Fiona Wood. Photo courtesy of author.

The medical profession has long regarded severe burns as a mostly irreversible injury. Up until recently, many burn victims wouldn't even survive whole those who did would be left with horrific scarring. But that all changed when, in the early 1990s, one woman came up with an experimental technique that would save the lives of those who had had their skin burned off. She called it spray-on-skin.

Today, Fiona Wood is the only person I know who, by sheer force of character, can compel exhausted medical students like myself to put down our phones and listen.

As I'm ushered into her office at Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, where she greets me with a wry English joke. Born in a Yorkshire mining village in 1958, the power of education was instilled in her from a young age. Learning was something her parents (a coal miner and a teacher) valued highly, and in high school she was encouraged to question everything "not as a criticism, but as an opportunity to nudge things forward". She originally wanted to be an Olympic runner but after that didn't work out, she was drawn towards medicine.

It was at the Queen Victoria Hospital in West Sussex, where Fiona (then a junior surgeon in training) first came into contact with burns patients. "I was looking at the scarring and the devastation in people's lives and thinking, 'Could I actually change that? Could I change that person's life trajectory?'''

What I'm going to do is learn as much as I can right here, right now so I can change as much as I can going forward.

The first part of her journey from novice to pioneer was not easy, and the catalyst was a case that almost made her give up. In 1992, she was confronted by a high school teacher who had been burned in an explosion. "A 29-year-old with 90 percent burns," she says, her voice becoming much quieter. "I thought I'd done a good job and then he got polyneuropathy (nerve deterioration) and became critically ill. He was paralysed and had to spend nine months in rehabilitation. I thought 'I'm not cut out for this. I can't do it.'"

After a few days, she had a change of heart and decided to use the experience as an opportunity to learn. At that time the treatment options for burns victims included using swaths of unburned skin grafts from the patient (which is a fast and reliable technique but it also requires a lot of skin and causes scarring) or to artificially grow skin – either from a donor or from a patient's own cells. The latter option took two weeks and could leave the patient at risk of infection as their exposed tissue cultivated bacteria.

This is why in 1993, Fiona and her colleague, Marie Stoner, began to work on an idea that would eventually become spray-on-skin. Instead of growing the skin tissue in a culture flask, they decided to grow the skin directly on the patient, cutting the healing time down from weeks to days. But after failed efforts to line gloves with skin or to attach cells under an adhesive dressing, one exasperated researcher said to the other, "Jeez you know, we should just spray this stuff on." It was a throwaway suggestion, but in that moment they knew this was the way forward.

Fiona and her six children. Photo courtesy of Fiona Wood.

They called their product ReCell, and it worked by taking a small amount of healthy skin from a patient, dissolving the structures holding the cells together with an enzyme and spraying the resultant solution over the affected area. It soon became a standard part of Fiona's practice, but it wasn't until a terrorist attack in 2002 that anyone outside the medical community really took notice.

On October 12, the Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah detonated two bombs in the Bali tourist area of Kuta, resulting in 202 deaths and countless injuries. Twenty-eight of the most gravely injured victims, some with burns covering 90 percent of their bodies, were airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital for urgent treatment. As head of the hospital's burns unit, it was Fiona's job to coordinate four operating theatres, 19 surgeons and 140 medical staff; as well as use her own skills to help save the lives of 25 people. When I ask her about incident, her reply catches me off guard. "I sense that you ask me the question because you think that incident might have been different from normal. Yes, the hospital was full; yes, there was a level of intensity; and there were burn patients who needed treatment but there was also an element of 'That's what we do' and 'Business as usual.'"

At that time spray-on-skin hadn't been exposed to the full gamut of clinical trials, and as some critics would later point out, was still in an "experimental" stage. Despite this, Fiona decided to use ReCell on the most severely burned. "You have to be pragmatic," she says. "There's no mileage in being churlish and saying 'I'm not doing this because it's on the back of a devastating event.' What I'm going to do is learn as much as I can right here right now so I can change as much as I can going forward."

Perth Hospital was the only one that used the treatment and Fiona was later lauded for their reduced incidence of scarring. Three people died under her watch, which was tragic but also impressive considering the scale of carnage. Yet, post-Bali, there was some discussion from Fiona's peers about the lack of clinical trials confirming ReCell's efficacy. Concord Hospital burns unit medical director Peter Maitz later told The Age, "Patients who come from a terrorist attack like Bali should not be subjected to an experimental procedure."

Watch our documentary, 'Dying for Treatment':

Ask her about this and Fiona is quick to describe the body of evidence that existed in 2002 for her "logical" and "very low-risk" technology. These included tests on animal models, work using the skin graft donor site as a control wound and a comparison of treatments in randomised scald injuries – all of which demonstrated positive effects. But this wasn't the only source of controversy.

In the same year as the bombings, Fiona and Marie decided to commercialise their research, forming Clinical Cell Culture . What originally started out as a "splendid idea" soon got them into hot water over perceived profiteering from horrific injuries. While Avita Medical runs as a not-for-profit organisation in Western Australia, the cost of ReCell does vary worldwide. When I ask Fiona about the ethics of making money from technology that could, if free, help thousands more, she acknowledges that it's a dilemma but argues it's difficult to make a difference without money. She's right, but it's also true that she's made millions from burns victims.

Engaging in positivity and dismissing negativity appears to be her central philosophy. It takes her a long while to think of the worst part of her job. "The thing that irritates me is when people criticise without offering solutions to the problem," she says eventually. Not letting the "bastards get you down" as apparently her dad would say is also advice she would give her younger self. "I think I may have lost a bit of energy worrying about what people said. As you get more mature, criticism is less impactful. You kind of shrug it off."

Do I think I live in an environment where we have the capacity for genius? Yes. Do I think it's realised often enough? No.

Interestingly, it's this attitude that's influenced her current work. Her work revolves around harnessing positivity to aid recovery, she explains. With this premise in mind she's begun researching ways the brain responds to injury, in order to compliment or borrow certain mechanisms. Her research title even has a snappy title: "Can we think ourselves whole?"

Despite her zealous faith in science and evidence, her belief in positive thinking comes up more than once. It might go some distance to explain her energy (she has six children and still manages to plays sport), as well as her ability to solve problems. I ask her if she considers herself a genius.


"Do I think I'm a genius?" she contemplates. "No. Do I think I live in an environment where we have the capacity for genius? Yes. Do I think it's realised often enough? No. I think part of that is our belief. We need to believe we live in an environment with a capacity for genius. To drive innovation. To change lives."

Photo via Flickr user Adrian Owen

Read: New York City Cops Still Don't Know Why They're Stopping People on the Street

Police officers are not too thrilled about safety—or much of anything at all—in New York City since Bill de Blasio became their mayor and Bill Bratton took back his old gig as police commissioner two years ago, the New York Post reports.

A Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA) online poll apparently surveyed 6,000 of NYC's 24,000 cops (that's a quarter of all officers for you non-math folks). The pollsters found little enthusiasm among cops for their gigs, with overall morale at "2.49 on a scale of 1 to 10." Around 87 percent of police officers polled think NYC has become "less safe" since the beginning of 2014, and a mountainous 96 percent of NYPD officers suggested relations between themselves and the districts they patrol have deteriorated.

(it is worth bearing in mind that the PBA is a political organization, and its combative head, Patrick Lynch, has clashed openly with Mayor de Blasio's administration for years now.)

Over three quarters of NYPD officers surveyed wouldn't recommending joining the force to family members. If offered higher paying jobs elsewhere, a whopping 89 percent said they'd split. A Manhattan cop told the Post—traditionally a fiercely pro-cop outlet—that spirit among NYPD officers has "always been bad, but this is the worst."

The city has yet to actually see the official poll results, though, and some official were skeptical of the early figures. City Hall spokeswoman Monica Klein rejected the survey out of hand, arguing the city is "experiencing historic lows in criminal activity."

For his part, Commissioner Bratton said Monday that he doesn't necessarily dispute the results so much as find them less than revelatory.

"I've been in the business for 40 years, and cops have been complaining about low morale at every place I've ever worked, every police department I'm aware of," he said. "Cops have never been happy about the pay in this city, and that's the reality of it."

Read: The Uptight Traveler's Guide to Portland, Oregon

The state of Oregon has granted Portland resident Jay Bishop the right to wear a white and red fox cap in his state ID photo following a fight that lasted over nine months, KATU reports.

Oregon, like most states, doesn't allow folks to wear hats or sunglasses in their driver's license photos, but grant a few exceptions—usually for religious reasons.

Bishop, who is reportedly never without his fox hat, argued that he should be allowed to be photographed wearing it because he practices the Native American Waashat religion, also referred to as Drummer-Dreamer or Seven Drums faith. The religion's traditions include "drum ceremonies, vision quests, and a fundamental belief in the connection between man and nature," according to Willamette Week.

Practicing Waashat also means you can claim a spirit animal as a totem. Bishop's totem animal, apparently, is the fox.

Portland's DMV initially allowed Bishop to wear the hat in his photo, but it caught the eye of some officials when the application went through processing with the state.

The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles rejected Bishop's request to wear the cap, claiming it hadn't heard of the religion. Bishop wasn't having any of that, so he lawyered up and dove into a nearly year-long battle with the state—a fight he has finally won.

In the wake of his success, Bishop is urging people to stick up for their right to rep their religion on their head. "It shouldn't matter if it's a yarmulke, or a hijab, or, quote, 'a silly fox hat,'" he told KATU.

Thumbnail image via KATU

Photo by meesh

Last week the Council of Europe published a report that saw UK prisons ranked the most heavily populated in the EU. The figures show that there were 95,248 people incarcerated in the UK in 2014; this figure has since increased, and will likely continue to rise.

I'm a teacher in prison. Recently, having managed to get the mandatory entry level literacy exercises out of the way (this session: how to structure a formal and informal letter), I asked a selection of prisoners in my class why they felt they were part of the biggest prison population in the EU and what, if anything, could be done about this.

(Names and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy)

DAVE

Dave, 33, was sentenced to eight weeks (of which he'll serve four) for non-payment of fines. I ask Dave if he thinks his offense warranted a custodial sentence and he laughs; he describes it as "absolute bollocks" but says he'd be happy enough to do it again if he has to—although he does go on to complain about having to put up with four different cell mates and a chicken salad baguette that contained only one piece of lettuce and a single cucumber slice.

Bravado aside, it's clear that Dave doesn't want to come back to prison if he can help it. He misses his children and his girlfriend, and has felt very uncomfortable around "the dirty smack heads." He tells me that it's obvious there's a problem with drugs being freely available in prison, and has heard of people deliberately picking up small sentences so they can make money inside from dealing. The penalties for being caught bringing drugs into prison are pretty steep, and a more concerted effort is being made to halt the flow of drugs from outside, but it's clear that it's still an issue for concern and a big barrier to even beginning to help rehabilitate people and make inroads into reducing the number of people in jail.

PAUL

Paul, 36, has been inside a couple of times over the last two decades, first for 12 months, but this time for 14 weeks. He's got a well-paid job outside as a plasterer and is in the fortunate position of knowing that he can drop back into work more or less the day after leaving prison. This is interesting, as many of the students I teach complain they end up committing another crime and returning to jail because of a lack of work available to them once they leave. Paul has a degree of sympathy for this, but is quick to add that ultimately it's down to an individual to sort themselves out, and says relying on the prison system to help them is a waste of time.

