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  1. DEVELOPMENT BLOG #4 We would like to begin this development blog by expressing our gratitude to each and every single one of our supporters. You are the reason why this project is so successful even before it is launched. As you are all aware, all of the money raised is spent for development purposes, hence you are all motivating our team of developers to continue to working with us! A big thank you to our early supporters for raising: $3,487.77 CREDITS TO DONATORS Bauer, fallguy1196, ititan, Unknown, trop, eli, Kirill_Ustinov, Sting McGee, LackingAName, Weatherguy, MickeyO, Partizan, Keel, Marty, Scarecrow, Yas, StefanM, perc GRETZKY, Qpacc, Schubert, Campbell, ChippySound, Exemplar, moonman, jaysavv, Celibano, Cleon, NickyW, Cypher, Tudounaozi, Bolic, Heartless, TBattle, EyelessRaymond, Naitor, DeputyThomson, Levitate, FreeTheHomeTeam, Sherry, Brett, Lawliet, Sidewinder, Mark4562, Marksman, Talon, Clu, proletariat, Chicago, normal, rvng, Protheus, Twinglockz, Hectic, KingLunatic, Dom., bloodmoney, Deca, rasbruu, Phantasm, Stoned Ape, Robyn, Rhelli, GageB, Kaos, Valentine, Flamer, TommyX, phantom_, Spartan, Conway, MinnesotanWinter, Cappunocci, Switch, mattmocz, Slipky, Misleader, Operator, Samuel, void, Eden, Nyx, xP3Jx, Crunchy, Knight, Jansify, west, Connor, Wisci, Chris, Lacoste, BravoMan, Shrekowski, Bunting, Dude, Illexus, Biography, Aesthetics, Geo, Burner, Eastsidee, BlooJaye, JJDAOPP, Katja, Mutt377, Mayll, Zach,3 Pags, Bandit, Buckley, Brando, Borgata, Cinematic, Pettie, EBK, StrokaFresh, Justitiae, Sleepy, MarcusHD, Nox, Cans, Afrosamurai, JVLS, Spookie, Akurasix, Gucci, Scandal, Jorgensen, Bycarbon, Drezor, Playboii, Bncal, Lux, Maramizo, Vagrant, Sirfuego, bone head, nefarious bueller, Jon, McDadda, TheMac_Aodhagain, Rheniummm, RGWE123, jon, Taddo Leonetti, obreezy, Peruvian Flake, shaqr, 21RodeoDrive, Voh, Louie, Corneru, Kjell, Briutas, Michaud, Sway, Tommo, Dizaster, Tyrant, Amy, tonyhawkproskater, Maradona, Stafford1878, Cufta, zalenac, Tseard, stringer, Blade, Lightshot, Sleepy, Skante2702, Jaime, Steel, Florida, tibi, Montana Fats, Cascavel. We would like to begin this development blog by providing you with an accurate number of our Staff Team members. As you can see, the biggest team at the moment is the Development Team with a total of 10 members, followed by the Staff Support Team with 8 members. In order to have a stable community upon launch, we aim to increase the number of all teams and ensure that there is proper oversight for each sector. Our priorities for the month to come: a) Increase the number of the Staff Support Team. b) Increase the number of the Admin Team. c) Increase the number of the Property Team. d) Increase the number of the Development Team. Please enjoy the features we have prepared for you. Note that these features will be worked on in the future, especially the banking system as we want to make it very user-friendly and beneficial for the players. With our rule "what's on you is on you", banking and debit cards become a priority for us. Drugs System Developed by @Nikolai The drug system is essential in order to provide members of the community with an immersive environment. Our Development Team has worked very hard to attempt to create a system that is realistic and effective. A big challenge is ensuring that there is a demand for drugs on the market, therefore this was a big factor in how we constructed the drug system. The layout below is the current script we have developed for the drug system. Keep in mind - this is not a final version and may be altered. Visual effects, etc. will be included in the next development blog! DRUG EFFECTS Health Regeneration Restores a set amount of health points over the span of pre-defined intervals for each drug. If a person is already at full health (100 points), the regeneration will not go above 100 and it will stay the same. If a person has 80 health but the drug restores 30 health points over 30 minutes, his health will only go up to 100 and not above. Strength Additional strength points will affect damage given (EXCLUDING firearms). If a normal hit with a bat would be 5hp, and a player uses a drug that would add +5 Strength Points, then he would deliver 10hp per hit. Additional Health Points Adds additional health points for the user. DRUGS LIST Marijuana Cocaine Crack Cocaine Ecstasy Heroin Methamphetamine Morphine Steroids LSD Psilocybin PCP DRUGS DECAY If not used, drugs will lose quality over time in order to dissuade potential stockpiling and to force players to buy the amount of drugs they need at a given time. The decay will start after one week from the initial creation of the drug, so in the first week the drugs stats will not be affected and they will be in pristine condition. If a drug reaches 0% condition, it'll be permanently removed from the server and from the player's possession. The drug's condition is affected whether the player is online or not. If for example, a drug has reached 60% condition, it will only provide 60% of the initial effects if it is used. ADDICTION & TOLERANCE When a player uses a drug script-wise, each gram will push the addiction and tolerance levels up by a certain percentage. Addiction and tolerance increases are calculated per gram used and each drug has a different addiction and tolerance percentage increase. ADDICTION LEVELS Level 1: 0 - 15% No effects 50% chance for addiction level to drop by 1.5% - 3.0% every 48 hours Level 2: 15 - 30% Chat text notice that suggests you need more every 10 hours Lose 15hp over 30 minutes 40% chance for addiction level to drop by 2.0% - 3.5% every 52 hours Level 3: 30 - 50% Chat text notice that suggests you need more every 8 hours Lose 30hp over 30 minutes 30% chance for addiction level to drop by 2.5% - 4.0% every 56 hours Level 4: 50 - 75% Chat text notice that suggests you need more every 6 hours Lose 30hp over 20 minutes Forced /examine descriptions depending on the drug until the timer runs out Forced /ame of visible withdrawal symptoms when addiction kicks in Screen effect that would last 1 minute 25% chance for addiction level to drop by 3.0% - 5.0% every 60 hours Level 5: 75% - 100% Chat text notice that suggests you need more every 4 hours Lose 30hp over 15 minutes Forced /examine descriptions depending on the drug until the timer runs out Forced /ame of visible withdrawal symptoms when addiction kicks in Screen effect that would last 2 minutes 20% chance for addiction level to drop by 4.0% - 6.0% every 65 hours TOLERANCE LEVELS Level 1: 5% - 15% Player will only benefit from 85% of the drug's perks. 70% chance for tolerance level to drop by 1.5% - 3.0% every 30 hours Level 2: 15% - 30% Player will only benefit from 70% of the drug's perks. 55% chance for tolerance level to drop by 2.0% - 3.5% every 35 hours Level 3: 30% - 50% Player will only benefit from 60% of the drug's perks. 35% chance for tolerance level to drop by 2.5% - 4.5% every 40 hours Dealership System and Personal Vehicles Framework Developed by @Nikolai One of our main priorities for the dealership system was to allow players the ability to finance a vehicle. The financing option will reduce the "grinding" aspect for new players and they will undoubtedly be able to focus more on roleplay instead of farming jobs to be able to afford a starter vehicle. The prices are also based on real-life and we've removed a lot of vehicles that we don't believe are necessary on a roleplay server. This system is not only going to be helpful for new players, but all members of the community. Having the ability to be able to obtain a vehicle will not be as difficult as it is on other roleplay communities and we are excited to see how this is going to play out. Car Thefts Developed by @Nikolai Car thefts are pivotal for any roleplay server. For this feature, we have decided to include a minigame that is required for you to solve if you wish for your character to be able to picklock a vehicle. This of course is only one way to break into a vehicle. If you're not fond of this method, you can reserve to a more violent approach - smashing the window of the vehicle. This will instantly allow you to enter the vehicle. Once inside a vehicle, you will be faced with another minigame which will require you to unscramble several words. For veteran roleplayers, specifically coming from LSRP, this system is familiar. We believe that this is an effective technique that should balance vehicle theft and discourage some from doing it. Considering that it is easy to break into a vehicle, either through picklock or force, it is reasonable that in order to start the engine, the player must face a bigger challenge. Fishing Job Developed by @Nikolai Unlike other communities, we've made an interactive fishing system where players will have to go through a minigame in order to catch a fish. Besides the minigame, players will have the opportunity to use different baits and upgrade their fishing skill. The concept will be explained below in further details. The minigame is quite interactive. It requires patience and quick reactions in order to complete. Based on the fishing skill levels, the game will require more or less tries in order to catch a fish. This system allows cooperative fishing so you and your friends may enjoy this system by spending time together and earning money at the same time. The current cooperative minimum is 2 people, whereas the maximum is 8. This also depends on the boat used for fishing. Our fishing system will bring a lot of opportunities, especially if we improve it so that players can sell fish directly to a certain business as opposed to selling it to an NPC entity in return for cash. BAIT Bait 1: Worm 35% chance to catch rare fish 40-120 seconds timer between each catch Bait 2: Rice Ball 25% chance to catch rare fish 30 - 100 seconds timer between each catch Bait 3: Minnow 15% chance to catch rare fish 25-80 seconds timer between each catch FISHING SKILL The levels will influence the type of fish you can catch and the weight, as well as the number of tries allowed to play in a minigame. FISHING SKILL LEVELS, POINTS NEEDED AND CHANCE OF SUCCESS WHEN LEVELING IT UP Level 1 Points needed: 10 Chance for success to level up: 100% Level 2 Points needed: 40 Chance for success to level up: 80% Level 3 Points needed: 80 Chance for success to level up: 59% Level 4 Points needed: 120 Chance for success to level up: 45% Level 5 Top tier. Can not be upgraded further. If the fishing skill level-up is not successful, the points will be reset but the level will remain the same. . HOW TO OBTAIN FISHING SKILL POINTS Players will earn fishing skill points when they successfully catch a fish, but you don’t earn these points very often, so it will take time to level up. The formulas are as following, based on each fishing rod level: Level 1 Fishing Rod 20% chance of earning a point every fish caught Level 2 Fishing Rod 15% chance of earning a point every fish caught Level 3 Fishing Rod 10% chance of earning a point every fish caught Level 4 Fishing Rod 5% chance of earning a point every fish caught FISHING LEVELS PERKS Level 1 Fishing Level 0 additional chance to catch a rare fish Level 2 Fishing Level 4% additional chance to catch a rare fish Level 3 Fishing Level 7% additional chance to catch a rare fish Level 4 Fishing Level 10% additional chance to catch a rare fish Level 5 Fishing Level 14% additional chance to catch a rare fish FISHING ON-FOOT VS FISHING ON A BOAT The fishing job includes fishing from either a platform/cliff (basically anywhere near water) or from a boat and then transporting the catch to sell it. The maximum carry amount while fishing on foot is 25 kgs. Once a person hits the 25 kgs limit, they will need to sell it to the selling points. The selling points are randomly generated (currently there are 3). On a boat, anywhere out in the ocean. When fishing from a boat, the catch is automatically transferred to the boat's storage unit. Each boat will have its own storage limit. Ultimately, fishing from a boat will be more beneficial as you can carry a lot more. Additionally, the number of tries on the minigame when fishing on-foot will be 5 and when fishing from a boat it will require only 3 which again, provides an extra bonus if someone invests their savings towards buying a boat. CO-OP FISHING ON A BOAT If you're the owner of the boat, you could invite your friends on a fishing session. The fish that each individual succeeds to catch is stored in the boat's storage unit automatically and the owner can split the profit to the rest of the team once the fish is dropped to the selling point. Each boat has a designated co-op capacity. (ex. tug boats allow 8 players to fish at the same time when other boats can allow only 2) RADARS Radars will be boat extensions that can be purchased and installed. Radars will guide the boat driver to fishing spots that have a higher chance of catching more fish. By catching more fish, we are referring to the timer between each catch. The bonuses are granted aleatory when the boat owner activates the radar. Once a bonus is active, the boat owner can not use the radar again until the active bonus expires. The bonuses list is as follows: 15% reduced timer bonus - 20 minutes 15% reduced timer bonus - 30 minutes 15% reduced timer bonus - 60 minutes 20% reduced timer bonus - 20 minutes 20% reduced timer bonus - 30 minutes 20% reduced timer bonus - 60 minutes 25% reduced timer bonus - 20 minutes 25% reduced timer bonus - 30 minutes 25% reduced timer bonus - 60 minutes 30% reduced timer bonus - 20 minutes 30% reduced timer bonus - 30 minutes 30% reduced timer bonus - 60 minutes Taxi Driver Job Developed by @Float The taxi driver job is one of the script jobs which will be available for all players of the community. This script is fairly simple and not complicated due to the fact that it is mainly used by new players as means to collect money. Once you are on duty as a taxi driver, you will receive calls from players which will show up on the left upper side of the screen. The call information will include the name of the person requesting a taxi, including their location which will be highlighted on the minimap. You can chose to accept the request or not, depending on your own preference. If you are a taxi driver, you will have the opportunity to set up your taxi fare. Once a passenger has been picked up, the script will allow you to activate the fare meter, which will show as a UI for you and your passenger(s). The UI will illustrate the fare, distance and rate in real-time. Property System (now functional!) Developed by @Mos In the previous development blog we showcased a mortgage UI for the property system. We are happy to introduce a fully working property system that will withdraw the money automatically from your bank account every week. Keep in mind that if you do not have money in the bank, after two unsuccessful server attempts to withdraw the due payments, your property will be automatically sold to the market. Designated properties will be buyable and sellable to and from the server. Selling to players will not be allowed. When selling a property to market, the player will receive the market value + furniture value of the property at that time (if there is any furniture). When buying a property from the market, the player will have the option to purchase the property for market value OR market + furniture value (if custom interior exists). If there is an existing custom interior and the player chooses not to buy the furniture, the custom interior will be automatically deleted upon purchase. Players