so exhaustively is because I think that many of them are an exact symptom of this—of a lack of explanation.

What do you want to get done during the remaining three years of your term?
I want to get back on track with crime, be the model in building community trust, and get people to have faith in this police department to the extent that the national conversation may have damaged it.

In terms of building community trust, how far along do you think the department currently is?
I believe our police officers generally make excellent decisions on stopping the right people in the right circumstance. Do I put inexperienced people out there? Do I fish with a net? No. We try to be as targeted as possible. Fishing with a net is a very bad way to police. You may catch a lot of fish, but you certainly don't get the right kind.

How difficult was it for you to pull all the interested parties together and come up with your plan?
It was difficult. Nobody is completely is satisfied with this. Nobody. The ACLU, the Police Protective League , the city council, and I are all not completely satisfied. But it's a workable compromise that allows police accountability and officer's confidence in a tool that is being used to not only monitor them but also support their work.

You've got a balance—I can make a system that's pure monitoring of officers, or a system that's pure prosecution, but we want something that will use; that allows for accountability; and will improve behavior on both sides of the camera and change the way cops perceive their jobs. All of us are guilty of not being our best at all times. Cameras increase the likelihood that everybody will perform to their optimum capability.

Two issues with the plan: The public doesn't get to see the videos of these controversial shootings, and the officers are allowed to view the video before they make their statement. These seem very problematic.
Representatives of the public are allowed to see the videos. The police commission, the district attorney, the city attorney, and the inspector general all have full access to these videos. A video is a form of evidence, like a written statement, an oral recording, a photograph, or an autopsy. To release it out of context doesn't do justice to the investigation. These are raw videos, capturing a knot hole of an incident and not the totality of the circumstances. What we are looking for is not absolute transparency. It's accountability.

As for an officer being allowed to view the video before making a statement, shouldn't an officer when transcribing his report be able to review it, so that can make the most accurate statement based on a report he created?

Or critics might suggest officers can make a statement that's most favorable to them when based on the video.
The evidence .

Being involved in a shooting is very traumatic. We are trying to get their best recollection. If the investigators decide that is not the best way to do it than we don't. In the Venice shooting (of Brandon Glenn), the officer involved hasn't seen that tape, because I thought it was a criminal act

Let's talk about the huge homeless problem in the city of Los Angeles, and how it's essentially been left to the LAPD to deal with for decades.
The best thing about this year is that finally other people are all the mental health services and the majority of the money for housing and other services.

We've been locked in a spiral going the wrong way on this. We had to claim a 14 percent increase in the . And damn near all of that is homeless on homeless crime.

So what's the new plan?
Creating more homeless housing and incentives for people to want to live in that housing. We have vacant beds every night mental health teams—"smart teams" of a mental health provider and a police officer that respond to not only calls about the mentally ill but also do case work on the homeless and mentally ill.

How many officers are working on that?
I am adding 32, and I had 40. That's a big commitment. And the Department of Mental Health has agreed to add 30 more . We are going to be handling almost 70 percent of our mental health calls with those teams. We can fix this problem with enough energy, commitment, and funding. It's not fixed now, but things are lining up and maybe we can make some progress.

LA has a long history of combative LAPD chiefs like Ed Davis, Daryl Gates, and Bernard Parks who warred with the media and other critics, and made the LAPD all about themselves. Even Bill Bratton, who courted the press and public, made the department about "Bill Bratton the Reformer." You, on the other hand, have kept a remarkably low profile. Why?
The chief of police should not be everybody's focus of interest. My ideal scenario is having a police department that to the next chief.

A version of this story was originally published in the The Crime Report.

Joe Domanick is West Coast bureau chief of the Crime Report, and associate director of the Center on Media, Crime, and Justice at John Jay College in NYC. He is the author of Blue: The Los Angeles Police Department and the Battle to Redeem American Policing.

All screenshots from 'Hitman: Blood Money,' via Steam

The central problem in my adult life is that I'm not Nathan Drake. I'm also not a soldier, a warrior, or an astronaut. I'm just some hairy, kind of overweight man who, if he ever saw a real explosion, instead of walking away from it nonchalantly, would have to call his therapist and talk about how it made him feel. I feel like an imposter when I play video games. Deus Ex: Human Revolution's Adam Jensen is supposed to be the world's greatest super spy, but in my hands, he's a bumbling clown—he can barely sneak past a single guard without accidentally jumping when he meant to crouch. He also gets shot in the ass.

I have the same problem in IO Interactive's Hitman games. Agent 47 is meant to be the epitome of a cold, calculating killer, able to assassinate anybody, no matter how well protected, without even being noticed. From gala balls to upmarket hotels and the White House itself, 47 routinely infiltrates classy and exotic locations—disguised as an aristocrat during Hitman 2: Silent Assassin's "Invitation to a Party" level, scanning the ballroom for a corrupt Russian general, 47 is the pinnacle of cool. But thanks to the Hitman games' ruthless style of stop/start stealth, where even the slightest mistake can send guards into a frenzy and force a retry, it's not always easy to break into character.