At this point, Paul starts talking about "benefits culture" and draws a link to how prison life serves as an extension of the welfare state: free food and free board in return for passive compliance. Is he saying that people are seeing regular stays at prison as a natural part of their lives? "Some fuckers are, yeah, for sure," he replies. No one in the room disagrees, out loud at least.

Given his profession, I ask Paul whether or not more focus on practical trade courses would work to reduce reoffending, and by extension the overall prison population. He agrees in principle but says that even when the appetite to learn is there, sentences are often far too short to properly master a trade, even at a basic level—which again leaves the onus on prisoners to make their own way upon release, often with the inevitable consequences.

Related: Watch 'Year of Mercy: Backstreet Abortion in the Philippines'

SIMON

Simon, 24, has been in and out of prison since he was 16. He tells me that he tried adding up the total amount of months he's been inside and it came to just under six years. What's interesting about this is that Simon has only ever received relatively small sentences (the longest being eight months); the long time actually spent in jail derives from constant breaking of tag and license conditions and also crimes committed while in prison (punching a prison guard in the face being the most notable).

Simon has previously spoken about the transition from Youth Offenders prison to the adult HMP experience. I ask him how he first felt being around older men, often with long and serious criminal records, and he insists that this wasn't a problem. He does, however, say that being placed in a prison 200 miles away from his family was difficult to deal with. They weren't able to visit him, for what he now recognizes as legitimate financial reasons, and it led to a breakdown in communication that resulted in him being homeless, fast-tracking his drug use and return to prison. Simon has reconciled with his family now, but says that this was a huge factor in him developing the pattern of returning to prison so frequently.

ALFRED

Alfred, 26, is serving six years for a third strike on selling cocaine, MDMA, and ecstasy. He's got decent grades and was two-thirds of his way through a college degree when he received his first strike. The group has already discussed how many crimes don't really warrant prison sentences, how individuals need to take stronger ownership of their life choices, and how rehabilitation somehow needs to be worked into prison culture. Alfred agrees in principle with all of this, but ultimately he sees the problem as being something entirely different. Smaller, state-owned prisons are being closed and the trend towards private prisons seems to be on the rise, something that Alfred views as pointing towards an ever-expanding prison population.

It's a pretty sinister and dystopian thought, but equally hard to disagree with Alfred when he says, "Private prisons only exist to make profit—why would they ever turn away a new or returning customer? For them, the bigger the prison population, the better."

§

The men in my class don't have any specific answers on what could be done to reduce the prison population, but their own experiences of prison life certainly do point towards what's going wrong. It's possible to look at, say, Scandinavian countries with excellent records of rehabilitation and lower rates of reoffending, but policy that is successful and practical for one kind of country, with a very different economy, isn't necessarily suitable for the UK. What's clear however is that a bad situation is only going to get worse if we carry on down the route of privatization; I've already taught classes that contain a father and son, how long before whole families take up semi-permanent residence in super-sized McPrisons?

Rushdie was tired, and I was ecstatic. Photo via the author

I was at the airport, waiting for my father to return from an Umrah trip to Saudi Arabia and feeling anxious from three too many shots in my iced coffee when my mother pointed to the gates and mumbled, "Hey look, it's that writer you like—the one your dad hates." I looked over and saw a tired man in a suit: Sir Salman Rushdie. He was standing in a weary, tired daze from his 14-hour flight, and I immediately bounded over and added to his confusion with questions, admiration, and a request for a selfie.

In the Qur'an, there is no explicit mention of a worldly punishment for blasphemy, as there is for offenses such as apostasy. And although Rushdie is addressing deeply conflicting questions we have about our faith, I believe he excuses himself from insult because he is operating within art. Furthermore, I believe addressing questions of faith is important, especially as a lot of Muslims, such as those fleeing Syria for the West, are experiencing a sense of spiritual disarray on a regular basis. Documenting feelings is not blasphemous, and especially not when what constitutes as "blasphemy" is open to interpretation.

Related: Watch our interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard

As a Muslim raised in the West, it's a natural tendency to question your faith. The novel affirms that a loss of faith leads to a soul in crisis, precisely when the environment you're introduced to is not built on the belief systems you were raised to be immersed in.

But what bothers me most about this fatwa revival is the obnoxious arrogance of such a decision or "opinion," as if the face of Islam and Iranian culture hasn't been tarnished enough. Its shameful to think that an appointed leader from a culture that gave us writers like Attar and Sadegh Hedayat, and filmmakers such as Kiarostami, Panahi, and Makhmalbaf ignorantly refuses to nurture the nation's artistic potential. Instead, Iran is choosing to fuel bigotry.

In high school, I remember lying to my cousins about liking Salman Rushdie. I was afraid they'd label me an atheist or a munafiq, but the truth is they were the real hypocrites. Pretty much no one in my family had read The Satanic Verses. Neither had any of my family in America, Germany, Pakistan, or Afghanistan—the latter didn't even have access to books, yet they all blindly agreed that this man deserved death.

This hypocrisy might be what really annoys me, or maybe it's that people often aren't equipped with the tools or intellectual opportunities to think for themselves, or enough freedom to judge work on its own merit. The Satanic Verses is to Muslim intellectuals what Infinite Jest is to hipsters. It's on everyone's shelves, and they all have strong opinions on the author, but most haven't read past the first 30 pages.

Follow Mahmood on Twitter.

Comedian Fawzia Mirza as Ayesha Trump at Donald Trump's canceled rally Friday in Chicago. Photo courtesy of Bradley Murray/Moll Jean Nye/Beela Productions/Charger Ent

"It's really a beautiful story, actually. Donald Trump build the Taj Atlantic City for my mother, Miriam Ali."

A Muslim woman named Ayesha Trump is explaining to the camera how, just as the original Taj Mahal was built as a sign of a man's outsized love for a woman, Trump's famous hotel-casino in New Jersey (which he doesn't own any part of now) is an undying testament to a passionate romance. It's a fascinating story. It's also completely untrue.

Ayesha Trump, the subject of a new mockumentary that came out Monday, is illegitimate in more ways than one—she claims to be Donald Trump's out-of-wedlock child, and she's also a character played by Fawzia Mirza, a Chicago-based actress and writer. Ayesha is obviously a vehicle for the usual Trump jokes, but her creator also intends her to be an explanation for some of the GOP frontrunner's most outrageous and hateful statements.

"I just started thinking, What could make him have so much hatred for us?" Mirza tells VICE. "And I decided that so much hate could only come from love he wasn't able to openly express."

Just as many prominent homophobes were later revealed to be closeted gay men, Mirza decided that Trump's Islamophobia might have stemmed from a love affair he had to hide as a married man.

"She was a flight attendant who was serving Mr. Trump chicken biryani and samosas in first class" before they "joined the mile-high club," Ayesha explains in the mockumentary. "They stayed friends after this—with benefits—not health benefits, sexual benefits, because obviously my father doesn't really care about people having health care."

According to the mockumentary, the fictional romance continued in secret until Ayesha's mother died in a mysterious plane crash while en route to China—where Donald Trump had offered her work in one of his signature fashion collection warehouses.

After filming wrapped, Mirza took her Ayesha Trump act to the Trump rally in Chicago on Friday, a raucous affair that was ultimately canceled before it began due to sweeping protests and violent confrontations. She went with a group of friends, including a former US Army infantryman whom she said was prepared to "airlift" her out of the rally with his arms if things got heated. But they were surprised to find Trump supporters were welcoming; some even offered them Subway sandwiches and beer.

For the most part, the Trump supporters the group encountered "were amazingly friendly but so full of hate," Nabeela Rasheed, the executive producer of the mockumentary, explains. One man had told her that he had 4,000 rounds of ammo in preparation for an armed conflict he anticipated between Muslims and Americans. But it wasn't intended as a threat—Rasheed says the bullet collector just assumed that she had "seen the light" and come out in favor of Trump, and therefore would be sympathetic to his point of view.

Some Trump supporters did turn on Mirza when they realized her act wasn't exactly kind to the candidate, according to Rasheed. That's when the shouting broke out.

"As people got louder and louder, Ayesha would just get quieter and quieter," Rasheed recalls. That's part of why Rasheed thinks the character serves as such a fitting archetype for many American Muslims: "She's absolutely an allegory because she has this quiet innocence."

Ayesha's soft-spoken responses helped diffuse the charged exchanges, and, according to Rasheed, mirrored the "gentle manner" of the Muslim-American community.

"They don't go out of their way to show up at rallies. They don't go out of their way to show up at the gay pride parade, for example... or even Black Lives Matters issues," she says. "I'm overgeneralizing a bit, but boycotted his hotels. The Latinos, because of their numbers and because of their organization—they're very organized and have lots of institutions that bolster the community."

Mirza decided to hit back at Trump's vilification of Muslims through comedy in part for this same reason—Muslim-Americans haven't been able to level much of that sort of response to Trump.

She says she wants to create a scenario where he couldn't use her criticism to bolster his own appeal as he's done with so many who have tried to take swipes at him in the past.

"This just seemed like one thing he can never do that with," Mirza says. "He's never going to embrace his illegitimate Muslim daughter... and that's why Ayesha Trump is the perfect way to critique Trump and to shed a light on how what he says impacts people."

The actress doesn't expect Trump to ever actually acknowledge Ayesha, but she's imagined what it would be like for them to meet.

"She'd probably tell him that it's OK, and he doesn't have to be full of so much hate," Mirza says. "And then he'd cry, and then she'd cry, and then she'd offer him some chicken biryani."

Follow Beenish Ahmed on Twitter.

The man shot dead by Toronto police has been identified as the best friend of previous shooting victim Sammy Yatim. Photo by author.

The mother of the victim of a police shooting in Toronto Monday morning says he was Sammy Yatim's best friend from high school.

The 21-year-old, who was identified to VICE as Alex Wettlaufer by a member of his family, was shot and killed in Villaway Park after Toronto Police responded to a call of two people fighting Sunday night at 11:30 PM.

The Special Investigative Unit (SIU), the division tasked with investigating police shootings, has declined to talk. The organization has a mandate to lockdown communications between police and the public while investigations are ongoing.

"There was a confrontation involving Toronto police officers and a police firearm was discharged," the SIU said in a release. The report alleges that when police arrived, two men were seen fighting, and one of them fled into Villaway Park.

It's unclear what time police arrived at the park, but an altercation occurred in which Wettlaufer was shot twice—first in the chest and then in the abdomen—before he was rushed to a nearby hospital. He was pronounced dead at roughly 12:30 AM.

Although police have not released the man's name, VICE confirmed the identity of the man who was shot by speaking to his mother, who wishes to remain anonymous.

"He was on the phone with me and he was crying," she told VICE, saying that Wettlaufer had called her to tell her that two men had jumped him and the police had shown up with weapons drawn. Wettlaufer says the police have not told her what happened yet.

"," the mother told VICE, making note that Alex was a good friend of police shooting victim Sammy Yatim, who was killed on a Toronto streetcar back in 2013.