who already own a property cannot buy another one (limit properties to 1 per character, although this could potentially face changes). The mortgage is taken out automatically every 7 days from the player's bank account. If the player does not have any money in the bank account after 2 unsuccessful payments (2 weeks), the property is automatically sold and the player will not get back any of the value of the property. The property owner will have full rights over his property (as in being able to sell it and actually receive money for selling it), only after he finishes the mortgage payment plan. This should help prevent players who become inactive, hence allowing the property to be re-sold as opposed to stay inactive forever. This will also greatly assist the Property Team as they will not have to manually conduct checks every month. The property owner can put their apartment / house for rent and can only have 3 tenants at once. The rent is taken out automatically from the tenant's bank account every 7 days in advance. So if a player wants to rent a place to stay in, they'll have to pay the rent upfront for the upcoming week. Custom Weapon Damage Developed by @Nikolai We have altered firearms damage to provide a more realistic and interesting situations, specifically when it comes to shootouts. The following are subject to change and are not a final version. Banks and plans for the economy Developed by @Nikolai Our focus, like mentioned several times in the past, is to create a realistic economy. One step to achieve that was to introduce cents in to our currency. You will often find items that include cents in their price-tags so don’t be surprised. Also, feel free to drop 30 cents to a homeless person on the streets, it will be possible! The current banking system is rather simple, it includes chat-based commands but we will look into the possibility of creating an interactive UI for it. Our next plans for the banking system is to introduce ATMs and credit/debit cards. Companion System Developed by @mehad The companion system is an easy-to-use system to check if the added players in the companion list are online. With the companion list, players would be able to add/remove their friends into a list and check if the respective characters are online. /companion add [ID] - Adds someone in the companion list. (player must be online in order to do so) /companion accept [ID] - Accepts someone's request for companion list. /companion remove [name] - Removes someone from the companion list. /companion nickname [ID] [setnickname] - Adds a nickname to the person (ex. instead of ""Anthony Castile" it would show "Anthony Castile - Nick") /companion list [online/all] - Shows online or all companion added users, including their IDs. Chat Language Selection Developed by @mehad We have developed a language system as often times, players roleplay knowing and using more than 1 language. On other communities, players were forced to manually include the language they were supposedly speaking via "/c [Russian] Hey, man.". As you can imagine, this is a pretty tiresome task especially if you're involved in a long conversation. For this purpose, we have created a language system that allows the players to automatically include a specified language which will appear every time you enter the command /la. This means that you will not have to manually enter the specified language every time your character is saying something. Instead, all you need to do is /setlanguage and then utilize the /la command. This will undoubtedly be useful for many players, especially in Liberty City, considering that it is a multi-cultural environment with various immigrants and tourists. Animations Developed by @Float Animations are imperative when it comes to portraying a character. We have attempted to create a system that is easy to access and most importantly - easy to use. As you can see, the UI is moved to the right side of the screen where it most likely will not hinder or in any way obstruct the roleplay you're participating in. In addition, animation may be triggered via the chat if you don't prefer to open the menu. We have based the animations list on categories: gestures, idle, dances, other, as well as favorites which will allow you to save any number of animations you frequently utilize in order to speed up the process and avoid awkward delays during roleplay scenarios. We hope that this animation system will encourage players to use animations more frequently and we are excited to see you use it! Description Markers Developed by @Float Description Markers will display relevant information to any players that walks in a close proximity to the marker. Markers can be created by anyone and can last on the server for several days. Players can also select the number of days markers are going to be available for before they expire. The description markers can be used for scenarios where in depth portrayal of various actions can be displayed, such as blood, broken fences, broken doors etc. A video showcase is presented below: Drag & Carry Developed by @Float Dragging and carrying is something that members of this and other roleplay communities desired. It will undoubtedly offer a lot opportunities for members of our community, whether they are interested in legal or illegal roleplay. Those animations can be used by law enforcement, as well as criminals and civilians. Dragging and carrying another player is done via a request. The other party has the ability to accept the action and therefore be carried or dragged around by someone else. The animations are synced across all players, so when you see someone being dragged in the back of an alley-way, then surely something shady is going on! Walking Styles (FREE!) Developed by @Float Unlike other roleplay communities, we will introduce different walking styles free of charge. This means that a donator status will not be required if you wish to utilize any of the different walking styles which will be available. Although it may seem minor, walking styles are a big part of the roleplay environment and we are happy that our players will get to experience those whenever they like. Talking Styles and Facial Animations Developed by @Float Our Development Team worked to produce different talking style variations, supported by facial expressions. The ability to express the body language of your character through talking styles is very important as this contributes to the overall feeling of immersion in-game, as well as allowing for a more realistic and interactive conversations between the players. You will notice that although facial expressions are not expressed in great detail, they still allow players to customize their character's expressions to a degree. Mouth movement is enabled by default. Hand gestures can be either enabled or disabled depending on your preference. Talking in /low or whispering to another player will not active mouth movement. Talking styles include body stances and gestures which will undoubtedly aid you in your day-to-day character activities. This feature is great as it applies to all members of the community, regardless whether are interested in legal or illegal roleplay. Closing Remarks We hope that you enjoyed reading this development blog. We are excited to showcase next batch of features very soon. With each day that passed by, we are one step closer to transforming this project into reality. We would appreciate if you tell your friends about this project. Our community continues to grow on a daily basis and we couldn't be more happy about that. Thank you for supporting us, we will not disappoint! LC:RP Management
    62 points
  2. The Lucchese Crime Family has operated in Liberty City since the 1920s. It was founded as the Reina family, under Gaetano Reina who ruled it until his murder in 1930. It was then the Gagliano family, namesake after the boss who took over from Reina - Thomas Gagliano. The family’s most known leader - Thomas Gaetano Lucchese was next in charge. He strengthened the Bohan based family and made it one of the strongest ones on the Commission. The family has strongholds in Bohan, Broker, Alderney and Acter, with Bohan alleged to be the strongest faction of all three, both historically and currently. Since 1993, the family has been controlled by Vittorio “Vic” Amuso from prison, through numerous bosses and various ruling panels. In 2003, control of the family was in the hands of a ruling panel consisting of Aniello Migliore, Joseph DiNapoli and Matthew Madonna. The latter became the official acting boss in 2009, with his underboss being Steven “Wonderboy” Crea, thus, officially shifting control of the family back to the Bohan faction. In 2011, during Operation Strongarm[1], both Madonna and Crea were indicted over racketeering, extortion, and murder charges[2]. Alongside Madonna and his Underboss Crea, twelve other members of the family were indicted, including then-soldier Richard Caporaso, also known as "Richie Two-Step", who was extorting Bohan garages and auto shops for sums ranging between $800 and $2100. Caporaso was a member of Edward "Eddy Stereo" Scimano's Bohan crew, also known as "The Little Bay Crew". Scimano himself was formerly indicted in 2003 for tax evasion charges. Caporaso and Scimano, both members of the Bohan faction within the Lucchese Crime Family THE MARANI ERA AND OPERATION ROARING CURRENTS Following Crea and Madonna's arrest, imprisoned boss Vittorio "Vic" Amuso appointed Theodore “Tugs” Marani as the family's acting boss. Theodore's brother, John "Trucker John" Marani was appointed as his Underboss[3]. The Marani brothers were both influential within the Broker faction of the family. The Bohan faction caught all the heat in recent years and Amuso felt it would be a wise idea to shift control to Broker for a while. During their tenure, the family went through quiet times as far as law enforcement were concerned. The family kept their hand in loan sharking, gambling, extortion and labor racketeering within several unions. Despite enjoying a relatively calm regime, during the Marani’s tenure as bosses, Federal prosecutors managed to send both Madonna and Crea to life in prison, following a murder case in which associate Michael Meldish was murdered in Bohan[4]. The Marani brothers also started grooming the next generation of the Broker faction of the family - Theodore’s nephew, Anthony “Tony Wasp” Imerti, was inducted in 2013 and was appointed acting captain of the Broker faction in 2015, despite an initial lack of support from older members of the Broker faction. Later in 2015, in a bust named “Operation Roaring Currents” by the authorities, Theodore Marani was indicted after a five month investigation concluded, charging him with bribery and sending him to prison for four years. Alongside Marani, several other figures in the family were also indicted, such as the ILA Local 1814 president, Ralph Zanese, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for various charges, including labor racketeering and accessory to human trafficking. Theodore’s brother, John Marani, was appointed the acting boss while Theodore was absent. Imerti, Theodore Marani’s nephew, was John’s link to the streets in the absentia of an underboss. In 2016, then-captain Dominick "Big Dom" Iuculano, was released from prison after serving an eight year bid on loan sharking and assault charges. Iuculano’s involvement with the Lucchese Crime family dates back to the late 1990s. He was always a prominent character within Bohan and was known to have vast influence there. Iuculano’s indictment in 2008 was reported to have been a “Major blow” according to prosecutors. His prison term was further extended in 2011 after being charged with loan sharking while still incarcerated. Wiretaps of Iuculano were presented to the jury during the trial, in which he can be heard saying: "And if a guy is late? What am I gonna do, send him a f----n' card and a box of chocolates? No, no... I'm gonna break the f----n' guy's arm if I have to. That's what I'd do for my money." Iuculano formed a strong friendship with incarcerated boss Vic Amuso while inside, and following that, he was set up as the new acting boss of the family, shifting control back to Bohan. IUCULANO’S REGIME AND ATTEMPTED COUP The Marani brothers were demoted following Iuculano’s rise to acting boss. John Marani became Iuculano's underboss, while Theodore assumed the consigliere position within the new administration after his restricted release ended in late 2018. Theodore’s nephew, Anthony Imerti, was made the official captain of the Broker crew. Following Iuculano's promotion, control of the Bohan crew was subsequently passed to Edward "Eddy Stereo'' Scimano, now a longtime member of the crew, with vast support from other members. Scimano used his influence in the crew to further increase the crew’s control of Bohan. This included putting soldier Charles DePonte in the president position of the ILA Local 1814, further increasing the family’s control of the Bohan waterfront and returning it to what it was prior to Ralph Zanese’s arrest. In April of 2017, incarcerated boss Vittorio Amuso passed away in prison after several years of facing heart-related issues. This left Iuculano rather vulnerable, as the Broker faction now outnumbered his own Bohan faction. Following Amuso's passing in prison two years prior, the Marani brothers decided to finally knock off Dominick "Big Dom'' Iuculano from his position as acting boss. Fellow Broker crew soldier, Mark Virga[5], was tasked with killing Iuculano. During one of Iuculano's usual trips in Chase Point, Bohan, Virga disembarked a motorcycle and approached the vehicle Iuculano was in, opening fire in it’s direction. Virga’s gun jammed after firing six rounds, all of which failed to hit Iuculano who only suffered from cuts, but did injure his driver, Albert Nirta, who was hit in the shoulder. Virga was caught by the LCPD and the BCI in a joint task force - Causing him to vanish into witness protection, not before ratting the Marani brothers out. In response, they were shelved and demoted to soldier positions by Iuculano in addition to their prison time which followed the fiasco. Anthony Imerti was also demoted from his role as captain and shelved by Iuculano and his new administration, despite having no relation to the attempted murder. Any direct links the Marani family had with the Lucchese borgata were now gone. Dominic Iuculano's vehicle, Chase Point, 2019 MODERN TIMES Following the demotion of the Marani brothers, Iuculano pushed for a major overhaul within the family's administration. It is assumed that Edward Scimano had been appointed to be his underboss, after serving as captain since 2016. Richard Caporaso, fresh out of prison after his eight year bid following extortion and racketeering charges, stemming from Operation Strongarm, was rewarded for his lack of cooperation with the government, and seemingly transitioned over to Scimano's previous position, claiming the reigns of the Bohan faction. At the same time, the Broker faction fell out of favor with the new administration after the farce caused by the Marani brothers, and without a prominent leader, it ceased as a major force within Broker. Instead, the Alderney faction rose to prominence as the second largest faction within the family. As of 2019, Bohan remains to be the main power within the family, following these decisions made by Iuculano. Although the source of power remains Bohan, the family is known to still have strong interests in several other boroughs as well as Tampa and Miami, FL and Westchester, LC.