2012's Hitman: Absolution tried to make 47 more accessible. By giving players improved combat abilities, more maneuvers, and dodges when it came to sneaking. With an "Instinct Mode," which highlighted items and persons of interest, Absolution wanted to put you behind the eyes of 47. But it was ham-fisted. The new abilities made Absolution feel more like an action game, and the extra on-screen and heads-up elements stripped Hitman of its typically elegant aesthetic. Hitman 2 made you feel clumsy. Those latter stages in Afghanistan and India were impossible to finish without hours of chaotic trial and error. But Absolution was too far the other way. You weren't an assassin. You were an action star.

However, when it comes to getting you into the mindset of 47—when it comes to how games, generally, can ingratiate players to superhuman characters—the PlayStation 2–era Hitman: Contracts (2004) and Hitman: Blood Money (2006) are graceful examples.

Contracts opens with a fantastic, striking image: 47 shooting another version of himself in the back of the head. The first level then takes place in a laboratory where dozens of dead bodies, all identical to 47, all wearing the same clothes, lie strewn around. It's a great way of showing rather than telling that 47 is not human, not in the strictest sense. He's part of a project to genetically rear the world's greatest assassin, just one in a series of clones, and as of the beginning of Contracts, itself a flashback to the end of the very first Hitman game, he's the last one left standing.

This sets up the central aspect of 47's character. When we see him kill an identical copy of himself, we understand immediately that there is something wrong with him: He is not stringently a person, because people are individually unique. But rather than distance us from 47—rather than make him seem to us mysterious and inexplicable—both Contracts and Blood Money are styled after 47's world view. Human characters are consistently made to feel "other." Playing as a genetically perfected superhuman, we are made to see people as beneath us and as lesser beings.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch 'Street Fighter V: KO Dreams,' commissioned by Capcom

Skip Muldoon, the target in Blood Money's "Death on the Mississippi" level, is a standout example. His loading screen image, more than a person, makes him look like an ape. When you encounter Muldoon, he's in his cabin eating and drinking—one of the ways to get to him is to pose as a waiter and bring him a cake, which he'll promptly stick his face into and devour. This is the way Hitman makes humans look subjacent to 47. Regularly, they're shown to indulge in their basest, almost instinctive desires. Muldoon eats like an animal, but he's also sexually predatory. If you watch closely, you can see him eyeing up 47, as well as the other male crew members aboard his boat.

Campbell Sturrock, the target from the Contracts level "The Meat King's Party," is another good example. An enormous fat man who lies on his bed eating entire roast chickens, he's also the organizer of a BDSM party and orgy. The converted slaughterhouse that is hosting the event, as well as literal animals, is filled with people rutting, taking drugs, and tying up one another. Streaked with blood and meat leftovers, and populated by people in fetish-wear, the party is conspicuously sordid and grubby. By contrast, 47, with his bald head and immaculate suit, is very clean—he isn't pulled into the filth of the people around him.

It's a theme consistent in dozens of Hitman levels and across almost every aspect of the games' visual design. Even incidental characters are shown to be perverts—an anonymous guard in the Blood Money mission "A New Life" can be caught sniffing the panties of the target's wife. The mark in "You Better Watch Out" accidentally killed a prostitute during an extreme sex game. The opera singer in "Curtains Down" is a pedophile.

If sociopathy can be (narrowly) defined as a diminished sense of empathy, Contracts and Blood Money encourage you to see the world through a sociopath's eyes. It's not just your targets' backgrounds or behaviors; it's the way they look. 47 is sleek and sexless. Comparatively, the people around him are grotesques. Some are fat, some are ugly, and some are highly sexualized—the male characters in Hitman are all six packs and pectorals, whereas the women have enormous chests and inflated lips. This is what 47 sees: creatures instead of people, defined not by personality but by crude biological urges.

Even Hitman's map system encourages you not to care about these beings. Observing your surroundings from the top down, the people around you are represented by a circle with a small line through it, the universal symbol, especially in the world of consumer electronics, for "on." When they're killed, that line turns to a dispassionate cross—instead of murdered, they are simply "off."

Because they are generally normal people living normal lives, getting players to empathize with and embody the superhumans they play in video games is a difficult task. Some games use streamlined mechanics, allowing players to perform the most amazing feats with the single press of a button. Others strip the character away completely, leaving a mute, empty body for the players to personify themselves. Hitman, at its best, uses visual design and small, written details. It shows that even the most difficult alien character, a merciless killer who is literally non-human, can be ingratiated to his audience.

The new Hitman game (which is pretty good, based on what we've seen so far) is released on March 11 for Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4. More information on the game's official website.

Follow Ed Smith on Twitter.