Const. James Forcillo, the officer who killed Yatim, was found not guilty of murder in January, but was instead found guilty of attempted murder.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Donald Trump in Hickory, North Carolina, on Monday. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

It's safe to say Donald Trump means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some people think he should be the next president of the United States, some think he's a fascist who supports white supremacist policies, and a few people think that he should be the next US president because he supports white supremacy. Everyone from taxi drivers to professional pundits has an opinion on Donald Trump, and so do America's prison inmates—even if they can't vote, for the most part, they are as excited and/or scared as the rest of the country.

"Donald Trump is a paradoxical individual," says Tut, a 52-year-old African-American from New York doing life in federal prison for a "three strikes" violation. "He is an extremely successful businessman, but everything in life isn't about money. People are not real estate, and every economy doesn't deal with currency. There is a human economy that supersedes the monetary and materialistic ideals of powerful people. He needs to understand the fact that the presidency isn't a pissing contest."

Many prisoners see Barack Obama's movements toward criminal justice reform as encouraging for obvious reasons, and the prospect of Trump, who can come off as a cartoonish authoritarian, doesn't seem like a step forward.

"The guy scares the hell out of me," Alex, a white guy doing ten years at medium-security prison in Tennessee for growing marijuana, tells VICE. "I believe he's Hitler reincarnated. He is a war- and fear-monger. Just like Hitler, he tells the people what he knows they want to hear and makes promises he can't keep and has no way of backing up. He wants to build a wall to keep out the Mexicans and he wants to kick out and alienate all the Muslims. I can't believe people entertain this con artist."

Scammer, con man, huckster—those are a few of the terms that come to inmates' minds when they talk about Trump. But a lot of prisoners don't really have a problem with the candidate's unabashed acquisitive nature. Like many Americans, they see his skill at making money as a potential asset for a president.

Dinger, a 40-year-old black man from Pittsburgh doing 20 years at federal prison in Kentucky for drug offenses, counts himself a fan. "I don't know too much about him, but he had his own casino. I think anyone that had his own casino would be a great president if he's elected," he says, adding hopefully, "I hope he changes these laws so that I can get the hell outta here sooner."

To a swath of America's condemned population, Trump offers a breath of fresh air—even if the country should never have reached such a dire state.

"Something is very wrong with that picture," Chris, a 36-year-old white man from Ohio doing 52 months for Oxycontin distribution, tells me. "Looking at his background, he is a savvy businessman who has made a fortune. But considering his past, he has no political background. Unfortunately, he is the best person for us to elect. And that's sad! American people really need to look at this and understand how bad this country has become."

Most Hispanics in the country can't stand Trump, and Beans—a 45-year-old Sureño gang member from Mexico by way of Florida doing an eight-year sentence for illegal reentry—is no exception.

"I hate Trump," he tells VICE. "I came to this country at four years old. I did everything right till I got in trouble in 1992 for guns. I made a mistake and did four years in prison because of it and got deported to Mexico. I came back because I didn't have family in Mexico. I was working hard. Everyday work, work, work, till I got stopped by ICE and charged with re-entry. Trump, whatever he's thinking, I don't think it's fair. Everyone has the right to live a good life regardless of past mistakes."

And Willie, a 30-year-old Native American from Alaska doing seven years for drugs, thinks that if Trump is serious about his immigration polices, he needs to deport himself. "If he was real about kicking out immigrants, he should leave too. Because Native Americans are the only true natives of this country," he says.

Multiple prisoners I spoke to believe Trump's campaign staff are behind the burst of violence—and that the mayhem is calculated to boost his standing.

"I think Trump is behind the violence and the people running his campaign are badass," Dave, a 44-year-old white guy from Kentucky doing 17 years for a bomb-related crime, tells me. "I don't think he'll be president, but he's doing exactly what he was supposed to do. As far as helping us though, he damn sure isn't going to do a thing to help us."

It's safe to say plenty of African-Americans and Mexican-Americans inside the prison-industrial complex view Trump as a racist who only wants to make America great for white people. But it's a fact that Trump's campaign has put the spotlight on race—an issue that is even more charged inside prison than outside it.

"Trump creates racial divisions within the Democratic and Republican parties unseen since the civil rights era," argues Sly, an African-American federal prisoner from Buffalo who's doing life for drug and gun crimes. "He pushes racial divisions between the American people."

Those divisions have exploded into violence in places like at Chicago over the weekend. But some prisoners, including people of color, can't resist the charm of a hyper-masculine blowhard.

"As a black man in America, to finally witness a candidate like Trump pursue the White House with brutal honesty and be successful ranks right next to witnessing the first black man become President of the United States," says Tea Mack, a 42-year-old Chicago native doing a sentence of 420 months for a conspiracy to commit kidnapping charge.

Federal prison inmates can't vote, and most state and local inmates can't either. Even many former convicts—especially in states like Florida—are barred from the democratic process. But that doesn't mean America's least visible citizens don't understand what's going on right now.

"Obama has tried to make America a better place for all," says Alex, the Tennessee inmate. "He has tried to right some of the wrongs committed by our government. I like the direction he has pointed this country. And now we have Hillary and Trump. Now I'm not opposed to a woman running the country, but she has to have some balls, not pockets looking to be filled. It is disheartening to think that these are the best two people in America who can run the country."

Some real green cards on a table at a naturalization ceremony in 2006. Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Finding a fake green card isn't difficult. I know this because after a half-hour of looking online, I was already emailing with someone who said they could make one for me.

The response came in seconds from a Gmail account. "Yes, we are capable of providing you with the green card, but the cost will depend on how soon you will need the green card." The email described two tiers of service: I could get the counterfeit green card in four days for $180 plus $55 in postage. If I wanted rush service—a two-day guarantee—I'd have to pay $280.

Both prices seemed like a steal compared to my legitimate green card (I'm Australian, married to an American), which cost me more than $1,500 and weeks of DIY paperwork to avoid expensive legal fees, which can easily run into the thousands. For some people, it takes months or years to achieve permanent resident status. And what do you win once you get that coveted green ID card? The ability to legally work anywhere that will hire you, freedom to travel across US borders, and the option of applying for some types of government aid—all benefits citizens take for granted, but is incredibly important for immigrants trying to live in the US.

So it's not surprising that when the real deal proves too difficult to get, many immigrants have looked for extralegal means of acquiring phony documents that can fool at least some of the people, some of the time. And where there's a market, there are merchants to take advantage of it.

"There is certainly money to be made," said Jack Morris, the unit chief for identity and benefit fraud at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Morris said the government agency made 1,282 arrests in 2015 related to document fraud, including counterfeit green cards.

The operations that produce these cards, along with driver's licenses and social security cards, are known as document mills. They can range in sophistication from one guy with a laptop to huge operations bringing in millions of dollars, according to Morris.

One of the biggest document mill busts came about in 2010 as a result of "Operation Phalanx," an investigation into a Virginia-based group that had created about 15,000 IDs—including green cards—in one year alone. The document forging ring stretched across 11 states, wired more than $1 million in profits to bosses in Mexico, and even kidnapped and killed their rivals.

Plenty of forgers are willing to risk arrest, and some aren't particularly subtle. On Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, for example, people advertise "papeles" (or "papers" in English) the same way vendors on Canal Street peddle fake Louis Vuitton handbags.

"We get constituents that come in almost daily telling us, 'I got stopped by at least four guys that wanted to sell me a fake ID, a fake green card,'" said New York State Senator Jose Peralta, whose district includes the avenue. He calls it the epicenter of fraudulent IDs for the tri-state area.

Peralta said a typical transaction takes about two hours: A runner posts up on the street, soliciting customers. Another person creates the IDs, usually in a small room behind a legitimate business like a bodega. Once the product is complete, another runner meets the customer at a different drop-off location.

The counterfeit green card market exploded in 1986, when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which made it illegal to hire those who don't have work permission in the US, according to Roy Fenoff, an assistant professor at the Department of Criminal Justice at the Citadel, South Carolina.

"At that time, the cards were not that high-quality," Fenoff said, which made for an easy counterfeiting job.

When Morris started his career as an ICE special agent in 1988, he said, the document mills looked more like somebody's arts and craft hobby than anything criminal.

"We would typically find blank card stock, a typewriter, scissors, laminate, and a laminating machine," he said. "People were honestly cutting out photos and gluing them onto a green card and typing in a person's name."

Since then, green card counterfeiters have become more advanced in order to counter new security features like holograms and tilting ink, which changes color depending on what angle you look at it.

"Good quality printers and scanners that anyone can get from the local Staples, they are able to put together something that even the experts have a hard time evaluating," said Fenoff.

One thing counterfeits haven't been able to copy, according to Morris, is the credit card–like magnetic strip. This means a counterfeit green card is useless for entry into the US, where Customs and Border Protection agents scan it. Employers can also choose to scan cards through E-Verify, an online system from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that verifies if someone can legally work in the US.

These phony cards are far from perfect. One immigrant, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, told me she got her fake green card through a friend of a friend. She moved to the United States from Slovakia in 2013, in search of a higher-paying job. But when she started looking for work with her fake green card, two restaurants turned her down for jobs because other employees had already presented either the same fake Social Security number or the same fake USCIS number listed on her green card.

"I am not sure how many have the same numbers as I do in Manhattan," she told me.

Even though it's likely that millions of people like her are using fake green cards, Morris said ICE's main focus is bringing down the counterfeiters, not going after individual immigrants.

Peralta, the state senator, has proposed legislation to change selling or manufacturing forged government documents from a class D to a class C felony in New York, raising the penalty from a maximum of seven years in prison to up to 15 years. The bill passed the Senate last year and Peralta hopes a vote in the Assembly will push it through this year.

Even so, he says, the only legislation that would eradicate the business of counterfeit green cards for good would be a law making it easier for undocumented immigrants to live and work in the US—that means immigration reform at the federal level. As Peralta put it, "The only way is if we stop the demand, if there is a path that leads towards citizenship."

Follow Serena Solomon on Twitter.

Photo via Change.org.

Cops in the town of Port Hope, Ontario have launched a "Blue Lives Matter" campaign that critics argue is tone-deaf at best and an egregious form of appropriation at worst.

Police in Port Hope, a small town located about 100 km east of Toronto, started selling T-shirts with the slogan "Blue Lives Matter" last week in an attempt to fundraise and draw attention to "all the police officers who have given their lives in the line of duty," Chief Bryant Wood told Northumberland Today.

The wording appears to be a play off the Black Lives Matter movement, which was created in part of highlight the extent of police brutality and the systemic racism within law enforcement toward black people.

When Cobourg resident Meghan Sheffield, 31, noticed the local force tweeting about the T-shirts, she said she was shocked.

"My reaction was literally 'Oh no,'" Sheffield told VICE.

"The Port Hope Police is a mostly male, white Canadian police association co-opting the words of a movement that was founded by queer black women for their own purposes," she said.

"Certainly policing is a very high risk occupation and we know that, but the idea that the lives of police officers have value has never been in question. Black Lives Matter came about because the American black community has been disenfranchised to the point that there are circumstances where the lives of black people have actually seemed to hold no value in a system that claims to protect everyone equally."

Sheffield said she contacted the police and was told T-shirt sales at the station would stop and tweets related to it would be deleted. She was informed, however, that the fundraiser was organized by the Port Hope Police Association, a separate body comprised of the same members. As of Monday morning, Sheffield said she believed shirts were still available through the association. She has started a petition against the campaign, which has garnered 313 signatures.