    39 points
  3. The Gambino Crime Family is one of the infamous "Five Families" that dominate organized crime in Liberty City. It was founded by Salvatore "Toto" D'Aquila in the early 20th century and was later taken over by the namesake Carlo "Don Carlo" Gambino in the 1950s. Under Carlo Gambino's tenure as boss, the family became one of the most powerful and influential organized crime syndicates in the United States. They engaged in a wide range of criminal activities, including illegal gambling, loan sharking, narcotics trafficking, and labor racketeering. History The roots of the Gambino Crime Family can be traced back to Liberty City's early days of organized crime. Founded by an Italian immigrant named Salvatore “Toto” D’Aquila, the family quickly rose to prominence and became a force to be reckoned with. Under Carlo Gambino's leadership, the family solidified its power and expanded its criminal enterprises throughout the city. The family's involvement in high-profile criminal activities and connections with politicians and law enforcement led to significant control over various industries and institutions in Liberty City and beyond. They became synonymous with organized crime and were known for their secrecy, loyalty to the "Omertà" code, and ruthlessness in eliminating rivals. Over the years, the Gambino Crime Family faced numerous law enforcement crackdowns, resulting in the arrest and prosecution of several high-ranking members. Despite these setbacks, the family managed to survive and adapt to changing times. Throughout its history, the Gambino Crime Family has been involved in various internal power struggles and leadership changes. After Carlo Gambino's death in 1976, the family witnessed a series of leadership transitions, with subsequent bosses facing legal troubles and assassinations. Law enforcement efforts and RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) prosecutions have significantly weakened the family's influence, but they still remain active and continue to be a significant presence in the world of organized crime. Bosses of the Gambino Crime Family Salvatore D’Aquila (1910-1928): D’Aquila was an early Sicilian-born mob boss who founded the D’Aquila crime family, which later became the Gambino family. He played a significant role in organizing Italian-American criminal activities in Liberty City. D'Aquila was involved in various criminal activities, including extortion, racketeering, and murder. He led the organization with an iron fist and was known for his cunning and strategic thinking. However, his leadership was marked by violence and power struggles within the Mafia. Salvatore D'Aquila's life came to a violent end when he was assassinated on October 10, 1928, in Liberty City, during a period of internal conflict within the Mafia. His death marked a turning point in the history of the American Mafia, leading to further power struggles and changes in leadership within the criminal organization. Alfred Mineo (1928-1930): Mineo was a high-ranking member of the D’Aquila crime family and became the boss after D’Aquila’s assassination. His leadership was marked by internal conflicts and power struggles within the organization. Alfred Mineo is notable for being a part of the Castellammarese War, a bloody and violent conflict between rival Italian-American Mafia factions that took place in the 1930s. He aligned himself with the Castellammarese faction, which was led by Salvatore Maranzano. This faction opposed the faction led by Joe Masseria, and the war was essentially a power struggle for control of organized crime in Liberty City. Mineo's involvement in the Castellammarese War ultimately led to his demise. On November 5, 1930, he was assassinated along with several other mobsters in what is often referred to as the "Night of the Sicilian Vespers." This series of coordinated killings was part of the ongoing conflict between the two factions. Salvatore Maranzano emerged as the victor in this power struggle but was himself assassinated shortly thereafter, leading to a restructuring of the Italian-American Mafia in the United States. Vincent Mangano (1931-1951): Mangano, originally from Sicily, took over the family following the Castellammarese War, a violent conflict among Liberty City Mafia families. He aimed to establish stability within the organization and expand its influence. Vincent Mangano immigrated to the United States and, like many other Italian immigrants, became involved in organized crime. He rose through the ranks and eventually became the boss of what would later become the Gambino crime family. He was known for his strong leadership and for maintaining a low profile, which contributed to his ability to avoid prosecution and law enforcement attention for much of his criminal career. Mangano's reign as a mob boss came to an end when he mysteriously disappeared in April 1951. It is widely believed that he was murdered, but his body was never found. His disappearance marked a transition in the leadership of the family, with Albert Anastasia ultimately taking control and renaming the organization as the Anastasia crime family. The circumstances surrounding Vincent Mangano's disappearance remain a subject of speculation and mystery within the world of organized crime history. His fate is one of the enduring unsolved mysteries of the American Mafia. Albert Anastasia (1951-1957): Anastasia, known as “The Lord High Executioner,” was a ruthless and feared mobster. Anastasia immigrated to the United States in his youth and became involved in criminal activities. He initially worked as an enforcer for the Gagliano crime family before rising through the ranks of the underworld. He was a ruthless and violent figure, often associated with brutal acts and murders, which contributed to his fearsome reputation. Albert Anastasia played a significant role in the formation of the modern Mafia, particularly in Liberty City. He became the boss of the Anastasia crime family, which later became the Gambino crime family, after a power struggle and the mysterious disappearance of Vincent Mangano. Anastasia's criminal activities extended beyond Liberty City. He was involved in illegal gambling, labor racketeering, and other criminal enterprises. He was also known for his involvement in the Murder, Inc. syndicate, a group of contract killers responsible for numerous murders on behalf of the Mafia. Albert Anastasia's criminal career came to a violent end when he was assassinated in a barbershop in Liberty City on October 25, 1957. His murder remains unsolved, but it is widely believed to be the result of a power struggle within the Mafia. Carlo Gambino (1957-1976): Carlo Gambino, a cunning and ruthless leader, was the founder of the Gambino Crime Family in Liberty City. Under his reign, the family reached its zenith, establishing a firm grip on the city's criminal activities. Carlo Gambino immigrated to the United States in 1921 and, like many Italian immigrants, became involved in organized crime. He rose through the ranks of the Mafia and became a powerful and influential figure. His leadership style was characterized by discretion, intelligence, and the ability to avoid the spotlight, which allowed him to remain relatively unnoticed by law enforcement for much of his criminal career. In 1957, Carlo Gambino orchestrated the murder of his predecessor, Albert Anastasia, in what is considered one of the most audacious hits in Mafia history. This act solidified his position as the boss of the family, which was subsequently renamed the Gambino crime family in his honor. Under Gambino's leadership, the Gambino crime family became one of the most powerful and prosperous Mafia families in the United States. He focused on various criminal enterprises, including labor racketeering, illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and drug trafficking. He maintained a strong and stable organization and was known for his low-key and pragmatic approach to leadership. Carlo Gambino's reign as the boss of the Gambino crime family lasted until his death from a heart attack in 1976. He is remembered as one of the most successful and influential mob bosses in American Mafia history. Paul Castellano (1976-1985): Following Carlo Gambino's death, Paul Castellano assumed control of the family. Known for his business-oriented approach, Castellano expanded the Gambino empire and formed influential alliances. Castellano was born into a Mafia family, and he rose through the ranks of the Gambino crime family. He became known for his ability to operate discreetly and maintain a low profile, which allowed him to avoid the attention of law enforcement for much of his criminal career. In 1976, Paul Castellano became the boss of the Gambino crime family, succeeding Carlo Gambino. Under his leadership, the family focused on a wide range of criminal activities, including traditional Mafia rackets such as loan-sharking, illegal gambling, labor racketeering, and drug trafficking. He was known for his conservative and business-like approach to organized crime, which included investing in legitimate businesses and avoiding the use of violence whenever possible. However, Castellano's leadership style also brought about conflicts and divisions within the Mafia. His approach differed from the traditional Mafia code, which emphasized loyalty and respect. This led to tensions with other mobsters, including John Gotti, who saw Castellano's leadership as a threat to the traditional ways of the Mafia. On December 16, 1985, Paul Castellano and his underboss Thomas Bilotti were gunned down in a hit organized by John Gotti and other members of the Gambino crime family. This brazen assassination marked the end of Castellano's leadership and the beginning of Gotti's reign as the boss of the family. Paul Castellano's life and death are significant in the history of the American Mafia and represent a transition from the old guard of mob bosses to a new generation of leaders like John Gotti. John Gotti (1985-2002): John Gotti, often referred to as the "Teflon Don," rose to power through an audacious assassination of Paul Castellano. Gotti's flamboyant personality and media presence brought both notoriety and increased scrutiny to the family. John Gotti is perhaps one of the most famous and influential mobsters in American history, known for his charisma, cunning, and ruthlessness. He became the boss of the Gambino crime family in 1985 after orchestrating the assassination of Paul Castellano, the former boss. Gotti's leadership marked a shift in the Mafia's culture, as he was more visible and confrontational than his predecessors. Under Gotti's leadership, the Gambino crime family was involved in various criminal enterprises, including illegal gambling, drug trafficking, loan-sharking, and labor racketeering. Gotti's charisma and ability to evade convictions in court earned him the nickname "The Teflon Don," as he seemed immune to legal consequences despite being the target of numerous prosecutions. However, Gotti's criminal activities eventually caught up with him. In 1992, he was convicted on multiple charges, including murder, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was sent to the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, where he remained incarcerated until his death in 2002. Peter Gotti (2002-2011): After John Gotti's imprisonment, his brother Peter Gotti took over as the boss of the Gambino Crime Family. However, his reign was marred by internal conflicts and an aggressive law enforcement crackdown on the Mafia. Peter Gotti had a criminal history and was involved in various illicit activities associated with organized crime. He operated in the shadow of his more famous and powerful brother, John Gotti, who was known for his charisma and notoriety. In 2002, after the death of his brother John Gotti, Peter Gotti briefly assumed leadership of the Gambino crime family. However, his reign was short-lived, and he faced legal troubles and internal strife within the family. Peter Gotti was indicted on multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, and extortion. In 2004, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His conviction marked the end of his criminal career and his leadership of the Gambino crime family. Peter Gotti remained in prison until his death. He passed away on February 25, 2021, while serving his life sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina. The year 2011 brought a series of turmoil and arrests within the Gambino crime family. The void left by the previous boss needed to be filled, and it was during this period that Gaetano Petrarca's leadership qualities and reputation garnered the support of key figures within the family. Recognized for his strategic thinking, discipline, and ability to maintain alliances, Gaetano was elected as the new boss of the Gambino crime family. Petrarca grew up in the tumultuous Passo di Rigano region of Palermo, where he became deeply entrenched in the world of the Sicilian Mafia from an early age. Under the mentorship of Salvatore Inzerillo, one of the clan's most influential figures, Petrarca quickly rose through the ranks to become one of Inzerillo's most trusted soldiers. One of Petrarca's most notorious deeds was orchestrating the hit on Italian prosecutor Gaetano Costa on August 6, 1980. Costa had signed arrest warrants targeting members of the Spatola clan, Di Maggio clan, and the Gambino family for their involvement in a heroin distribution network. This hit, ordered by Salvatore Inzerillo himself, was meant to demonstrate Inzerillo's power independent of the Sicilian Mafia Commission. In the aftermath of Costa's assassination, a brutal war erupted between the Inzerillo Mafia Clan and the rival Corleonesi clan, led by Salvatore "Toto" Riina. This conflict, spanning from 1981 to 1983, resulted in the decimation of the Inzerillo family. To survive, Petrarca leveraged Inzerillo's connections with the Gambino family in Liberty City. Under the orders of Giovanni "John" Gambino, Petrarca found sanctuary within the Gambino crime family. The Gambinos, led by John Gambino and facilitated by Gambino soldier Paolo "Paulie Scat" Reina, created a safe haven for the Inzerillo remnants, known as "gli scappati" or "the escapees." As a soldier in John Gambino's crew, Petraza participated in various criminal enterprises, allegedly including the retaliation for the attempted car bombing on Gambino boss John Gotti. He brought his son, Ennio Petrarca, into the rackets, utilizing him as a mediator between the Gambinos and the Sicilian Mafia. John Gambino faced legal scrutiny when turncoats like Sammy Gravano and Francesco Marino Mannoia implicated him in drug smuggling, organized crime activities, and the 1988 murder of Francesco Oliveri. The Gambino brothers, including John Gambino, failed to appear at their arraignment on September 1, 1992, forfeiting a substantial bail. After John Gambino's 15-year sentence and the conviction of others in the Pizza Connection case, Petrarca rose to the position of caporegime within the Gambino crime family in 1994. Under Petrarca's leadership, the Petrarca crew focused on various lucrative rackets, including illegal gambling, extortion, and drug