The police association did not respond to an interview request from VICE, however, Mayor Bob Sanderson told VICE he believed shirt sales had ceased. The fundraiser didn't go through council but it likely wouldn't have been approved, he said, citing the major issue as "plagiarism."

"I think moving forward you don't want to take other people's stuff."

Sanderson said he believes the issue has sparked a positive dialogue about racism though, "I don't see that in particular in this community. We don't have a lot of ethnic groups here either, we're sort of a small town."

When asked if he could understand why hijacking part of a movement meant to highlight black deaths at the hands of police is offensive beyond just plagiarism, Sanderson said "all lives matter."

"When catastrophe falls upon people who are doing their job, whether it be police, or fire, or emergency workers, our sympathy is much higher, we do understand they're out there protecting us."

Mathew Lawrence, president of the Port Hope Police Association, told Northumberland Today the campaign is "by no means" connected to any racial or political movement; he also said it's about supporting cops who suffer from PTSD.

"The reality is, all lives matter, no matter the colour, or job."

Black Lives Matter Toronto co-founder Alexandria Williams, 27, told VICE the idea that the fundraiser isn't political or racial is "bullshit."

"It's disgusting... they think they could actually be able to erase a movement that was created because of the violence that they inflict on the black community," she said.

"You have blacks who are being killed by the police, there is no remembrance of their body, of their flesh, of their family. When a police officer dies, they get buried in state."

If the police association was truly ignorant of the significance of Black Lives Matter, she said it should apologize publicly and voice support for victims of racial oppression.

As for the response "all lives matter," Williams said that amounts to saying "'Shut the fuck up, black people'."

"No one is saying all lives don't matter but the fact that black people have to make it clear that we do... we're dying every eight hours out here."

Both Sheffield and Williams said the campaign's offensiveness is detracting from the legitimate issue of PTSD amongst first responders.

Williams said the fact that the petition was started by the Sheffield, a white woman, demonstrates what it means to be an ally.

"Recognizing your privilege... and using that privilege as a stance to stop shit like this from happening, that's the proper use of an ally."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

This elephant ain't going anywhere. Photo via screenshot.

A bored, zombie-like elephant in Japan is not going to get the crowdfunded rescue Vancouverite Ulara Nakagawa had once hoped for.

After raising $30,000 to relocate the country's oldest elephant from her "concrete prison," Nakagawa visited the Tokyo zoo last week only to learn Hanako the elephant is well fed and "comfortable with her keepers." An animal welfare expert has ruled the move unsafe.

Nakagawa first learned Hanako's story when visiting Japan in September 2015. She found out the elephant was captured in Thailand at age two and kept alone for 61 years.

"It struck me she was living in that concrete enclosure for as long as my own mother has lived," she told VICE.

The Vancouver woman wrote she was "shocked and dismayed" by the elephant's living conditions in a blog post last year. She said the elephant appeared "lifeless" and lacked comfort and stimulation.

International media jumped on the story, sparking a petition to send the giant mammal to a sanctuary. That petition has over 430,000 signatures to date.

Nakagawa decided to raise money for the move earlier this year, amassing US $30,000 in one month. The Inokashira Park Zoo has agreed to review the elephant's living conditions, and Nakagawa says the money raised will now go towards heaters, a running water basin, and other home improvements for Hanako.

"For Hanako it's too late, she's turning 70 this month," Nakagawa said. " has without a doubt stated it would not be safe to move her out of the zoo. We also determined there's no elephant sanctuaries in Japan."

"She's not going to be moved, and that still doesn't mean she's fine," added Nakagawa, disputing recent media reports. "She's lived a sad life."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

All photos by author.

A new recommendation from Toronto's top medical professional is calling for the opening of safe injection sites at multiple locations in the city.

Dr. David McKeown, Toronto's Medical Officer of Health, told reporters Monday he believes supervised injection sites should be opened at three locations in the city's most at-risk areas—Queen Street West, Downtown, and Queen Street East.

A safe injection site provides intravenous drug users with clean injection equipment and medical supervision while they get high.

" needs to have to be able to seek other services."

Berger notes the success of facilities like Vancouver's Insite—North America's first and, until recently, only safe injection site—in reducing overdose deaths and infectious disease rates, which he says proves the service is both effective and necessary in cities with high drug-using populations.

He also told VICE that while Insite has been very effective in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the service doesn't exist in the rest of the metro Vancouver area, which leaves "huge portions of the population" neglected. Berger says that wouldn't be an issue with McKeown's plan.

"This is a plan that was exhaustingly researched and talked about for the last decade. It was an inevitability."

McKeown's report notes that, in 2013, 206 people died from drug overdoses in Toronto, up 41 percent from 2004. The overdoses align with the huge spike in province-wide deaths from opioids; more than 5,000 people died between 2000 and 2013 alone.

McKeown is set to present the idea to Toronto Public Health on March 21, after which the federal government can choose to greenlight the plan or not. According to Berger, it's likely the plan will go through given the government's recent approval of a second safe injection site in Vancouver.

Among local politicians, the idea of safe injection has support. Coun. Joe Cressy, who has been leading the charge on harm reduction initiatives in Toronto, told reporters Monday the implementation of safe injection services is a "top public health priority."

"These programs will save lives. They will provide comprehensive health services to those who need it. These programs will also make our communities safer. They will move drug use and needles from streets, our parks, our backyards, and our coffee shops, and into a supportive and safe environment."

But not all agree. Brash conservative Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti told VICE News he will fight the safe injection sites "tooth and nail" and thinks the service should only be done in "hospital settings," rather than in clinics open to the public.

"I don't disagree with the fact that we need to learn how to do things better, but you cannot mix heroin and residential communities in any way," he said. "You've got to figure out a process that gets professional services for addictions... but in hospitals, not in local communities. It becomes a disaster."

Mayor John Tory told reporters Monday that he is "carefully reviewing" McKeown's proposal, but added the implementation of the plan needs to be sensitive to the public.

"My priority is the safety of the public and that means working to prevent drug-related deaths and keeping needles and drug paraphernalia out of schoolyards and other public places across Toronto. This is a difficult issue, and it is important that we listen to the experts, review the facts, and hear the views of local communities during the public consultation process."

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Musical Urban Legends is a series of comics based on music world whispers and hearsay. The scenes depicted are not matters of historical fact. Check out Peter Bagge's website, Twitter, and buy his books from Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly.

On December 14, 2012, cops arrested a 26-year-old named Christopher Loeb outside of his mother's house in Smithtown, New York, slammed his thin body to the ground, and started roughing him up. When his mother Jane arrived, the officers relented and drove him to the Suffolk County Police Department's fourth precinct in nearby Hauppauge, where they chained him to the floor. Loeb was kept in the dark about his arrest and denied access to a lawyer, but it soon dawned on him that the treatment might have something to do with a black duffel bag he'd recently stolen from the backseat of an unlocked black 2008 GMC Yukon. A heroin user who dabbled in burglary to support his habit, Loeb had found things in the bag that might have belonged to a police officer: handcuffs, mace, and a gun.

But he also found things that pointed to something much darker, according to a friend of Loeb's who spoke to him after the incident—like porn that appeared to him to feature prepubescent boys.

According to court documents, James Burke, then the chief of police for Suffolk County, derived pleasure from presiding over the continued abuse of Loeb at the police station. He told fellow officers with an air of wistfulness later on that it reminded him of his "old days" coming up with the force; he jokingly called the cops that aided him in subduing Loeb his "palace guards." One of these men allegedly told Loeb he was going to rape his mother during the beating, and Burke even threatened to murder Loeb with a "hot shot," or a fatal overdose of heroin that might later be arranged to appear self-inflicted.

Immobilized but conscious of the fact that Burke was the owner of the bag with the alleged porn stash, Loeb called the chief a name. Newspapers typically soften the word to "pervert," and the feds say Loeb was mistaken, but in Loeb's telling of the story, as documented in a video interview recorded for Newsday, he called Burke a "pedophile."

According to Loeb, when the chief heard that word, he exploded with rage, driving his thick fingers into the young man's face.

"He used to tell people that he wanted to become a cop so he could get away with breaking the law." —a high school acquaintance of James Burke

In subsequent weeks, Burke pressured his colleagues to cover up the abuse. One cop later told the US attorney's office that if it were discovered by Burke that he had spoken to the FBI during the investigation, he would be a "dead man."

On February 26, after a lengthy FBI probe, James Burke pleaded guilty to federal charges of violating Christopher Loeb's civil rights and knowingly conspiring to conceal evidence of it. But according to former police officers, local politicians, lawyers, and Suffolk County residents with whom I spoke about the case, Burke's conviction likely represents only the first domino to fall in what could become one of the more surreal federal probes of local law enforcement in American history.

It involves allegations of illegal wiretapping, cover-ups, sex addiction, drunk-driving cops, and blackmail. It involves a super PAC funded by the Suffolk Police Benevolent Association that critics say uses mandatory donations to cement a wall between cops and the people they are paid to protect. And it involves Tom Spota, the longtime Republican-turned-Democrat District Attorney of Suffolk County, who fathered Burke's rise to power through a close friendship that began after they met during the high-profile trial of a bizarre murder case.

Robert Trotta, an outspoken ex-cop who is now the county legislator from Suffolk's 13th District, has been struggling to pass bipartisan legislation to reform the police for more than two years. He compared the atmosphere of paranoia and fear officers experience there to that overseen by the KGB during the Cold War.

"I had to get out of the police department," he tells me from his office. "That way I could be free to talk about what is going on there."

"Suffolk is so dirty," concurs Peter Fiorillo, a retired New York City cop who has lived on Long Island since the 1960s. "Every place has corruption, but on a scale from one to ten, they're an 11."

From the outside, it seems strange that Burke was given so much authority. How could a man who in 1993 carried on a sexual relationship with Lowrita Rickenbacker, a convicted prostitute and drug dealer who'd been arrested multiple times in the very precinct where he acted as supervisor, become, in 2012, the top cop on a force of over 2,500 officers?

Described by those who knew him as a sex-obsessed narcissist, Burke—a squat, sharp-talking middle-aged bachelor with a vulgar disregard for social niceties—could also be charming when he wanted to be. He carried the reputation of a cop's cop, and his natural intelligence helped compensate for his lack of a college education. Three former officers with whom I spoke described him as an inspiring public speaker, and the Internal Affairs report into his relationship with Rickenbacker describes Burke's reputation as that of an "extraordinary street cop" with an intimate knowledge of "local street people."

It has been documented by Internal Affairs that Burke lost his gun on one outing with Rickenbacker, whom he knew then as Lowrita Fields, and that the pair had sex in his patrol car. But based on conversations with others about the incident, Trotta suspects Burke may have been shaking down drug dealers for crack and using the contraband with his girlfriend while they had sex.

There are few law enforcement agencies where a man like Burke would be a candidate for a leadership role. But Suffolk County is the exception to a lot of rules.

The county's demographics render it uniquely positioned for the kind of corruption embodied by men like Burke, according to Bruce Barket, the attorney handling Loeb's lawsuit against the county. Tucked onto the eastern end of Long Island, it's home to 1.5 million people and is bordered only by Nassau County (and then New York City) to the west, the Long Island Sound, and the Atlantic Ocean. Other counties in the New York metropolitan area have borders that are frequently crossed by police and civilian vehicles, Barket notes, but Suffolk is an exception.