trafficking. The offsprings of those convicted in the Pizza Connection case, most notably Gino Reina and Saverio Urzi, were consolidated into Petrarca's crew. The Gambino crime family, under the reign of Gaetano Petrarca, entered a new era characterized by relative peace and prosperity. Gaetano emphasized a strategic approach, focusing on expanding the family’s legitimate businesses, reducing internal conflicts, and forging stronger alliances with other criminal organizations. His connections to the Inzerillo Mafia Clan also played a vital role in establishing partnerships with Sicilian criminal entities, creating lucrative opportunities for both sides. Gaetano’s tenure as boss was marked by a period of unprecedented growth and stability for the Gambino family. The organization diversified its operations, delving into international narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and high-level corruption. Gaetano’s reputation for fairness and level-headedness also earned him respect from his subordinates and the wider criminal community. Ties to the Sicilian Mafia and the Inzerillo Mafia Clan The Gambino Crime Family has historically maintained close ties to the Sicilian Mafia, specifically the Inzerillo Mafia Clan. These connections allowed the family to expand their criminal operations internationally and establish a foothold in Sicily. The roots of this connection trace back to the early 1980s when the Inzerillo family was engaged in a bloody mafia war against the rival Corleonesi faction in Sicily. Seeking refuge and expanding their operations, some members of the Inzerillo family fled to the United States, specifically Liberty City, where the Gambino family had significant influence. The Gambino crime family provided a safe haven for these Inzerillo members and facilitated their entry into the American underworld. They collaborated in various criminal activities, including drug trafficking, extortion, illegal gambling, and money laundering. The connection between the two groups also extended to the sharing of information and resources, strengthening their criminal enterprises on both sides of the Atlantic. This partnership allowed the Inzerillo family to regain power in Sicily and maintain its operations abroad. Over time, law enforcement agencies caught wind of the Gambino-Inzerillo alliance and launched investigations that resulted in arrests and prosecutions targeting both organizations. However, the ties between the two families demonstrated how organized crime groups can form international networks to enhance their criminal activities and evade law enforcement. Ties to the ‘Ndrangheta The connection between the Gambino Crime family and the ’Ndrangheta, a powerful and secretive Italian Mafia organization, dates back several decades and has involved various criminal activities on both sides of the Atlantic. The relationship between these two criminal groups has exemplified the globalization of organized crime and their ability to collaborate across international borders. The ’Ndrangheta is based in Calabria, Southern Italy, and is known for its extensive reach and influence in criminal enterprises, particularly drug trafficking and money laundering. On the other hand, the Gambino Crime family, one of the Five Families of the American Mafia, holds a significant presence in the United States, with a stronghold in Liberty City. Their collaboration has been centered on various criminal ventures, with drug trafficking being a major area of cooperation. The ’Ndrangheta has been involved in the production and distribution of vast quantities of cocaine, and the Gambino Crime family has acted as a key facilitator in transporting and distributing the illicit drugs within the United States. Moreover, the two organizations have also engaged in money laundering schemes to legitimize their ill-gotten gains. The ’Ndrangheta has used its extensive network in Europe to launder money, while the Gambino family has utilized its influence in the American business world to facilitate money laundering operations. Throughout the years, law enforcement agencies have intensified their efforts to dismantle these criminal networks. Numerous investigations and arrests have targeted members of both organizations, leading to significant disruptions in their operations. However, the fluid nature of these criminal groups allows them to adapt and continue their collaboration through various means, including bribery, corruption, and the establishment of front companies. Historical Structural Hierarchy of the Gambino Crime Family: Boss: At the pinnacle of the Gambino Crime Family stands the enigmatic Boss, whose identity remains concealed to outsiders. The Boss is the ultimate decision-maker, controlling the family's vast network and overseeing all operations. They are protected by a select group of trusted advisors. Underboss: The Underboss is the second-in-command, acting as the right hand of the Boss. They manage the day-to-day operations of the family and serve as a liaison between the Boss and the lower-ranked members. Consigliere: The Consigliere is the family's counselor and advisor, offering guidance on matters of strategy and disputes within the organization. They are typically seasoned members with a deep understanding of the family's history and traditions. The Consigliere acts as a mediator in conflicts and ensures the code of silence, known as "omertà," is upheld. Caporegimes (Captains): Caporegimes, or Captains, oversee specific crews of soldiers and manage their respective rackets. They are responsible for executing the Boss's orders and expanding the family's influence in various neighborhoods. Caporegimes maintain direct control over their soldiers and enforce discipline within their ranks. Soldiers: Soldiers are the foot soldiers of the Gambino Crime Family. They carry out the family's criminal activities, including extortion, protection rackets, and enforcement. Soldiers must demonstrate loyalty and commitment to the family above all else. They often have a mentor-protege relationship with their Caporegime. Associates: Associates are individuals with loose connections to the family, usually involved in providing services, information, or facilitating transactions. They aim to climb the ranks and become full-fledged members by demonstrating loyalty and earning the family's trust. Gambino Crime Family Rackets: Extortion and Protection Rackets: At the core of the Gambino's revenue stream lies the extortion and protection rackets. They target local businesses, demanding regular payments in exchange for "protection" against vandalism or other threats. Those who refuse to cooperate often face severe consequences. Drug Trafficking: The Gambino Family is heavily involved in the distribution of illicit drugs throughout Liberty City. They control a vast network of drug dealers and maintain a firm grip on the city's drug trade. Illegal Gambling: The family runs a network of illegal gambling operations, including underground casinos and sports betting rings. They rake in substantial profits while evading law enforcement. Loan Sharking: The Gambino family operates an extensive loan sharking business, providing high-interest loans to desperate individuals who cannot secure funds through legitimate means. Defaulting on payments can have dire consequences for borrowers. Union Corruption: The family exerts influence over several labor unions, leveraging their power to manipulate contracts, secure kickbacks, and control the workforce in key industries. Arms Trafficking: The Gambino Crime Family smuggles and distributes illegal firearms, arming various criminal elements across the city. They profit immensely from fueling the escalating violence. Establishment of Labor Union Control: The Gambino Family's grip over labor unions is founded on a complex network of alliances and coercion. Through bribery, intimidation, and strategic placement of their operatives, they infiltrate the leadership positions within these unions. This affords them significant leverage over worker rights, wages, and benefits, effectively monopolizing the labor force. With their control over the unions, the Gambinos exploit the workforce by enforcing harsh conditions and long hours without adequate compensation. Dissent is swiftly dealt with through intimidation, violence, or blacklisting, ensuring that any attempts at rebellion are promptly crushed. This creates an environment where workers have no choice but to yield to the Family's demands. In Port Tudor, the Gambino Family holds sway over the hiring and firing process at various docks and shipping companies. Leveraging their control over the unions, they manipulate the selection of workers, favoring those loyal to the Family and eliminating potential threats or informants. This tight grip over the labor market ensures their illicit activities remain well-concealed. Port Tudor's strategic location as a major port city becomes instrumental in the Gambino Family's operations. They establish a near-monopoly on the import and export of goods, smuggling contraband and evading law enforcement with ease. The port's sprawling infrastructure provides an ideal cover for their illicit activities, making it challenging for law enforcement to dismantle their operations. Alliances and Shared Rackets with Other Families The Gambino Crime Family has engaged in strategic alliances and shared rackets with the other four major Mafia families in Liberty City: Lucchese Crime Family: The Gambinos and the Luccheses have a long-standing alliance, collaborating on various criminal enterprises such as gambling, loan sharking, and labor racketeering. Genovese Crime Family: The Gambinos and the Genoveses have maintained a complex relationship of both cooperation and rivalry. They have jointly controlled labor unions, engaged in narcotics trafficking, and shared interests in the construction industry. Bonanno Crime Family: While the relationship between the Gambinos and the Bonannos has experienced periods of cooperation and conflict, they have collaborated on lucrative ventures such as illegal gambling, loansharking, and narcotics trafficking. Colombo Crime Family: The Gambinos and the Colombos have occasionally worked together on certain criminal activities, including loan sharking, labor racketeering, and extortion. However, tensions and conflicts have also arisen between the two families over the years. These alliances and shared rackets allowed the five families to exert significant control over various industries and maintain a formidable presence in Liberty City's criminal underworld. Gambino family territories The following boroughs in Liberty City are depicted as territories under the control of the Gambino crime family: Broker Broker serves as a significant stronghold for the Gambino crime family, with the organization exerting control over various criminal activities within this borough. These activities include drug trafficking, illegal gambling operations, and the operation of protection rackets. The family has strategically established a network of associates and maintains a firm grip on key areas throughout the borough. Algonquin The Gambino crime family has managed to expand its influence into several neighborhoods within Algonquin, one of the most prominent boroughs of Liberty City. Within Algonquin, the family exerts control over a range of criminal endeavors. This includes high-end businesses, money laundering operations, and participation in the illicit trade of luxury goods. Through their network of associates, the Gambino family has established a dominant presence in the borough. Dukes Dukes, a borough known for its vibrant nightlife and entertainment venues, has fallen under the sway of the Gambino crime family. The organization maintains control over various aspects of criminal activity in Dukes. This includes operating illegal clubs, running underground gambling establishments, and engaging in extortion and bribery to solidify their power. Their presence in Dukes is evident in the control they exert over key areas and their network of criminal associates. Out of Character:
    37 points
  4. DEVELOPMENT BLOG #3 Hello everyone! It's been almost 3 months since our last Development Blog, but we are very excited to announce our 3rd Blog! As you will see, we've delayed posting this update to ensure that our new features are developed, enhanced and tested to perfection before making them public; all of our features are developed from scratch, which, unfortunately, can take a large amount of time, giving such blogs a gigantic delay between one another. As always, quality is primordial to us, and our server development this spring has been beyond our expectations with some features being made without an initial suggestion and created on-the-go with feedback from our community and staff. Our development is going stronger than ever, and with summer coming up we expect to deliver more features and updates; some unfortunate real-life events have caused setbacks, but as of the beginning of May this project has gained momentum, not only in development, but for the community development as a whole. Recently, our Development Team has expanded to a total of 9 developers, and we are very excited to have them as part of our ever-expanding community! This means that development should speed up from this point onwards and we only hope to continue expanding our development team. As always, we are eager to hear what our community thinks and we can't wait until we showcase the 4th development blog, which will definitely contain some major systems which we absolutely look forward to showcasing. Until then, we ask that you continue to support us by spreading the word and/or offering financial support. As a reminder, all of our donations are spent on the development of the server! Liberty City Map (updated version) Overhaul by @Mos In this update we present our overhauled, in-house version of the Liberty City map which adapts the Grand Theft Auto IV Liberty City to both RageMP and Grand Theft Auto V. This map version is unique to our community and brings a lot of fixes to slight incompatibilities of the old version. Originally, the Liberty City map mod that we ported to RAGE was located at the bottom right corner of the original Los Santos map. The new updated version brings our Liberty City map in the middle of the old San Andreas map that has been removed, replacing Los Santos' position entirely. In the list of improvements we also want to note that several collisions are fixed and that the textures overall are improved and offer a new, fresh, grimey look to our splendid Liberty City. This task took a few weeks of work and also comes with a modified weather file, enhancing the overall look of the city, enhancements to fog and rain, and more. This overhaul should also bring a slight increase in performance, as redundant assets and map files have been removed, leaving Liberty City as the singular item of the map. There are still textures that require fixing, but his map has improved performance significanctly. We have also synced the weather with Liberty City's real-life counterpart - New York City. This is an exciting change! If you would like to test our new Liberty City map overhaul, the map has been ported entirely and is available on our Early Supporters server. Read more information about our Early Supporters server here. Map Editor tool for Mappers Developed by @Mos, @materia and @Captien We are very confident in saying that we are providing LC:RP the most advanced and in-depth Map Editor available on the RageMP client. As it stands, this Map Editor is used exclusively by our talented Mapping Team and is currently on a separate server dedicated to mapping and map projects. So far, our Mapping Team has been working tirelessly to provide the community with the most detailed and unique interiors. The change of environment from West to East Coast has been no easy feat, and our mappers have been on the frontlines of this culture change; as we've taken the enormous task of turning a previously unusable map from a different game as a GTA V RageMP roleplay server, we are forced to create interiors for our factions and institutions from absolute zero, and immense efforts have been put into providing interiors for our most critical legal factions, with some projects being the Liberty City Police Department HQ, the Fire Department of Liberty City HQ, and also a range of apartments and complex interiors that will be used as assets in the future. Mappers now have absolute freedom and their only requirement is creativity, as the map creation process along with interior mapping is now fast and efficient through the in-house Map Editor, making 3rd party software relatively obsolete; just as a secondary advantage for more advanced mapping tasks. Mappers can also work together in pairs or in teams to finish greater projects faster. If you are creative enough and enjoy creating beautiful environments, do not hesitate to inquire and join our Mapping Team. If you wish to join our Mapping Team contact our Mapping Team Leader, @Crunchy. Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) work in progress Developed by @xanx We've long discussed about solutions regarding the Mobile Data Terminal and its implementation for our law enforcement and legal factions, with options being the in-game implementation or a separate browser database; our incredibly talented @xanx, however, found the perfection solution to this problem by developing an integrated Mobile Data Terminal that will work both in a browser and will be accessible in-game through the RageMP platform! The platform so far is phenomenal both visually and in terms of features, and a titanic amount of work has been put into an elaborate and sophisticated tool that will relieve our law enforcement factions of forum-work while creating something beyond a basic Mobile Data Terminal solely used for charging individuals and issuing fines. As it stands, our Mobile Data Terminal can create logs, register character cautions and notes, upload images for each unique character, look up: names, addresses, vehicles, warrants and APBs, custom logs, and more! It will even display various statistics on the home page that are updated in real time where government agencies may monitor the efforts of law enforcement, and may pursue various strategies to reduce crime, increase or decrease faction budgets, develop laws and policies based on the data... The options are endless, and the MDT developed by @xanx is a phenomenal addition to our community. User Control Panel (UCP) revision 2 Developed by @Divergent The User Control Panel is the most essential tool to manage a heavy-roleplay community and plays a crucial role in improving the user experience, managing the community and providing an outlet for players to access in-game information. We are very happy to say that the User Control Panel has seen the most progress so far and we are very satisified with the look and features currently available. Just as every other development project, the User Control Panel has been done from complete scratch and is mostly complete! Currently, some revisions and fixes are being done but the UCP is as good as finished, and its implementation will made fully to our database soon. From a suggestion that was concluded approximately 2 months ago, you guys expressed your interest in moving some administration-related bureaucracy to the UCP for easier access and cleaner forums; player reports, faction reports, staff reports, bug reports as well as ban appeals, all have been moved to the User Control Panel. This is, as far as we are aware, something that has never been done before in any other roleplay community, and it's an experiment we're looking forward to see the results of. If this will greatly improve our bureaucracy and alleviate some community problems, we cannot know until we see the results, but we look forward to it! As we are a heavy-roleplay community, the application process will be the only way to access our server and the User Control Panel will host our server applications. We took some decisions regarding the process itself and the questions players would have to answer in order to pass; while we do not want to create an extensive application that will take a long amount of time to complete, it will consist of our server rules and information from our In-Character history and lore and our community guides, as mentioned in the introduction of this Development Blog. Customizable Chat Developed by @materia It goes without saying that as a text-based roleplay server our chat system is indispensable. Other communities currently offer limited options regarding their chat system, however, we reached the conclusion that we should not have a fixed system for our chat and give our players full customization options regarding text displayed in the chat. As such, you will be given options to modify everything you like in terms of text, from stroke, to shadow, size, page size, width, and so on! Attention Calling Actions (/to, /meto, and more) Developed by @materia One of our most recent suggestions was to implement chat commands that are targeted towards certain players if roleplaying in crowded areas to minimize confusion and misinterpretation of chat by players who are not engaged in it. The implementation of this feature has been one of the fastest so far, making this the first suggestion accepted, developed and finished in the same day. You will now be able to direct chat commands to players using their ID and a chat message: /to [ID] [message] for normal tone and range /tolow [ID] [message] for quiet tone and lowest range /toshout [ID] [message] for loud tone and highest range Property Purchase and Mortgages UI Developed by @xanx and @Mos One of our major design decisions was to change the way properties are bought by players and how we can make them accessible for everyone. You will now be given the ability to get a house regardless if you don't have the money for it through our brand new mortgage system: if your budget will not cover the full cost of a property price, you will be given the ability to put down a down payment of the initial price and may be increased as much you like, allowing you to cover the rest of the payment through weekly payments. The higher the down payment, the lesser the weekly payments and less frequent. Such a system would of course require some development, and we are glad to show you our completed mortgage UI which will be linked with the property system that we're working on! LCPD Online work in progress Developed by @Samuel "LCPD Online" will become a term used interchangeably through in-character and out-of-character conversations. The LCPD has (and plans to) to develop front facing and department facing resources to make our department realistic and technologically advanced. One of the completed features of LCPD Online is a breast-bar system that has replaced the traditional forum avatar for the LCPD forums. This breast bar is an edit of HTML templates and CSS to display a name bar, badge and specific ribbons for each individual officer. This unique approach to profile columns on the LCPD forums allows for LCPD members to recognize one another at a level never achieved before. No longer is it simply the rank, it's a display of accomplishments and longevity. This is one of many features that will benefit our department and build a pleasing NYPD aesthetic. Driving Licenses and Tests Developed by @Captien The driving examination has been a heated debate among members of our community, with some advocating for the removal of such a system and vice-versa. We've decided to keep the driving examination but put our own LC:RP twist to the process of getting licensed to drive. We are excited to introduce our new DMV system, shown below! Through the DMV, you will be able to get multiple types of licenses, such as: Class Driver Junior - Ability to drive passenger vehicles and trucks with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) of 10,000 lbs. or less but with a class D licensed person as a passenger. Class Driver - Ability to drive passenger vehicles and trucks with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) of 26,000 lbs. or less. Class Motorcycle Junior - Ability to drive all kind of motorcycles but under supervision by a class D/M licensed person. Class Motorcycle - Ability to drive all kind of motorcycles. Class Economical - Ability to drive passenger vehicles and trucks with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) of 26,000 lbs. or less. Also for-hire vehicles that carry 14 passengers or less. Requires D class license. Class Commercial - Ability to drive passenger vehicles and trucks with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) of 26,000 lbs. or less depending on endorsements and restrictions. Requires D class license. Each driving test will be unique in its own way and we're also looking into the possibility of turning the automated DMV system into a player-driven business / company after launch, so it will stay automated until we finish development for the company system. Currently, the automated system can detect excessive speeding, damage detection, not turning on the left/right indicators when taking a turn, burnouts, driving on the wrong lane and driving on pavements. The DMV system is still a work in progress and is already available on the Early Access server for testing. Note: The NPC you see here will be replaced with a checkpoint. Statistics, Time Played Counter and AFK system Developed by @Captien and @materia Our second most recent development update was to implement player statistics in-game for every unique character (/stats), which would log various information of the character as well as include our leveling system which would be linked to our play-time counter and the AFK system which was added concurrently to the statistics update. The AFK time will be tracked regardless if the user is tabbed out of the game or not and will easily detect if users are not actively playing, meaning that it will not increase the 'time played' counter. Leveling up does not grant any specific in-game perks (such as strength or health) but as soon as we decide on a reward system based on playtime, we'll either announce it in the next community update or development blog. We're already working on such a reward system, but is still a major work-in-progress and the pros and cons are still being taken into consideration. New Radar, HUD Information and Speedometer Developed by @materia and @Mos Having implemented the Liberty City map the first time, we quickly realized that the drastic change in the map made most players that are very familiar with the obsolete Los Santos map and were entirely unfamiliar with the new environment that we're trying to implement. We quickly solved this problem: we replaced the default map that was adapted to the GTA V style with an improved map that contains the boroughs, all localities, and street names, and to complement this we've also updated our new map with an indicator of the bottom right, showing the direction of travel and the area zone. To further improve the quality of our HUD we saw no reason not to create a speedometer and a fuel indicator for vehicles that looks clean, simple, fits our color scheme and doesn't obstruct any other information or textures. Players List Developed by @Ore and @Mos A small update but an important one nonetheless is our player list, which has been requested for a long time for our Early Supporters server and will be ported on server release. The key for our player list has been mapped to ( ` ), which will show the list of online players with their ID on the far-left, followed by their name, and in the far-right their level. You will be able to see the total amount of online players at the top. Improved Character Selector and Character Creator Developed by @xanx Following internal feedback, we enhanced our character selector and creator User-Interface. The page will now be linked in real-time to our User Control Panel, displaying user information and more importantly news updates that will not only be posted on the forum but on the main page of the UCP also. The current selector will display available character names and money, specifically money deposited in the bank and money in-hand along with the character level. Creating a character has been simplified, you would have to click on an empty slot which will redirect you to the character creation system. The system is very user-friendly and is composed of sliders with a couple of different menus on the top to select from. We want our character creation and selection system to be as modern, attractive and competitive as possible, and we hope the current one exceeds your expectations! Custom EUP for legal official factions Credits to the LC:RP Modding Team (LCPD), @Louie (LCPD) and @Weatherguy (FDLC) We've also seen great progress on behalf of our talented Modding Team who have been working on critical faction mods and uniforms, with basic uniforms for the Liberty City Police Department and the Fire Department of Liberty City being already complete. These mods will serve as the 'default' uniforms, with many more mods that replicate different functions for these two factions still underway. The Liberty City Police Department patrol uniform is complete, with short and long-sleeve variants available, jackets, caps, and a white command variant being available, including badges for every rank presentin the LCPD hierarchy. The FDLC has received the EMS command and outwear, with firefighting uniforms, CBRN, and stand-by uniforms to come in the following months. The LCPD can expect tactical mods in the future (vests, helmets, etc.) and more assets such as badges and holsters for detectives. Various texture modifications for both the FDLC and LCPD will be made to adapt the current vehicle pack to our factions' logos and branding. Many more uniform variants are on the agenda based on real counterparts of the FDNY and NYPD, but we are currently focusing on the most crucial ones. It's our objective to have great diversity in mods to enhance immersion, and we will update you as soon as we release more! Minor updates but worth mentioning: Synced weather and time based on NY. Major cleaning for server-side and client-side with improved performance. Vehicle engine and light state controller. Optimized login system. Disabled instant kill with gun melee.