"To become what they are now," Barket says from his office in Nassau, "Suffolk County operated unobserved for decades."

At over 85 percent white and predominantly Catholic, the area is less than diverse, despite a robust Latino population dispersed throughout Long Island's East End. Communities like Smithtown, where Burke grew up, emerged largely through the phenomenon of white flight, where Caucasian families dealt with the specter of urban crime by fleeing from the five boroughs and heading toward the sea.

It's ironic, then, that Suffolk itself became known for a brutal murder case. On April 21, 1979, Joseph Sabina found his 13-year-old neighbor John Pius, Jr. lying motionless in the yard of Dogwood Elementary School. Stones had been stuffed down his throat to asphyxiate him. The resulting trial was an odd convergence of the people who would run the county's law enforcement apparatus years later: The prosecutor assigned to the case was a young Tom Spota, and Burke, then 14 years old, served as one of Spota's key witnesses. In the end, Smithtown locals Michael Quartararo, his brother Peter Quartararo, Thomas Ryan, and Bresnic—all high school–aged boys—were convicted of the murder.

Jesse Kornbluth, a journalist who chronicled the Pius case for New York magazine in a labyrinthine two-part 1982 story, describes Suffolk residents to me over the phone "as people who view New York City life as a kind of sinful Gomorrah." At the same time, he explains, people there are prone to ignoring the more psychologically horrific dangers that mutate along the quiet, tree-lined streets on which they live.

For some, the verdict in the Pius case did not bring any closure. One of those people is attorney Frank Bress, now a law professor at New York Law School in Manhattan, who defended Bresnic in a 1986 appeal.

"Burke was a low-level burglar and drug dealer as a kid," Bress says over a salad not far from his home in Westchester. "It made his testimony unreliable."

The lawyer ran a yearlong clinical program on Bresnic's appeal with eight of his students while he was teaching at New York's Pace University, immersing himself in what he perceived to be inconsistencies of evidence. Today, he believes the same thing he believed then: that all four boys were innocent. Theories abound about who might have committed the murder—some suggest it was Pius's father, or possibly a local drug dealer—and it's difficult to talk about the case without acknowledging a degree of doubt about the true identity of the killers.

Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota in the hall of a courthouse in Riverhead, New York, in September 2007. (AP Photo/Ed Betz)

Bress accuses Spota of dipping between his work as a prosecutor and as a civil attorney, handling the victim's side of civil suits he himself prosecuted in criminal court. A yellowed file copy from the Bresnic retrial refers to Spota's "pecuniary interest" in trying cases.

"I could see right away that Spota was dirty," Bress says now. "The way he conducted himself, moving between prosecution and civil cases like that was highly unethical behavior."

Bess's recollection of Burke as a small-time burglar and drug dealer was corroborated by an anonymous source that claims Burke mostly trafficked in small stuff, like marijuana and hallucinogens. Selling weed, the source notes wryly, was a slightly bigger deal back in 1979 than it is now, and he shares Bress's conclusion that Burke's criminal proclivities likely made him a malleable resource for the prosecution.

Even in those days, Suffolk cops had a reputation. According to Kornbluth's research, the department had a 97 percent confession rate for murder suspects, a number three or four times higher than most American homicide squads' best years—and there were allegations that officers would break all sorts of eggs in order to make that omelette. Examples cited by Kornbluth include a man who claimed that a thin telephone book was placed against his head before he was beaten with a slab of concrete, and another who said cops tied a slip of paper to his penis and then held it over a paper shredder, threatening to feed his member through the blades.

"None of what's happening is a surprise to me because Burke is the same guy then that he is now," the source who knew him in high school tells me. "He used to tell people that he wanted to become a cop so he could get away with breaking the law."

Burke was officially hired by the Suffolk County Police Department in 1986 as a 21-year-old. He was promoted to sergeant in 1991, when he was 26, and reportedly had Spota's ear. Two years later, James Burke was having sex with a convicted prostitute inside his patrol car.

"Horny," says a gruff voice with a thick New York accent on the other end of the phone, when asked to describe the disgraced chief in one word. "Horny guy."

The voice belongs to a man I'll call R, an ex-cop who met Burke as a student during a police-training course the former chief taught in the late 90s. The two hung out together, drinking and chasing women. At that time, Burke was being promoted from sergeant to lieutenant, and R describes him as personable and friendly, "the loudest guy in a given room." He also says Burke was a short guy with a Napoleonic complex and "a sex addict."

"He was once in a bathroom in a hotel room with other guys and there was definitely coke there. But drugs weren't his thing. Sex was." —a former New York cop

"Burke used to take me and some of the other guys to Gossip, a strip club in Melville," R says. "Downstairs, in the private room, Burke and other cops used to fuck some of the dancers for money. Burke loved prostitutes, and he loved smoking cigars. He loved dipping his cigar in cherry brandy."

R cites a locally infamous bust at World Gym in Ronkonkoma in 2002, where officers were convicted for selling cocaine and steroids, as representative of the scene among Long Island cops at the time.

" was once in a bathroom in a hotel room with other guys and there was definitely coke there," R says. "But drugs weren't his thing. Sex was."

I ask whether he ever imagined his friend would go on to become chief.

"No way," he responds with a laugh. "I figured he'd just get hit with a DUI. But he was Spota's boy, and that was his hook."

Burke has since admitted to driving drunk and using the power of his badge to avoid paying a price. Court documents reveal that in 2011, he struck a state-owned vehicle, abandoned the scene, and failed to report the incident. He later concealed the crimes by surreptitiously paying thousands of dollars for repairs.

When asked about R's allegations of sex work, a spokesperson for Gossip informs me that the club was rebranded under new ownership in 2014 with an emphasis on "upscale and sophisticated" entertainment. But a dancer named Gia who worked at the old Gossip between 2003 and 2004 confirms R's description of the place as a "cop hangout," though she admits she wouldn't know Burke's face from thousands of others because of the heroin she was abusing at the time.

Gia says she worked on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights with two regular dancers named Tara and Hawaii, and that the trade of sex for money was commonplace in the basement of the club. She adds that empty "liquor cabinets" were used for sex work and that the ownership at that time, which she describes as "shadowy" and Russian, encouraged prostitution—and that one dancer at the club had a "Felix the Cat magic bag" filled with vibrators, nipple clamps and other gear for female submissive S&M sessions.

Gia says cops were regular customers, but "different from the firefighters," who were usually looking for a gentler time. The police she knew, as a rule, were misogynists who liked it harder. And some of the cops, she claims, would bring "base" to smoke with the girls—a.k.a. crack cocaine.

"You have to understand that these were vulnerable girls with drug problems," Gia says. "They were raised to respect cops, and then when they see them breaking the law with drugs, or roughing them up, it can be really upsetting because it suddenly feels like the whole world is against you."

I ask Gia if she might introduce me to Tara or Hawaii to see if they ever encountered James Burke.

"I can't," she says, her lips curling downward into a pout. "They're dead of a drug overdose."

Suffolk County Police officers from the anti-gang unit check walls for gang graffiti behind local shopping malls in October, 2005, in Brentwood, New York. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Robert Trotta's online bio once noted that his campaign was waged with "the goal of making county government more efficient," a polite reference to the vile culture he says he witnessed over 25 years as a Suffolk cop. He speaks from his office with a Long Islander's vowel-twisting accent, peppering descriptions of his homeland with words like "Gestapo," "unbelievable," "crazy," and "staggering." He says that beyond what's already known about corruption through local newspaper stories about Burke, police have created an unsustainable system where they receive massive paychecks to the tune of hundreds of thousands per year while the county plunges into deeper and deeper fiscal ruin.

Even after Burke was forced into retirement by the scandal surrounding Loeb, for example, he was still owed an eye-popping payout of $434,370 under the auspices of unused sick and vacation time. (Burke averaged an annual salary well over $200,000 in his final years on the force.) Trotta keeps the news clippings of Burke's public implosion taped to the wall above his toilet.

"The money that the cops are putting together right now is just stupid, staggering," he says, flipping through a set of stapled pages. "Look at how stupid this is."

The pages refer to financial disclosure reports of a Super PAC called the Long Island Law Enforcement Foundation. Trotta claims that the county Police Benevolent Association (PBA) fills the coffers of the Super PAC with mandatory paycheck deductions from officers, and that the money they collect is then spent on massive advertising blitzes to help friendly candidates. He further claims that these mandatory donations are illegal—and that they reinforce a culture of secrecy that enables men like James Burke to rise unchecked. He believes the majority of cops are not behind these efforts, however, and that they emerged from corruption in the upper ranks of the PBA and county administration.

(The Suffolk County Police Department referred me to the PBA regarding inquiries into the Super PAC. The PBA did not respond to multiple phone messages left at their office.)

When he was still a cop, Trotta served on a special FBI task force formed in 2010 featuring two other Suffolk officers, John Oliva and Willie Maldonado. The unit was charged with bringing violence under control in heavily Latino neighborhoods of Brentwood and Central Islip, where MS-13—a Salvadorian gang—had gained a foothold, according to Robert Doyle, a retired detective sergeant who helped assemble the squad. MS-13 members, often identifiable by blue and white colors and sometimes their love of Alex Rodriguez jerseys (he sports the number 13), were believed responsible for a gory trail of unsolved murders that the county needed federal assistance to solve. (Gang members' ability to escape south to Latin America when pressured by local police presented unique challenges.)

Former Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer praises the work of that task force in a phone interview, saying they did a "yeoman's job," singling out in particular the skills of Oliva, the son of Cuban immigrants who gained reliable access to Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. But on the Friday before Labor Day 2012, with the probe still underway, both officers were abruptly transferred to peaceful, low-crime districts. Doyle now alleges that Burke and Spota moved the officers to eliminate a hovering FBI presence in the county. At around the same time, Burke was reported to be obstructing federal authorities from collaborating on the effort to catch the Long Island Serial Killer. (Spota's office referred numerous requests to comment for this story to the US Attorney's Office, which declined to comment.)

Doyle describes the reassignment of the officers as "having diamonds that you toss away in the coal."

The New York Times reported this February that federal investigators were examining the circumstances under which Officer Oliva's phone was tapped by Spota's office in 2014. The bug was said to be the work of Assistant DA Chris McPartland, who is described, ironically enough, as Spota's top anticorruption lawyer. (Cops who knew McPartland, and feared his power, called him "The Lord of Darkness" behind closed doors.) Meanwhile, court documents reveal Burke ordered his officers to install a GPS in the Suffolk Deputy Police Commissioner's car in an effort to blackmail him. And Newsday published a story on March 8 detailing how federal investigators believe Spota blocked their probe of Suffolk Conservative Party leader Ed Walsh, a former county sheriff charged with wire fraud and stealing government funds.

Both Trotta and Doyle are quick to note that Spota has run twice unopposed for office. In 2013, the most recent election, he was cross-endorsed by both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as the Independent and Conservative parties. Ray Perini, a Republican attorney who attempted to challenge Spota, was quickly stifled by members of his own party.

"They had the cops out working in force against me," Perini says over the phone with a chuckle.

When I visit Suffolk County Police Headquarters in Yaphank on a recent warm Wednesday evening, farms and empty fields engulf the isolated station. One cop car shoots across the open road and disappears onto the Long Island Expressway, flashing red and blue lights into the dissolving daylight. Inside, it feels like most of the station has gone home. One plainclothes officer behind the reception desk stares vacantly at a News 12 Long Island TV broadcast chirping about Spota's alleged efforts to protect Walsh.

Words like "corruption" and "ongoing" echo in the deserted lobby.

At 35, Timothy Sini is Suffolk's youngest-ever police commissioner. He had to adapt quickly to the atmosphere of mistrust that engulfs this end of the island: Upon first being appointed last November by County Executive Steve Bellone, he was greeted by a harsh op-ed in Newsday assailing his "zilch experience" and "weak credentials."

The cop has the kind of face that stays young, along with round, clean-shaven cheeks that undercut the gravity of his somber talk about reform.

"It's a humbling experience," Sini says of his first few months on the job. "But I see this as an opportunity to move the department forward in a much more positive direction."

Sini assures me he's done a top-to-bottom assessment of the department and that he's working hard to increase transparency. He's also planning for the County Police to have an active social media presence down the road, and wants a better relationship with the press. He adds that he has transferred more officers into Internal Affairs to help avoid more incidents that might stain the reputation of the county, and says that as a former member of the US Attorney's office himself, his relationship with federal authorities is stronger than that of any predecessor.

So far, at least, Sini's strategy seems to be bearing fruit: The FBI has rejoined the hunt for the Long Island Serial Killer, and federal agents are once again going after MS-13 members in the area. Still, it's impossible not to notice how questions about Suffolk's shady past are taking a toll on the new commissioner.

"I didn't know who James Burke was when I was an attorney," Sini says, his light, intelligent eyes tracing the distant corners of a tired-looking conference room.

"I do now."

Suffolk County Police cars involved in the search for the Long Island Serial Killer in Babylon, New York, in April, 2011. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

When he steps into Judge Leonard Wexler's federal courtroom in Central Islip on the morning of February 26, James Burke is dressed in prison grays with pants cuffed at the ankle. The emblematic mustache he wore throughout his career as a cop has been shaved off, lending him a softer, more fragile appearance.

He looks skinnier than in recent pictures, and wears a vague smile across his face, perhaps at the recommendation of his lawyer, a broad-shouldered man named Joe Conway. (When I speak to Conway before the plea, he describes Burke as inquisitive in their meetings, always provoking thoughtful discussions about his own defense.)

Burke has been housed in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, far from the inmates he helped put behind bars over three decades in law enforcement on Long Island. "People adapt," Conway tells me of his client's state of mind. "Right now James is making the most of a bad situation. You know how it is."

For his part, Christopher Loeb is also secluded from the public as he receives treatment for an addiction he can't seem to shake. Heroin problems are on the rise on Long Island, as they are across much of America, and Loeb is just one of many people scuffling with the disease. The man made headlines again in December after a violent altercation between himself and two other people spilled out into the gated community where his mother lives. When I go there to try to speak with Jane Loeb, Christine, a security guard, tells me Chris's public battles with drug addiction took a toll on his mother, and that she's grown depressed and reclusive in the years following his abuse at the hands of Burke.

Jane doesn't even bother showing up to the disgraced cop's date in court.

Christine makes it out for the occasion, though. As does retired NYPD Officer Fiorillo, along with other members of the community determined to catch a glimpse of Burke up close—and perhaps gain some insight into how a culture of police corruption has festered for decades.

When I ask Christine what she thinks of Burke, she shakes her head in disgust, calling him "just a dirty, dirty dog."

"Why do people like Burke even become cops?" she asks. "Don't they want to help people?"

Michael Edison Hayden grew up on Long Island. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, the Los Angeles Times, and National Geographic, among other publications. Follow him on Twitter.

Hillary Clinton at a rally in North Carolina last week. Photo via Flickr user Nathania Johnson

US News

Sanders Could Quash Clinton in her Illinois Home State
Voters in five states head to the polls today in a crucial day for presidential primaries. Hillary Clinton is trying to fend off a surprise victory for Bernie Sanders in her home state of Illinois, where polls show he has drawn close. One CBS News/YouGov poll shows Sanders with a 2 percent lead. —USA Today

Google Pushes Congress to Back Self-Driving Cars
Executives behind Google's self-driving car program will appear before a Senate Commerce Committee today in a bid to persuade lawmakers to allow fully-autonomous vehicles on the road. Google does not want changes to safety rules to become a state-by-state process. —TIME

NFL Admits CTE Risk
The NFL's senior vice president for health and safety, Jeff Miller, has acknowledged the connection between concussions sustained by football players and the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). It's the first time a league official has accepted a direct link. —The Los Angeles Times

Chicago Man Shot by Police After Drug Shootout
One man was fatally shot and three Chicago police officers injured after officers responded to complaint about narcotics in the area on Monday night. When one man began shooting at officers, at least one officer returned fire and shot him dead, according to police. —Chicago Tribune

International News

Russians Withdraw from Syria
The first Russian planes have begun leaving Syria, after President Vladimir Putin announced on Monday that his country would be withdrawing from the war there. Western officials said it could help Syria's government engage in peace talks, which are now entering a second day. —BBC News

Myanmar Gets New President
Htin Kyaw has been elected the country's president by Myanmar's new parliament, the county's first civilian leader in 50 years. Kyaw is a close ally of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is barred from the post but is expected to lead the country anyway through Kyaw. —AP

Turkey Strikes Kurds in Iraq
Strikes by Turkey's air force in northern Iraq are believed to have killed 45 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, the armed forces said in a statement this morning. The strikes were retaliation for Sunday's bombing in Ankara, and were reported as the first funerals were held for the victims. —Reuters

Breivik Makes Nazi Salute in Court
Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik raised his arm in a Nazi salute as he arrived for the first day of a lawsuit against the government. Breivik is accusing the state of human rights violations for holding him in isolation, and his case is being heard in the prison gym hall. —Sky News

Radiohead. Photo via Flickr user Daniele Dalledonne

Everything Else

Pope to Declare Mother Teresa a Saint
Pope Francis will sign a decree today for the canonization of Mother Teresa, and announce the date and venue for the Albanian nun's sainthood ceremony. Four other candidates for sainthood are also being considered. —The Guardian

Radiohead Announce US Shows
Radiohead have announced their first US live shows in four years. The band will play New York's Madison Square Garden in July and at Los Angeles's Shrine Auditorium in August, part of a tour for their ninth album, expected this year. —Rolling Stone

New York City Schools to Give Out Free Tampons
Deminine hygiene products will be dispensed for free in bathrooms at 25 public schools in low-income neighborhoods in the city. A pilot program showed attendance increased among female students and fewer asked to be excused from class. —Buzzfeed

Man Pledges to Give Away a Million Weed Seeds
British Columbia weed activist and former New Democratic Party candidate Dana Larsen has promised to send free weed seeds to any Canadian willing to openly grow their own cannabis garden. —VICE

Done with reading today? Watch our video 'VICE Talks Film with 'High Rise' Director Ben Wheatley'

Not drugs from this actual bust, but you get the idea. Photo: NCA via

It seems like only yesterday we silently processed the gall of a drug gang that smuggled heroin, cannabis, and MDMA into the UK from Europe in flower boxes. Oh—right.

Now there's news that a group of drug traffickers has got a combined 78 years in prison for ferrying heroin, coke, MCAT, amphetamine, and cannabis into the East Yorkshire area. As luck should have it, the gang—allegedly led by a man called Philip Bell—happened to move drugs into and around Boston, England, where a rate of about 15 murders per 100,000 people apparently makes the Lincolnshire city this year's "murder capital" of the country.

In total, 16 people linked to the gang all pleaded guilty to drug-related offenses, after first slipping up in October 2015 when two drug runners were stopped making an amphetamine, cocaine, and MCAT delivery worth $58,000. Ten men and four women were sentenced to prison time last week at Lincoln Crown Court, with another two due to serve community service hours. One man, Stephen Hopkins, didn't show up to the sentencing, and his case has been adjourned until later this month.

Things started well enough for the gang. Philip Bell met two of his co-defendants, Hull local Leslie Hodgson and Liverpool man Gary Perry, in Hatfield Prison not far from Doncaster. They were all doing time for previous drug offenses, according to the case's prosecutor, George Aspden.

"This was a professional drug trafficking operation," he said in the trial, according to local Lincolnshire press. "The motive appears to have been financial gain rather than drug addiction. Arrangements were coordinated using unregistered pay as you go mobile phones. Significant amounts of money must have changed hands."

The gang was spread across East Yorkshire, Merseyside, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire, according to police. Bell and his associates apparently started moving drugs into Boston from Merseyside and West Yorkshire, before distributing them in the area.

After the October 2015 bust—where police stopped Linda Haw and her husband Joao Dos-Reis making that amphetamine, coke, and MCAT delivery—a search warranted raid on the Kirton, Lincolnshire home of Amber Medina uncovered 4 kgs of coke with a street value of $227,00 in November, according to Lincolnshire police.

John O'Connell, the guy who'd made the delivery to Amber's house, was then arrested carrying $22,000 in cash. In December, a Merseyside man called Ian Jones was arrested in Boston carrying 1 kg of heroin, worth about $95,000.

(Outer circle, clockwise from top left) Raymond McNally, Neil Grant, Leslie Hodgson, David Towers, Ian Jones, Francis Kelly, Amber Medina, Linda Dos Reis, Philip Bell, Louise Baxter. (Inner ring, clockwise from top left) Margaret Wattam, John O'Connell, Garry Perry, Michael Chand. Photo: Lincolnshire Police

When authorities started to connect the dots between people affiliated with the gang, they learned about the family members and friends drawn into its network. Hodgson, who had previous drug-related convictions dating back to 2006 and was known to Hull police, brought his partner Paula Jackson into the group. Her house was used for stashing drugs, for which she pleaded guilty. While he got five years in prison, she's been handed an eight-month jail sentence, suspended for 18 months with 100 hours of unpaid work—in other words, she won't have to go to prison if she does the unpaid hours.

Amber Medina, of the 4 kg of coke at home raid, was convicted alongside her 55-year-old mother Linda Dos Reis. They've both been charged with conspiracy to supply drugs and possession of cocaine with intent to supply; Amber's due to spend six years in prison, and her mother five years and three months. Philip Bell has been singled out by the prosecution as the ringleader at the center of it all, and he has picked up the longest individual prison sentence of 12 years and eight months.

"This was a major drugs business organized by Bell," said Detective Inspector Paul Myers of the East Midlands Police special operations unit, who headed the investigation. "He not only sourced drugs from Merseyside and elsewhere but arranged for their storage and distribution."

Myers also described Bell as "manipulative and amiable" and the "mastermind of the operation," according to the BBC.

The other defendants in the case were named as Michael Chand from Cambridgeshire, Margaret Wattam, and Louise Baxter from Lincolnshire, and David Towers from Leeds. From Merseyside, Gary Perry, John O'Connell, Ian Jones, Francis Kelly, and Neil Grant were all charged.

Eddie Mannix. Photo: Central Press via

If you know anything about the real-life Eddie Mannix—the thuggish general manager at MGM during the studio's golden age—then you probably know that making a comedy about him seems ill-advised.