    36 points
  5. DEVELOPMENT BLOG #5 Hello everyone! We would first like to begin by thanking all of you for the financial and moral support throughout our journey. You are the reason why this project is up and running, and we are determined to create this project in a timely manner. For those of you who are not yet aware, LCRP will be releasing in 2022. Whilst we prefer to to make the exact date/period public, we have planned it and are working tirelessly in order to achieve that goal. To reassure you all, you will not have to wait another year for LCRP to become reality We would also like to announce that we are changing our approach when it comes to publishing development updates. You, our community, clearly expressed your desire to see more frequent and smaller development updates than larger ones. As we've said times and times again, this community exists thanks to you and we will respect your decision! To update you on our community affairs, we have recently partnered with a prominent Romanian roleplay community (RO-RP) with the purpose of exchanging ideas and helping each other where possible. We thank our partners for the agreement. We remain open to such agreements in the future. We decided to hold off on an additional 3 features which we planned to showcase. We'd rather postpone their showcase at the moment due the various factors, including competition. Over the next month, we will focus on resolving some of the bugs, as well as improving the map. This will of course be combined with work on features. User Control Panel Developed by @Divergent and RO-RP With our first official partnership agreement, we are excited to showcase what our partners at RO-RP have worked on in order to improve our UCP. Apart from the newly updated design, we are happy to showcase our ticketing system. As you will see below, apart from having a functional ticketing system, we've focused on analyzing the results of the complaints. Many communities did not pay attention to the satisfaction from their players, however, we will be actively analyzing what the trends are and investigate any potential issues. Phone System v1. Developed by The phone system is a very exciting feature that we have worked on for quite a while. When we first started working on it, we used a different phone design and thanks to feedback from the community, we changed it to a more modern one. Example of the first design: Example of the improved design, thanks to community feedback: We mention this because we really value community feedback. This project was built based on various different opinions, therefore feedback will always be something that we appreciate a lot. The current phone offers many features such as: Contacts Messages Calls Calculator Notes Social Media Settings Bank App Email service (allows you to change certain features of the phone) Properties Manager Taxi calls The phone is dynamic which means you can dictate whether you want it to be fully, partially shown or hidden on the screen. As you will see, the player in the video has enabled the option to see the upper side of the phone. This is something that players will have access to. The taxi app is not shown in this video, but it will be an available option to all players. Work is still being done on the phone feature, but it is almost complete. Updated MDT Developed by @Char It's a pleasure to announce that we have updated our MDT's design. We believe the current modern design is a more aesthetically pleasant and provides law enforcement (LCPD) with an easier functionality. This is important as it is the faction's intention to use this MDT for most, if not all department paperwork. This means that most of the faction's report will be moved to this MDT. At the moment, most of the frontend work on this MDT is complete. Once we are finished with the design, we will onto backend work for this tool. As you will see, the MDT provides various types of information such as: persons records vehicle records department reports BOLOs Warrants Evidence Department notices Legislation The MDT has both dark and white modes available, and we will look into adding helpful functions to members of the faction, based on the feedback received. Dynamic Fire System Developed by @Revelt Similar to how we consult with the general community, we consulted the creation of a fire system with the Fire Department of Liberty City (FDLC). We understood from that faction was that the lack of fires in certain time zones was a big issue concerning to the activity of their faction members. This is why we created a dynamic fire script, which may be triggered via the following ways: via an admin via the leadership of FDLC randomly This way, even if there are no admins and/or faction leaders available, a fire may be triggered randomly. However, we also foresaw the issue of having random fire appear with no FDLC members on duty, hence random fires will only be spawned if a certain number of FDLC faction members are on duty. Pet System (Free Feature) Developed by @senti180 A pet system is needed for a serious roleplay server. Our system is simple to use with a native UI which we might look into improving if there is demand for it. At this moment, however, we don't believe this system requires a unique UI. You will be provided with a catalogue where you will be able to select a pet. The pet system allows you to own a pet that you can directly control. You have the following options available: Despawn pet - the pet will be despawned Wander - the pet will roam around Follow - the pet will follow you Come - the pet will run toward you Stay - the pet will remain in a stationary position Sit - the pet will be seated Bark - the pet will bark upon instruction Sell pet - allows you to sell your pet to another player/the market The pet system is a feature that you won't have to pay for. This means that every player will have access to pets, as long as they meet a certain hour/level requirement. This is done in order to avoid overpopulating the server with pets and avoid this having an impact on the performance of the server. Radio System Developed by @Nikolai The radio system is an integral part for legal factions. When we were discussing our approach regarding this system, we pinpointed two important issues: civilians' inability to hear radio transmissions the abuse of radio by illegal and legal roleplayers To address the first point of concern, we wanted to allow people to hear what radio transmissions are being sent to the respective police officer, paramedic, etc. In the past, members of the factions were the only individuals who were able to see what radio transmissions were being sent on the radio. With this system, if you are within the vicinity of a faction member with access to a radio, you will hear any radio transmissions that are being sent to the radio frequency that the faction member is tuned into (which may be several). However, we also understood that this nay not always be practical, hence the implementation of a command which allows faction members to use an earpiece. That way, they would be the only individuals who can hear the radio transmissions. Finally, faction members are allowed to adjust the volume of their radio which will affect when people would be able to hear the radio transmissions. To address the second point of concern, radios will only be allowed to factions. What often happened on other communities was gang members, organized crime and generally a group of civilians (racers for example) would use a radio for their daily communication. However, we also understand that certain factions such as security, transportation companies would require radios, hence every single faction on the community would be able to request radio access, but that will be reviewed and approved on a case-by-case basis. HUD V2 Developed by @YouLL and @Nikolai A pretty simple, but useful feature aimed at improving the overall experience of members of the community. As you will see, we have changed our speedometer to a more aesthetically pleasing one. We hope you find it useful, too. Administrative Commands Developed by @Nikolai Administrative commands will be available to the following teams: Lead Admin Team Admin Team Staff Support Team Faction Support Team Property Team Each team will be able to access certain administrative commands, depending on what their team is allowed to do. For instance, a member of the Faction Support Team may have access to commands that members of the Property Team don't. We will be using our UCP in order to set and edit the permissions of all types of roles. At the moment, you will see what someone with access to the Master Admin account sees. Each of the roles is editable at any point in time. In-depth drunk system Developed by @senti180 The in-depth drunk system is a natural addition to our drugs system which we showcased in the last development blog. Our community made a suggestion regarding this idea and we decided it would be a good addition to civilians, criminals and law enforcement. The in-depth drunk system will allow alcohol to have actual effects on your character which will then reflect on the interaction with other players. We believe that this is an opportunity which other communities have ignored. One of the biggest changes we have made in regard to this is the breathalyzer. This will be a tool available to law enforcement, which means that finally, police officers will be able to get accurate script information if a player is driving under the influence! The current version of the breathalyzer is utilizing the following system: BAC between 0.08 and 0.12 - random effect: tripping over when walking/running, slightly blurred vision BAC between 0.12 and 0.16 - random effect: tripping over when walking/running/standing, slightly/more blurred vision BAC between 0.16 and 0.30 - random effect: tripping over when walking/running/standing, slightly/more blurred vision BAC between 0.30 and 0.40 - random effect: tripping over when walking/running/standing, slightly/more blurred vision, hp decrease BAC from 0.40 - random effect: tripping over when walking/running/standing, slightly/more blurred vision, hp decrease The random effect changes every 1.25 minutes BAC level goes down 0.01 every 40 minutes. The blurred vision and blackout can be stopped with /stopeffects. However, in order to ensure that this command won't be abused and that other players such as law enforcement will acknowledge if a character is under the influence, the following will appear every 20, 30 minutes: /ame Firstname_Lastname shows signs of intoxication. This will balance the system, allowing the intoxicated player to stop the effects whilst still allowing those around the player to know they are under the influence. Here are the current drinks and their alcohol levels: coffee: 0.00 water_bottle: 0.00 sprunk: 0.00 ecola: 0.00 junk_energy_drink: 0.00 beer: 0.02 vodka: 0.04 white_wine: 0.035 red_wine: 0.0325 tequila: 0.04 Realistic Gunplay Developed by @Nikolai Gunfights are a daily, if not an hourly occurrence on many roleplay communities. We have attempted to create a more competitive system when it comes to gunfights. We plan to to constantly change the shooting mechanics based on feedback provided by the community. We are aware of the fast reloading and will make ensure that it is changed. ID system Developed by @senti180 This system offers fake identities which may be used for different purposes. The 2 current categories are stolen and forged identities. Depending on the type, you may use it for various reasons such as to enter a club illegally, purchase vehicles/apartments/businesses, etc. This is a feature will will improve players who are interested in illegal roleplay. We will, however, limit the number of "forgers" in order to ensure balance. Likely, those who are interested will need to apply, or the feature may only be available to illegal factions. The ID system allows individual players to display an identity document to another player. The system should be flexible and allow the creation of fake identity documents. The LID is a database contains the identities of all citizens of Liberty. This database may be used by Law Enforcement to conduct background checks. The LID may be used for tracking purposes. Just like bank card transactions, "IDENTITIES" are tracked. If a user purchases a house, that activity can be viewed in the LID, same with car registration, etc, licensing, etc. And this is also how one would be investigated in Identity Theft or Identity Fraud. Bank accounts, mortgages, etc. are all attached to the identity. This means that ID documents must be linked to purchases made by the player, such as vehicles, businesses, apartments, houses, etc. This can eb an automatic process where a player purchases a house and choses the identify with which they want to make the purchase. You are able to: /selectidentity /forgeidentity /showID [ID of the player that is being showcased to] showlicense [ID of the player that is being showcased to] We are still working on the feature, so it is at a basic level at the moment. We will improve it in the future. Boombox System Developed by @Nikolai Some of you messaged us on discord with a request to have a boombox system available for the players. We considered your requests and decided to create the feature. As you will see in the video, the boombox system's purpose is to create a more realistic environment with the usage of sound. You will be able to experience sound/music differently, depending on whether you are inside the vehicle, outside or in a close proximity to it. This system will work no matter if you are streaming a song, talkshow, etc. So, it offers great roleplay opportunities for members of the community. Closing Remarks As always, we thank all members of the community for the support and feedback. It really helps us speed up the development process. In the next devblog you can except to see work related to the legal factions framework and some interesting updates for players who are interested in illegal roleplay. Again, we will be posting smaller, but more frequent updates from now on! LC:RP Management
    34 points
  6. Low Income Apartment Building Interior General Information: Displays a poor living condition style apartment building Has an open air entrance that allows full view of the apartment walkways above The lobby leads to a staircase up to the next level of floors as well as down to the basement where the washing machines are Overall purpose of this interior is to display the poor conditions of a low income housing apartment building
    33 points
  7. THE HISTORY The Angels of Death Motorcycle Club (AoDMC) is an international outlaw motorcycle club - also known as 1%ers. Founded on March 17, 1948, in Fontana, San Andreas, where multiple smaller local motorcycle clubs merged. Francis Oldman (aka Fingers), a veteran of World War II, is often given the honor of being credited with starting the club after breaking from the Pissed Off Bastards motorcycle club after a conflict between another rival club. A handful of the founding members suggested the club's name, derived from their former WWII flying squadron's nickname the "Death Angels". In 1930, the Howard Hughes film The Angels of Death showcased extraordinary and dangerous feats of aviation, and it is believed that World War II groups that used that name based it on the film. Much of the early history of the AoDMC is unclear. Decades of parties, drugs, delinquency and total disregard for the opinions of others have clouded & hidden some of the adventures and stories of the past. It is said, however, that most of the rumors of the early days are true. According to Charles "Sonny" Robertson, founder of the Angel Pine charter, the earliest charters of the club were founded in San Fierro, Red County, Paleto Bay, Angel Pine and elsewhere, with the members usually unaware that there were other clubs sharing the same name. Other sources claim that the San Fierro Angels of Death were organized in 1953 by Rocky Paterson, and Angels of Death member from San Chianski ("SanChi"), implying that the "Fierro" Angels of Death were very much aware of their forebear clubs throughout the state. The "Fierro" Angels of Death were reorganized in 1955 with 13 charter members, Joey Davis serving as President, and the smaller, original logo. The Angel Pine charter, at the time headed by Robertson, used a larger version of the "Flaming Reaper" patch which was first used in 1959. The Angels of Death are often depicted in semi-mythical romantic fashion like the 19th-century James–Younger Gang: free-spirited, iconic, bound by brotherhood and loyalty. At other times, such as in the 1966 Roger Corman film The Wild Angels, they are depicted as violent and nihilistic, little more than a violent criminal gang and a scourge on society. The club became prominent within, and established its notoriety as part of, the 1960s counterculture movement in San Fierro's Hashbury District, playing a part at many of the movement's seminal events. Members were directly connected to many of the counterculture's primary leaders, such as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Timothy Leary, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Mick Farren, and Tom Wolfe. "Gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson's book about the club launched his career. From 1968 to 1969 the Angels of Death of San Fierro headquarters was at 715 Hashbury (across from the Grateful Dead house at 710 Hashbury). Over the years, the club has grown to a membership between 3,000 and 3,600 members across 467 chapters in 59 countries. With statistics like these, it's hard to deny that the AoDMC is the largest motorcycle club in the world. Many police and international intelligence agencies, including the United States Department of Justice and Europol, consider the club an organized crime syndicate. Common nicknames for the club are the "A.o.D", "Red & White", "AoDMC", and "14". How the Angels of Death became an international criminal organization is a real chicken-and-egg question. While there's no doubt that the club's activities were pretty sketchy from the very beginning, in the early years, this was mainly small-time stuff pursued by individual members. The structure of the Hells Angels is a confederacy of individual chapters — they're all under the umbrella of the Angels of Death, but they're independent, at least in theory, so even if one chapter was engaged in criminal activity, it couldn't be blamed on the entire organization. With this expansion, the AoDMC unavoidably branched over to the East Coast of the United States, touching down in state of Liberty. ANGELS OF DEATH, A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION In contrast to other prominent motorcycle clubs in the United States, the Angels of Death organization is not headed by a national or international president; it is instead governed by regional officers, who are each chosen to represent a collective of localized chapters at monthly regional meetings. Although the club has no official "mother chapter", the Angel Pine, San Andreas faction has traditionally been able to maintain a preeminent position as "first among equals" because it has the largest membership of any U.S. chapter and because of former Angel Pine chapter president Sonny Robertson's esteem among club members internationally. The Angels of Death's prior de facto "mother chapter" was the original San Chianski chapter, which was led by Francis Oldman until the late 1950s. In 1958, Robertson assumed leadership and moved the club's headquarters to Angel Pine. In Liberty state, the AoDMC is incorporated as the Church of Angels, a nonprofit religious organization. Numerous police and international intelligence agencies classify the Angels of Death Motorcycle Club as a motorcycle gang and contend that members carry out widespread violent crimes, including drug dealing, trafficking in stolen goods, gunrunning, extortion, and prostitution operations. Members of the organization have continuously asserted that they are only a group of motorcycle enthusiasts who have joined to ride motorcycles together, to organize social events such as