Yet, that's precisely the task that Joel and Ethan Coen have taken on in their newest feature, Hail, Caesar! Set in 1951, the film follows Josh Brolin as a likable "studio fixer" who shares Mannix's name, and whose story is very loosely based on Mannix's life. Brolin's job is to protect movie stars from the vagaries of public scandal; to that end, he dashes around Hollywood soundstages chasing kidnappers and fending off gossip columnists.

The Coens offer Mannix's day-to-day activities in the spirit of ironically light-hearted farce—one that obscures a dismal and unglamorous reality. For the real-life Eddie Mannix, who reigned at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1924 to 1962, covering up rape, abortion, and potentially even murder were all a part of the job. While studio co-founder and mogul Louis B. Mayer extolled the virtues of wholesome family entertainment, Mannix served as the muscle. He and the MGM publicity department were determined to maintain the studio's rosy public image at any cost.

Karina Longworth's You Must Remember This podcast dedicates a whole episode to the man, discussing the worst of the rumors surrounding his career. In an article for Vanity Fair, David Stein alleges that Mannix helped to quash rape charges against an MGM executive in the 1930s, even after the victim, Patricia Douglas, went directly to the district attorney with her case. Then there's the story that provides the plot for 2006 film Hollywoodland—the mysterious suicide of TV's original Superman, George Reeves. Reeves had been having an affair with Mannix's wife Toni before suffering a few near-fatal car accidents. He died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in 1959.

Hail, Caesar! nods to Mannix's careful handling of Loretta Young's unexpected pregnancy, arranging for her to adopt her own child and thus shielding her from the taboo of unwed motherhood. His list of "fixes" are almost dazzlingly reprehensible—from manipulating Judy Garland's worsening drug addiction and talking stars into terminating pregnancies, to pinning crimes on innocent parties. He even personally helped to recover the badly burned remains of mega-star Carole Lombard from a plane crash in 1942. One shudders to imagine his average working day.

Of course, the enormity of Mannix's job description took a great deal of complicity, and MGM helped to furnish that. Hollywood studios once wielded nearly feudal levels of power: Backlots were essentially self-sufficient, from the colossal ranch of Warner Brothers to the palatial surroundings of the 20th Century Fox lot.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's was the biggest of them all; its backlot in Culver City spread over 176 acres, holding 200 permanent buildings that included a dentist and a barbershop. More transitory facades included an array of sets—jungles, ancient temples, New York streets, and European villages. The lot had its own railway station to ship in lumber for set-building, and the commissary fed some 2,700 people per day.

These were practically self-contained moviemaking cities, with an according rule of law. As such, there were studio doctors and a homegrown police force, specially trained to recognize all contract players on the lot. If a crime or a scandalous medical condition popped up, these people were the first on the scene, well before the LAPD were informed.

Some of the better-known scandals "taken care of" by studio police are well covered in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon. The apparent suicide of Jean Harlow's husband Paul Bern, the cold case murder of silent-era director William Desmond Taylor, and the stabbing death of Lana Turner's abusive boyfriend Johnny Stompanato all have something in common: In each case, studio officials were at the scene of the crime for hours before police were called.

It's not surprising that someone like Eddie Mannix is relatively obscure now. MGM was home to Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and Jean Harlow, earning it the old boast "more stars than there are in heaven." No one wants to imagine that the purveyors of The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain could have carried out and covered up a murder with the same ease as a mafia don.

Mannix's embodiment of Hollywood gangsterdom had less explicit echoes throughout the first half-century of American film. The rise of the movie industry and organized crime in America had their own parallels. Both were enterprises helmed largely by Jewish and Italian immigrants, flourishing at the turn of the century. Both hinged on the outsider's dream of success in America. It seems fitting that a mutual fascination existed between them—Frank Sinatra emulating Bugsy Siegel, or Siegel's own starry-eyed wish for Cary Grant to play him in a movie.

Similarities abound everywhere. Take vicious LA gangster Mickey Cohen and head of Columbia Studios Harry Cohn, the so-called "meanest man in Hollywood." In fact, they had a remarkably similar background. Both were Russian Jews, poor immigrants from New York and self-made men who came to California early to seek their fortunes. One chose to trade in celluloid, the other in violence.

Maybe unsurprisingly, their worlds were not totally divorced from one another. The legend goes that Cohn, a notorious bully, enlisted the gangster when he learned the combustible news of a romance between Sammy Davis Jr. and his contracted blond bombshell Kim Novak. In 1957, public knowledge of a planned interracial marriage might have ruined both careers. Supposedly, Cohen threatened to bar Davis from his nightclub circuit, which would have effectively ended his career. Other stories suggest the threats were more sinister. What is clear is that Davis was married to black singer Loray White within a year—likely at the behest of Columbia Studio's underworld associates.

Cohn's persona probably contributed to the cigar-chomping, egotistical stereotype of the studio head. But unlike Eddie Mannix, he also seemed to have his moments of magnanimity. He gave relative creative freedom to luminaries like Frank Capra and Orson Welles, and he was fiercely loyal to studio employees—even paying hospital bills for some.

The moguls were largely men of little formal education but great imagination—hustlers with immigrant chutzpah. Their ugly tangles with politicians, police, and mobsters are a crucial part of Hollywood history. In their efforts to make motion pictures an enduring art form, they might be admirable—but their methods left a lot to be desired.

Follow Christina on Twitter.

Front page of Italian newspaper L'Ora from 1972, announcing the murder of investigative journalist Giovanni Spampinato. The title reads: "Our correspondent from Ragusa / Killed only because he was searching for the truth."

This article originally appeared on VICE Italy.

In the latest Reporters Without Borders (RWB) World Press Freedom Index, Italy ranked 73 out of 180 countries. Last year, RWB's 100 Information Heroes List featured two Italians—among reporters engaged in war zones, investigating drug trafficking, or working under harsh dictatorships. One of them is Pino Maniaci of Telejato (a small TV station based in the town of Partinico, in the province of Palermo, Sicily), who has fallen victim to "something like 40 slashed tires, three burned out cars, as well as physical assault."

The above testimony is featured in a report "on the state of information and the plight of journalists threatened by the mafia" by the Italian Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission. The document, which was approved unanimously by the Italian Chamber of Deputies a few days ago, is the result of 12 months of hearings conducted to investigate the relationship between organized crime and information in Italy. Its findings aren't particularly encouraging: Contact between mafia organizations and the press is frequent, and attempts to control media and information by the mafia even more so—especially in the Italian provinces.

The report is based on data gathered by the Italian NGO "Ossigeno per l'informazione" (Oxygen for information), which has recorded 2060 "threats and acts of intimidation or retaliation against journalists," since October 2014.

I called Claudio Fava, deputy president of the parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission and coordinator of the committee that conducted the survey, to discuss the situation.

VICE: What is the relationship between the Italian press and the mafia today?
Claudio Fava: The number of journalists being targeted, and in many cases silenced, by criminal organizations keeps growing. And the problem extends to newspapers—especially smaller regional publications that are important because they report on local news.

Is the Italian public aware of the situation?
The public knows very little. They are only aware of the most talked about cases that involve famous journalists. It's not just that people don't talk about the threats, the risks and the dangers you take on as a journalist—they don't even talk about the stories you tell. Beyond the generic solidarity statements, journalists are kept in isolation, which of course puts them at even greater risk.

This is the first time in 50 years that the Anti-Mafia Commission addresses the link between organized crime and information. Yet the underworld has always had a certain influence on the Italian media, right?
The mafia's efforts to influence the flow of information are age-old. What have changed and become more sophisticated are the tactics they employ to exert that influence. Once upon a time, they used gunfire; these days they send a platoon of lawyers asking for millions of euros in damages your way. Their tools are subtler, but the result is the same. The fact that the commission is finally addressing the issue shows that the issue is urgent.

Italian MP Claudio Fava speaking in the parliament

How important is it for the gangs to control information in their territories?
It is critical. Criminal organizations need to control information to gain impunity. Access to information enables you to build a personal point of view. When you don't know what is going on, you live in a constant state of suspended freedom.

The report includes a point dedicated to specious litigations. How do these affect journalists?
Specious litigations have the power to economically isolate journalists. We are talking about freelance reporters with loose or no contracts, who get paid a few euros per article. To hurt a journalist or to silence them, it is often useful to isolate them—financially and professionally—using slander and other intimidatory strategies that are not exclusive to mafia gangs.

What has been done to protect Italian journalists in recent decades?
The real question is: What have journalists been doing for themselves? We shouldn't think of this as an issue for someone else to take care of. Journalists—and I say this as a journalist myself—must be the first to take on the struggle.

There are different ways to do so: Speaking up about the risks fellow journalists are faced with is one; pushing for new regulations to protect the freelancers is another.

The number of journalists who have been threatened in Italy, 2006–2016. Data collected by Ossigeno per l'informazione

The report mentions "exploitative journalism" and indicates freelancers as the main victims.
That's correct. The profession of journalism is often practiced outside the law—namely, many work as journalists without being members of the Italian Register of Journalists. Those journalists, who don't have a press card in their pocket, are considered illegal, abusive, and invisible, but they are not illegal, abusive, and invisible to those who threaten or even kill them. In Sicily, three freelancers were recently killed: Mauro Rostagno, Peppino Impastato, and Beppe Alfano. The professional body can only do so much. There is a lot of distraction, indifference, and even a hint of resignation. According to the data that Ossigeno gave us, more than 2,000 journalists have been threatened in just over a decade. These are problems we should all care about, not just on a political level but on a professional level, too.

How do Italian publishers and journalists react to threats and pressure? Is self-censorship common?
Sure, that happens, too. If you are being threatened, and you don't have enough protection because you work for a small publisher, because the pay is bad and because your colleagues do not care, you may choose to self-censor. It doesn't mean you are an accomplice; it just means you chose the easy way out.

So what could be done to change this situation?
We proposed that frivolous lawsuits are reviewed and punished in a different way to how they are treated now—not with a fine, but by forcing those who venture fraudulently in a judicial process to pay a considerable percentage of the damages asked. Another way is acting on the current condition of freelancers, in terms of contractual guarantees. A third point is talking, not just about the threats but more importantly about the stories that raised those threats. It is a commitment that the commission extends to everyone—especially journalists.

Channel 4's Tattoo Fixers press shot

Enter the Tattoo Fixers. Sketch, Jay and Alice stroll in with their pads and pens and hear the regrettable story of how needle perforated skin. The recipient then gets the artists to each sketch out options for the cover-up. This is when viewers begin to get the buzz. You know what's coming – it always comes, even though, you think, surely not again, not this time. Three huge designs. A whopping great profile of a stag that'd stretch across a chest to cover a little bit of script. A zombie face ripping through flesh to cover a lightly sketched stick figure. The person waits. They choose one of the designs. The artist responsible for the chosen design has won. The artist and the recipient go to the back of the shop to start work on the cover-up.

If you haven't watched Tattoo Fixers before, you're missing out. It's a show that reaches the dizzying highs and delightfully predictable lows of Don't Tell the Bride or Come Dine with Me. It's one of the best shows on British TV.

But for anyone who knows about tattooing, it's something more. In the last few weeks, numerous members of the British tattoo industry have become pissed off with the show for various reasons, and now this feud has arrived at a full-on stand-off.

"There's always a strong response from the tattooing industry to tattoo shows," explains Paul Taylor, the tattoo artist behind the "Fuck Tattoo Fixers" T-shirts. "But this has been different because it's a direct attack on us as a British industry. That's how it's come across. I made the T-shirts as a joke, and before I knew it, people wanted them. We sold over 100 immediately and now we've inspired a few tribute acts. I've seen all different kinds of T-shirts on everyone."

On Instagram the #fucktattoofixers hashtag is well and truly popping off.

A cover-up posted on Instagram by "Sketch", one of the tattoo artists on 'Tattoo Fixers' @sketchreppinink

Paul is angry for the same reasons that other artists are. For starters, the tattoos are "unnecessarily fucking huge", according to Hannah Calavera, an artist who wrote a blog about the show – which was taken down after she was threatened with legal action by Studio Lambert, the production company behind the programme. "They're just making the same tattooing mistakes again, except worse, because the things they do over the top are so fucking dark and needlessly massive," she says. "Especially when the original tattoo is really tiny or faded."

Hannah explains that there are certain basic codes of conduct that aren't being adhered to. "The checklist I go by before doing a cover-up is: Will I be able to improve the original tattoo? Will it look like an original tattoo when it's finished, or a cover-up? If I think it's a cover-up then I won't do it. Will they be happy with it long-term? Because who's to say that after a few weeks they won't go, 'Actually, I've had this huge tattoo in place that I probably would never have got tattooed if I'd had a choice,' and then regret it as much as the original?"

This, she feels, is not being asked on the show. Instead of getting a large cover-up, laser removal should be an option. Due to the nature of the show's format, this doesn't happen. "I think it's a responsibility on our part to make sure we're not just doing something for the sake of it, because then you have added to the number of people who are unhappy with their tattoos," she explains.

A Tattoo Fixers representative responded to these concerns by saying, "Cover-ups are often a third bigger. Regardless of whether big or not, the contributor gets sign-off on the design."

Sketch's tattoo (left); original design by Emily Rose Murray (right) from Instagram

Another issue cropping up online is the suggestion that Sketch has been copying other artists' work (when asked for comment on this allegation, there was no response from either the producers or Sketch). Sneaky Mitch and Emily Rose Murray are two names that appear often, while Antony Flemming says Sketch has lifted tattoo designs from him. He says he found out about it after people online kept linking him to a rose neck design on his Instagram very similar one of Sketch's. "It's an extra big kick in the teeth when Sketch is so big and has been on TV."

As Paul Taylor puts it, this is one of the only times the tattoo community in the UK has really rallied together as an industry. "Even if it's not a friend, you see someone's work being copied and it's like it's happened to you. You think, 'Should I put my stuff online in case it gets ripped off?'" he says. "I've been tattooing 15 years and it feels like an affront to anyone who's ever tried in this world."

And, of course, then there's the person who paid a lot of money for a custom tattoo getting mugged off.

Sketch's tattoo (left); original design by Antony Flemming (right); Instagram @antonyflemming

This beef has escalated beyond the industry. Now, people who have had cover-ups done on the show are coming forward with serious complaints about the work. On Monday, The Mirror reported that someone tattooed in the first season by Sketch has been left "devastated" and with bad scarring. The show's makers responded that duty of care to participants was "paramount" and that consultations with a dermatologist had been arranged.

In a Facebook post, another person, Daniel Head, accused the show of various ills, such as tattooing him when he was very sick and encouraging him to sit through long periods of tattooing. E4 responded that he had been enthusiastic about filming at the time and that the show followed "stringent safety regulations".

There are even people who have been on the programme coming forward with tattoos showing through the cover-up. "There are rules in tattooing dictated to us by the skin," explains Paul. "We've got mates with numerous emails in their inboxes about writing showing through wings, and stuff like that."

Hannah says that since her blog went viral, she's had people volunteering photos of healed cover-ups that were done on the programme. "You can see the old tattoo in every single one," she says. "They never show healed photos on the programme. How are the people on there and the TV viewers supposed to see this in context?"

There has, however, come a resolution of sorts. Ben Doran, a tattoo artist in Bath, posted a status on his Facebook saying he'd sort out anyone's tattoo from the show who wasn't happy with what they ended up with. He says he's had 10 to 12 people contact him wanting their botch job fixed. "I didn't think there'd be an explosion with my post, but it got thousands of likes and hundreds of shares, just overnight. If anyone wants their tattoo covered or repaired, we'll do it for free. Some of the people who've got in touch, you can see the original tattoo underneath. For others, they're just absolutely heartbroken," says Ben.

"If you can see a tattoo underneath a cover-up, it's not a cover-up. I had a girl with a peacock feather on her bum message me for help. The tattoo isn't horrendous, but it looks really aged and you can see the whole tattoo coming through underneath. There was the girl that had the gypsy head to cover up the clown. I've had a guy who's had an octopus on his hand to cover a dick on the side of his finger. There's the guy who had two wolves on his arm to cover the football fan pissing on a shirt. All these people got in contact with me."

Sketch taking a selfie; Instagram @sketchreppinink

Now, a laser tattoo removal guy has teamed up with Ben. Anyone who Ben cannot immediately cover is able to get free laser removal until the area is more ready to be covered up by Ben. "There's no dislike or disdain from me towards Sketch or the producers of the show or the show itself. It's TV at the end of the day. But it's putting us back as an industry."

Not everyone who's been involved with the show hates their new tattoo, of course. Natalie, who was on Monday night's episode, told us she loved her experience so much she wants another one. "I had a great experience – I don't know what anyone's going on about, to be honest," she said. "I had a wolf on my forearm by Jay and it covered up a crap tattoo of a cat I had. I've applied for next season. I'll probably not get on next time, but I've got a tattoo on my shoulder I want to get covered and I want Sketch to do it."

We reached out to E4 and Tattoo Fixers and a rep said, "Over a million people regularly enjoy the show. Far from portraying the tattoo industry negatively, we are very proud of the team, their artistry, professionalism and the quality of their work. Naturally people will have opinions on different designs; however, we get a huge amount of positive feedback from viewers and, of course, the contributors themselves."

@sketchreppinink

On Monday, Sketch addressed the scandal for the first time. After making his social media accounts private and then public again, Sketch shared a supportive post on Instagram from another tattoo artist. The tattooist, Leigh Coombs, called on people to stop weighing in on the drama and stop slating Sketch online – while adding that the work wasn't up to a decent standard. "Yes I can admit that a fair amount of the work on there is below par and the conditions in the studio change with different camera angles, but the way that Sketch is being treated is disturbing to say the least," Leigh posted.

Is this Sketch repenting for his sins, or accidentally admitting that some of the work is "sub par"? Where will it go from here? Will this saga end in him leaving the show? Will the show have to make adjustments? Will there be an on-air apology? When will the bad tattoos end?

The main problem in all of this, according to members of the industry, is the way Tattoo Fixers is making them look, as individuals, as British artists, as a community. "The average person watching this on British TV doesn't know the standards at which tattooing can be," said Antony. "Being given the intro to the show, which says these are the best artists in the country, they'll believe that these are as good as tattoos can be. They're not even average tattoos, they're bad tattoos – especially Sketch's. We don't want UK tattooists made to look like fucking idiots."

@hannahrosewens

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At a small pub called The Horseshoe tucked away in a corner of central London, Deta Hedman, the current number one female darts player in the world, is practicing. She's wearing relaxed jeans and a pink and black darts shirt, drinking a pink cider to match. It's only a small session, relatively, as she has to be up at four in the morning to travel to the Isle of Man for a tournament.

"I do as many as I can. I think last year I only had a couple of weekends off. But this year so far I've had two weekends off because Billingsgate got cancelled. Because I don't go out each night to play leagues, I have to keep playing tournaments, because that's how I practice. And while you're winning it becomes a habit. And I love those habits," she says.

Hedman was born in November 1959 in Jamaica, before moving to Witham, Essex, with her family. Her voice contains traces of a patois cadence she once had. She still lives in Witham. "I've been here 43 years. When I came my brothers used to play darts in the pub. One of them had a dart board at his home. When I go down to his house after school, do my chores, we used to have a practice and it was 301, double in double out, and they used to whitewash me and I would never get off that board until I won a game. And that's how it all started really."

Since then, Hedman has won over 100 tournaments and risen to the top spot in women's darts, while holding down a job at the Royal Mail, doing late shifts, and working until the early hours of the morning. It's a work ethic that has been present throughout her career, and it makes her uncomfortable with the title of 'professional.'

"I'm a semi-pro, to put a finer word on it. To me, when somebody says you're a professional, that's what you do for a living. But I'm a semi-pro, because I've always worked. Once I left school I found a bedsit. From that I just worked, paid my bills, and darts is just a hobby that I thoroughly enjoy. Whenever I get prize money, I think OK, that's a bill that's going to be paid."

In 1997, financial difficulties and redundancy caused Hedman to drop darts altogether. The hiatus lasted seven years.

"What you've got to realize is, up until I came back, I've never had a sponsor. If I didn't win, I'd have nothing. So if I did win anything, that just goes back into the kitty. Even though I have a couple of sponsors now, which helps, if I didn't do so well then I wouldn't be able to do as many tournaments as I do, because the prize money for the ladies' tournaments is absolute pants. It really is. And it costs us exactly the same as the men to travel, especially in Europe. The pairs, the singles—we pay exactly the same. That's why the World Championship, I get so angry with it, because the men's prize money is £100,000 . And it's only three years ago that it went up to 12. Before that it was ten, and before that it was six, and before that it was four."

Hedman is "The Dark Destroyer," a nickname she lifted from boxer Nigel Benn. "I destroy people on the board normally, so that's where it came from." Hedman's throw has a beautiful glide to it, much like the rest of her movement. Though tall, she swans when she walks, and her throw has a strange time-stopping effect, as if she's pushing it directly into the board through telekinesis. There is something decidedly easygoing and stress-free about her actions, even down to her speech. Everything is said with the calming placidity of experience and quiet determination.

Like all pub sports, racial diversity in darts isn't great, to say the least. It's something Hedman has had to deal with in the past and, unfortunately, on occasion, still does. "We were in Europe once and someone said in a clear voice, 'I didn't know they trained monkeys to throw darts.' It doesn't really bother me as such. If they were to say it in my face, then I would tackle them. I would go back in their face. I will fight my battles. If it continues then obviously I'll do something about it." In contrast, she's been made to feel different in her long-term home of Witham.

"Pubs aren't the black person's culture. But where I live in Witham, there are pubs everywhere. You probably don't remember, but in the olden days everybody used to go to the pub on a Sunday and play darts, dominos, card games—all the little cheese and pickle and biscuits—that's where it came from, we all loved doing that at lunchtime. And where we lived in Essex, it was such a friendly place, it really, really was. Everybody knew everybody."

The nurturing disposition has rubbed off on Hedman, as she contemplates a life after darts. "There is going to be a time where I will have to stop playing. I would like to put something back into the game, such as being an official. I was actually speaking to the youth selector recently, so I might go into that."

Deta Hedman's supreme love for darts is evident. It seems that her maintenance of a 'normal' life and remaining semi-professional has allowed her to care for the game and the people in it in a different way, and let her retain a sense of great humility, even as the best female player in the world.

"I still walk around Witham and people say, 'There's that darts lady!' And I say, 'Who?'"

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