group road trips, fundraisers, parties, and motorcycle rallies, and that any crimes are the responsibility of the individuals who carried them out and not the club as a whole. Members of the club have been accused of crimes and/or convicted in many host nations. Their A BRIEF LOOK AT AoD 1% MC IN LIBERTY CITY STEPPING UP IN THE WORLD: Any global brand needs a presence in Algonquin to be taken seriously — that's why every luxury label in the universe has a store on Fifth Avenue. The Angels of Death are, above all else these days, a brand, so their iconic clubhouse at 77 E. Third Street in Liberty City was an essential part of their marketing and identity. Purchased in 1969, the Clubhouse has been a controversial part of the neighborhood for years, with some residents regarding the Angels as a colorful part of the authentic Liberty experience and others despising the bikers for the way they illegally hogged parking spots and intimidated anyone who complained. LAW ENFORCEMENT RAIDS & EVICTIONS: The authorities also put a lot of energy into trying to shut down the Clubhouse... or at least get inside for a good search. According to LibertyTree, the FBI first raided the place in 1985, and the city tried to evict the Angels in 1994. None of those strategies worked, but the Club's sudden departure in 2019 after 50 years of tough resistance is symbolic of their decline. Adding insult to injury, they moved to a less expensive spot in Bohan, but as CNT Liberty City reports, their new neighbors aren't excited to see them — especially after a gunfight broke out there just a few weeks into their tenancy. RETALIATION & MURDER: College student David Johnson was shot five times in the head at point-blank range with a .22 caliber handgun fitted with a silencer in the parking lot of his apartment building on December 14, 1975. Law enforcement sources stated that Johnson was murdered by the former president of the Alderney Angels of Death chapter in retaliation for him killing an Angels of Death member in a car crash on July 3, 1975. CONFLICT WITH RIVAL CLUBS: In September 1994, near Buffalo at the Lancaster Speedway drag races, there was a clash between the Angels of Death and a rival biker gang resulting in two deaths, and multiple injuries. As recently as 2022 in fact, two high-ranking members of the Pagans were recently hit with federal charges for allegedly beating a man they thought was aligned with the Angels of Death. Reports circulating in March 2022 claimed that the same Pagans gang was expanding its base of operations to Liberty City as well, despite 20 members being arrested and pleading guilty to racketeering charges. And a biker brawl in Massachusets involving dozens of people left seven people injured later in May. It took place at one of the gangs’ clubhouses. Other acts of extreme violence and brutality to rivals are reminders that the gangs are both ruthless and here to stay. VIOLENT ASSAULT & GREIVOUS BODILY HARM: On January 28, 2007 a woman named Shaniqua DeAndre was found badly beaten on the sidewalk outside the Angels of Death' clubhouse at 77 East Third Street in the Lower Easton, Algonquin. The resulting investigation by the LCPD has been criticized by the group for its intensity. The police were refused access to the Angels of Death clubhouse and responded by closing off the area, setting up sniper positions, and sending in an armored personnel carrier. After obtaining a warrant, the police searched the clubhouse and arrested one Angel of Death who was later released. The group claims to have no connection with the beating of DeAndre. Five security cameras cover the entrance to the Liberty City chapter's East 3rd Street club house, but the LC AoDMC maintains nobody knows how DeAndre was beaten nearly to death at their front door. A club lawyer said they intended to sue the city of Liberty for false arrest and possible civil rights violations. SUPPORTYOURLOCALBIGREDMACHINELIBERTY
    31 points
  8. ———————————————————————————————————————————— FACTION INTRODUCTION LIBERTY CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT LIBERTY CITY'S FINEST Welcome to the Liberty City Police Department's faction thread! One of the main differences between the LCPD and law-enforcement factions on other roleplay communities is that we have removed many of the redundant OOC regulations which have imposed demotivation and in certain cases destroyed great roleplay opportunities for its members. Actions by members of the faction, whether they are good or bad, will leave an in-character impact on the socio-political environment of Liberty City. The community's philosophy: "A New Era of Roleplay" reflects the vision and values of the LCPD. As such, the faction does not have any corruption restrictions and encourages issues that arise as a result to be resolved via in-character means. As you will read below, we also allow our Internal Affairs Bureau to be corrupt, but only to benefit anti-corruption. This transforms the robotic internal affairs seen on other communities to an active and engaged bureau, with an emphasis on character development and roleplay. Instead of only being questioned about an incident, you may very well face challenges by IAB investigators if you decide to be a corrupt officer and conceal information. The faction puts an emphasis on leadership roleplay. Those in command of the department are responsible for managing an interactive budget that affects the day-to-day operations of the department. This provides a unique political twist whilst at the same time encouraging faction leaders to maintain in-character civility and order within their ranks. The general "vibe" this faction is attempting to portray is that the agency has faced tremendous issues pertaining to corruption throughout the majority of its history. The removal of the corruption regulations now allows the faction to either attempt and change its values or continue down the same path. This is what makes the LCPD unique. It allows the faction to be transformed by its members, as opposed to it being a static entity which only promotes a certain style of roleplay. Our faction offers a storyline of its development from 1844 to 2021 with only key events that helped shape the current faction's culture and traditions. It is mandatory information for anyone who wishes to join the faction. Please read the "Notable Events" section in order to gain an understanding of how history has shaped the department and how that impacts the faction today, both from an IC and OOC perspective. LORE & CONSISTENCY Our faction follows the history of the New York City's Police Department up until the year 2020 during which the LCPD undergoes leadership changes. For roleplay purposes, certain events that did not occur in real life were included in the faction's history to set the tone for the department. Whilst we aim to replicate the NYPD, the faction's overall goal is to encourage roleplay over agency replication. We aim to build our own lore and this would not be possible if we have no faction individuality. This means that we encourage all of our faction members to develop their characters as they see fit and help us mold the IC development of the LCPD. Apart from the abovementioned, the faction's goal is to provide the community with outstanding and innovative law-enforcement roleplay. The faction drastically differs from our Los Santos counterparts in regard to departmental structure, traditions and culture. Each of our bureaus will encourage in-house passive roleplay to promote character and group development as opposed to focus only on reactive policing. The faction's goal is to limit the OOC involvement and as such, we don't have a microphone requirement for faction members. Law enforcement on other RP communities has always focused on replicating a real-life department rather than developing their own. It is our goal to reform what law enforcement roleplay is. ROLEPLAY OPPORTUNITIES The faction offers a plethora of roleplay opportunities. The following information is regarding the aim of each bureau and how that differs from the repetitive roleplay in Los Santos: Internal Affairs Bureau Unlike other Police Departments found in different GTA Roleplay communities, the LCPD has adopted a very different approach regarding the Internal Affairs Bureau and the roleplay it provides to the faction and the community. Due to the lack of corruption rules, the IAB is allowed to be corrupt in order to deliver justice. Setting up officers, planting evidence, getting civilians to act rowdy to 'investigate' officers and anything else in the interest of the investigation are allowed. We do this to allow a new refreshing and politically-oriented and power-dynamic roleplay environment. Detective Bureau Investigative roleplay on other communities is often neglected and based on unrealistic TV shows and movies. The LCPD's Detective Bureau is based on real-life practices. We encourage squad roleplay as opposed to solo or partnered patrols. Members of the DB will frequently attend briefings, investigate cases as a squad, get involved in passive RP and overall prioritize character development and investigative roleplay as opposed to encourage patrols, pursuits and involvement in patrol incidents. The Criminal Investigation Course (CIC) is entirely practical and encourages passive roleplay such as mock scenarios, lectures, investigation assistance, etc. We've steered away from the common ride-along approach when it comes to preparing officers for detective positions. Focus will be placed on in-house roleplay and character development. Special Operations Bureau Tactical roleplay has often been referred to as "play-to-win" and "DM-oriented". The Special Operations Bureau in the LCPD will also focus on squad and station roleplay, encouraging character development and removing the deathmatch stigma. This, of course, does not mean that members will not be allowed to patrol or respond to situations. This means that the entry requirements will be much tougher and aimed at ensuring only individuals with a passion for tactical roleplay are accepted into the bureau. No more unmarked patrols, no more 3, 4 man patrols and senseless shootouts. We will put focus on IC trainings to encourage tactical roleplay whilst also ensuring our members are OOCly prepared for the situations they will likely encounter in-game. Patrol Services Bureau This bureau will provide a collaborative approach to law enforcement roleplay, by working with illegal-faction leaders in order to maintain friendly relations, balance, and a good roleplay environment. Officers in the PSB will undertake community projects to learn who the locals are who reside in neighborhoods they patrol, provide assistance to local businesses, and be pro-active in policing. Under the Borough Patrol System, individual stations will be set up in certain regions of the city which will set the tone for the officers you will encounter from these stations. This should provide more relatability of officers, and encourage a lot more passive-role play. Press releases and conferences will be hosted on a regular basis in order to promote awareness of the crime-control activities of the LCPD and give the community information on what is occurring in the city. Training & Information Bureau Having open communication with a faction is typically left on the back-burner when it comes to media relations, and so forth. Our Training and Information Bureau offers unique opportunities to engage with our faction from an in-character perspective with our open door policies. We aim to prioritize the engagement with your characters, and approach media relationships with real world expectations. We will serve to develop our faction members as they enter our faction and throughout their careers as roleplayers in the LCPD. This bureau is one of the deviations from the NYPD and merges the Training Bureau with Public Information into one. Members of the public will have the chance to get involved in immersive community councils, each headed by a civilian president. DEPARTMENT STRUCTURE The faction is divided into 3 sections: ‣ Patrol: Patrol Services Bureau and Special Operations Bureau ‣ Investigative: Detective Bureau and Internal Affairs Bureau ‣ Administrative: Training & Information Bureau, Legal Matters, Public Information The administrative section of the faction allows civilians to occupy 2 Deputy Commissioner positions with no operational authority over uniformed members of the service. The two positions have authority over their respective fields: Public Information and Legal Matters. Both of these can employ a number of civilian staff positions. ‣ The Police Commissioner is the faction leader and serves as an aid to the decision-making process in order to keep the faction well-aligned beyond the scope of the Chief of Department. The Police Commissioner is responsible for overseeing the administrative section of the department. ‣ The Deputy Commissioner is a civilian role that reports directly to the Police Commissioner. They are neither the faction, nor assistant faction leader but are rather roles that are in-charge of certain sections of the faction. They report directly to the Police Commissioner and have no authority over uniformed members of the service. ‣ The Chief of Department is the highest sworn uniformed member of the service and serves as the faction's assistant leader. The Chief of Department is responsible for overseeing the patrol and investigative sections of the department. The LCPD consists of 5 bureaus, each comprising of several divisions and/or sections. ‣ A Bureau is lead by a Bureau Chief, titled as "Chief of X". It is the highest level of organization, and there are six in our faction. Their Executive Officers are ranked Assistant Chief. ‣ A Borough is currently only used by patrol services. It is a collection of precincts in a geographical area. ‣ A Division is any section within a Bureau or a precinct house in patrol. The COs and XOs of DB and IAB hold the rank of Inspector and Deputy Inspector, where as the COs and XOs of all other bureaus hold the rank of Captain and Lieutenant. ‣ A Section also referred to as Unit or Squad is the last level of organization, and the name depends on the bureau, division, or size and composition. Sections are typically lead by a Lieutenant with a Sergeant as an Executive Officer. DEPARTMENT LEADERSHIP DEPARTMENT ADMINISTRATION LAGGAN, SHAWN POLICE COMMISSIONER (( @Deca )) DUBORD, ARTHUR FIRST DEPUTY COMMISSIONER (( @Tudounaozi)) MCCONELL, SETH CHIEF OF DEPARTMENT (( @Soyuz )) BUREAU LEADERSHIP SMITH, DAVID CHIEF OF DETECTIVES (( @Ols)) MADRIGAL, CHRISTOPHER CHIEF OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS (( @Earl)) JONES, JACKSON CHIEF OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS (( @Bunting )) LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME CHIEF OF TRAINING (( VACANT )) PATTERSON, WILLIAM CHIEF OF PATROL (( @Ulysses)) NOTABLE EVENTS 1844 On May 7th, the LCPD is officially established when the state passes the Municipal Police Act, authorizing the start of the Police Force. The force is modeled after the Metropolitan Police Service in London. 1845 On May 23rd, The Liberty City Police Department becomes operational under Mayor William Havemeyer. 1845 800 men work for the LCPD under the first Chief of Department George W. Matsell. 1887 Members of the service begin carrying firearms. The first weapon being .32 caliber double action four inch barrel Colt revolver. 1911 Samuel J. Battle is appointed by the chief of police as the first African - American officer to join the LCPD. 1912 Isabella Goodwin is appointed as the first female Detective. 1924 The LCPD creates its Women Bureau. 1926 Mary A. Sullivan is first woman appointed to head the Women Bureau. 1934 For the first time, female officers are allowed handgun practice. 1934 Felicia Shpritzer sues the LCPD to allow women to take the Sergeant exam. As a result, Shpritzer and Gertrude Schimmel become the first female sergeants and after suing once more, the duo became the first female lieutenants in 1967. 1970 Frank Serpico exposes systematic corruption within the service and claims officers pay bribes to be assigned patrol cars in order to collect cash from drug dealers, gamblers, etc. 1970 The Knapp Commission is formed to investigate misconduct and corruption. 1972 During this period, several officers are assassinated by the radical Black Liberation Army. 1975 Liberty City enters a financial crisis. 5,000 Police Officers are discharged as a result. 1992 Mayor David Dinkins creates an independent Civilian Complaint Review Board for the LCPD, which is disbanded 1 year after due to violent police protests. 1980 The LCPD engages in community policing and creates the Community Patrol Officer Program (CPOP) and order maintenance strategies (grounded in Broken Windows theory). 1994 The LCPD undergoes major changes and develops crime control strategies under Commissioner Bratton: CompStat, SARA, hot spots policing. 1994 29 officers are arrested after an investigation found that a group of officers from the 30th Precinct, led by Sergeant Kevin P. Nannery, participated in various criminal activities such as perjury, grand laceny, extortion, possession and distribution of narcotics, civil rights abuse, etc. 1994 The "Gregor Commission" finds that corruption is a frequently occurring factor, widely spread within the department. 1995 The Internal Affairs Bureau is formed as a result of the defunct Internal Affairs Division. 1995 The Commission to Combat Police Corruption is formed to monitor and evaluate the anti-corruption programs, activities, commitment, and efforts of the Liberty City Police Department. 1998 Lieutenant Mark Schomer of the Internal Affairs Bureau is found deceased after being shot in the head. The incident sparks what many call "a war between the IAB and the rest of the department" 1998 Investigator Jonathan Darkowitch of the Internal Affairs Bureau is fatally wounded after he is beaten by a group of unknown individuals. 2000 6 officers from the 116th Precinct are arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin. 2001 Following the September 11 attacks, the LCPD makes major structural changes in support of terrorism prevention. 2006 Detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa are arrested after an investigation uncovered the detectives were providing intelligence and protecting the Lucchese crime family and their allies. The detectives are charged with 8 eight murders, 2 attempted murders and 1 murder conspiracy, along with money laundering, drug dealing and obstruction of justice. 2009 It is determined that the LCPD's SQF disproportionately affects poor minority residents of Liberty City. 2009 Officer Adrian Schoolcraft is arrested, abducted by his fellow officers and involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital after providing evidence of manipulation of crime statistics. 2012 The Commission to Combat Police Corruption (CCPC) finds dissatisfaction within the Internal Affairs Bureau members due to hatred presented towards them on behalf of other officers. The Commission also alleges that the IAB is group of individuals who seek personal benefit and status, with some instances of outright corruption and misconduct. 2020 Mayor Marcus Hernandez replaces LCPD's Commissioner Dermot Shea with Timothy Wright. As a result, Chief of Department Terrence Monahan resigns. 2020 Commissioner Timothy Wright appoints Brian Turner as Chief of Department, previously being the Internal Affairs Bureau Chief. 2020 The Liberty City Police Department undergoes drastic structural changes. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION Liberty City Police Department Forums Liberty City Police Department Website This thread will showcase the development of our faction as a whole. The following are links that will showcase the development of groups and individual characters within the Liberty City Police Department, although they will likely be posted under this thread as well. The 41st Chief of Department for the Liberty City Police The Internal Affairs Bureau Homicide Squad Special Operations Bureau (Heroes of the night..?)
    31 points
  9. THE SHOWER POSSE The [Jamaican] Shower Posse, classified as “One of the most sophisticated criminal organizations in the world”, is a criminal organization that was founded in Jamaica and extends throughout New York/Liberty City, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, California/San Andreas, Ontario, Quebec, and The United Kingdom, specializing in narcotics trafficking (specifically Cocaine, Crack-Cocaine, & Marijuana), Arms Trafficking, and Money Laundering. The term “Shower Posse” has been theorized to consist of several different origins: 1. The term “Shower” was used to represent The Jamaican Labour Party “showering” supporters with gifts in exchange for favours. 2. The term “Shower” was used to represent The Shower Posse’s tactic towards executing their targets. Generally, mafias resort to carefully assassinating a single target through covert means, ensuring that the assassination is subtle without harming any innocent civilians. The Shower Posse, however, has been known to “Shower” their enemies with bullets, often publicly executing targets by discharging tons of rounds into their target, regardless as to whether they are by themselves or surrounded by large groups of people. 3. The term “Shower” references to The Jamaican Labour Party’s election slogan: “Shower for the People”, which was in response to The People’s National Party’s [of Jamaica] election slogan “Power for the People”. HISTORY IN JAMAICA The Jamaican Shower Posse was formed by Lester “Jim Brown” Lloyd Coke during the early 1980s within “Tivoli Gardens”, which was formed as a proxy for “The Jamaican Labour Party” in order to funnel wealth to the political party through arms trafficking, narcotics trafficking, and prostitution. However, The “Jamaican Labour Party” (JLP), which is in major opposition of “The People’s National Party [of Jamaica]” (PNP), has been known to be a COINTELPRO project by the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. in order to counter-act against the pro-Communist and pro-Castro “People’s National Party [of Jamaica]”. Thus, both parties engaged in a major power struggle, hiring mercenaries from the slumyards of Jamaica to execute political opponents and funnel wealth to their respective parties. The U.S.-funded Jamaican Labour Party formed “The Shower Posse” while the pro-Communist People’s National Party formed “The Spangler Posse”, continuously utilizing these proxies to reign terror upon their opposition and generate revenue for their political campaigns. Lloyd Lester Coke functioned as the “Key Enforcer” for the Jamaican Labour Party for Prime Minister Edward Seaga, often being responsible for torturing and executing seven “Jamaican Labour Party” defectors on behalf of the party. In the process, he was praised by the local community of Tivoli Gardens for providing them with food, water, and electricity through the assistance of Prime Minister Edward Seaga. Eventually, he was known as the “Protector of Tivoli Gardens” by P.M. Seaga, resulting in a mutual bond between The Shower Posse and The Jamaican Labour Party. By 1992, Lloyd Lester Coke was imprisoned by the People’s National Party and then executed via a “mysterious prison fire”, causing his son to function as the new leader of The Shower Posse. Christopher “Dudus” Coke, alongside with his accomplice named “Vivian Blake”, became the main leaders of The Shower Posse within Jamaica. He was known to “shower” Tivoli Gardens with food, clothing, employment, and healthcare, causing the community to heavily support him as the new leader of the posse. To a certain extent, his influential power had resulted in Jamaican authorities being obligated to request for Dudus permission to even enter Tivoli Gardens. Overtime, Dudus had expanded the Posse’s influence throughout West Kingston, beyond Tivoli Gardens, asserting a firm grasp on the region through fear and violence. One report indicates that Dudu had decapitated a member’s arm with a chainsaw for simply “pinching some of his weed”. Dudus, through the assistance of Vivian Blake, began to expand the Posse into the United States, prioritizing on regions within New Jersey, Liberty City, and Vice City. In 2009, The U.S. government was well-aware that the individual named Christopher “Dudus” Coke was responsible for leading The Shower Posse within the U.S., gathering enough evidence to request for his extradition from Jamaica to Liberty City on narcotics trafficking charges. In 2010, the Jamaican government placed West Kingston under Martial Law, in an attempt to secure the region against the armed supporters of Christopher “Dudus” Coke, resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties and seventy-three deaths. Dudus was captured by Jamaican forces during a routine road-block leading to the U.S. embassy, being disguised as a woman with a wig on his head. He was imprisoned within Jamaica for over a year until he was extradited to Liberty City in 2011. HISTORY IN THE U.S. According to The Federal Bureau of Intelligence, over fourty “Jamaican Posses” exist within The United States of America under completely different names and aliases. However, the F.B.I. confirmed that these Jamaican Posses exist under the wing of two predominant Posses: The Sprangler Posse under The People’s National Party and The Shower Posse under The Jamaican Labour Party. The Jamaican Shower Posse began to expand their operations beyond Jamaica, using the J.L.P. to assist with the legal process towards migrating Shower Posse members to Liberty City (New York). Their primary method towards accumulating capital and funneling wealth into Jamaica involved selling marijuana and firearms throughout the streets of Liberty City. Overtime, by the mid to late 1980s, The Shower Posse (whom were initially funded by the C.I.A.) were responsible for flooding the lower-income African-American boroughs of Liberty City with cocaine. By 1988-1989, the U.S. media began to link several mass-shootings to The Shower Posse, identifying these entities as “Thugs that terrorize people through fear and violence for profit”. The Shower Posse were known to “shower their enemies with bullets”, conducting these public acts as a means towards instilling fear into the local populations of Liberty City and Vice City. For example, Shower Posse members were known to INTENTIONALLY “shower” large crowds with bullets, despite only attempting to assassinate one target. The media and legal authorities reported that The Shower Posse were known to disguise themselves throughout The United States of America, Canada, and The United Kingdom by aligning themselves with African-American gangs, often by integrating Posse members into these gangs. By the 1990s, Shower Posse members have been known to “align themselves with black Westcoast gangs”, disguising themselves as Bloods and Crips in order for the Posse to remain undetected. This process continued until the present. By 2009, The U.S. government was well-aware that the individual named Christopher “Dudus” Coke was responsible for leading The Shower Posse within the U.S., gathering enough evidence to request for his extradition from Jamaica to Liberty City on narcotics trafficking charges. By 2011, “Dudu” was extradited to Liberty City, in fear of being executed in Jamaica. On June 8, 2012, Christopher “Dudus” Coke was sentenced to undergo twenty-three years of prison within Fort Dix, New Jersey for narcotics trafficking and smuggling. Liberty City Presence In Liberty City, the Shower Posse primarily prioritizes on trafficking Cocaine, Crack-Cocaine, Marijuana, and Firearms, alongside with engaging in Money Laundering through service-industry businesses and real-estate. Despite being depicted as an extremely hostile and violent organization in the 1990s, the Posse has recently been more "off the grid" due to the F.B.I. continuously targeting the org during the "Dudus" extradition, combined with countless operations that dismantled several trafficking rings throughout the U.S. The Shower Posse does not claim any specific territory, but has a powerful presence puppeteering local sets with bribes, inexpensive sales in the black market, and fear. They have been known to install members within numerous sets in order to puppeteer these sets for profit, and are primarily motivated by "Profit" over "Warfare". They often utilize delivery service industries and customs agencies as a means towards trafficking narcotics through the "Bahamas to Miami" trade-route, trafficking cocaine from the Caribbean, to Miami, and then throughout the U.S. within Liberty City, New Jersey, Atlanta, and even Los Santos/Los Angeles. The narcotics are then sold within their respective regions, before being laundered via service-industry businesses and real-estate. O.O.C. Information The L.C. Shower Posse is attempting to portray an international-wide drug trafficking organization, whose main operations are within Kingston, Jamaica and Miami, Florida. We are NOT portraying a street gang, and this faction is not intended for those that wish to engage in fast-paced criminal R.P., as these operations are usually off the grid and slow-paced. Numerous illegal and even "legal" roles are appreciated, as laundering is a major part of this org. To put it in simple terms, we are a Drug Trade Organization, not a Gang. Modern-day Shower Posse could be compared to a lower-class and less-organized L.C.N., and are recognized as sophisticated drug traffickers, not street dealers. News resources classify them as a "Secret Society" that perceives themselves to be "Untouchable", and they some-how try to act like the Black Illuminati to a certain degree. If you are interested in RPing as a sophisticated Caribbean organization that blends elements from Organized Crime and "Street Gang" elements? Then, this is for you, as the Shower Posse are much more organized compared to street gangs, but are less organized than LCNs. All recruitment is conducted ICly. If you have any questions, contact @Ras or ras4049 on Discord. Guides are available upon request, alongside with other necessary resources. Crew leaders reserve the Right to C.K. any character that joins the crew.
    27 points
  10. “ In Thy light shall we see light. ” espucci University (also known as Vespucci, and officially as Vespucci University in the City of Liberty) is a private Ivy League research university in Liberty City. Founded in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Suffolk Church in Lower Algonquin, Vespucci is the United States' fifth-oldest institution of higher learning and the oldest in Liberty State. It is also one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence. Vespucci is frequently ranked among the top 20 universities in the world by major college and university rankings. Vespucci's main campus is located in the neighborhood of Varsity Heights, Algonquin, and includes 16 schools, 25 libraries, and plenty of accommodations and recreational spaces. Notable landmarks include the Low Memorial Building, which houses the University's central administrative offices, and the Butler Library—the largest of Vespucci's libraries; all are a concentration of Beaux-Arts architecture. The University comprises two undergraduate schools—Vespucci College and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as thirteen graduate and professional schools such as the highly acclaimed Vespucci Business School, Journalism School, Law School, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Vespucci also has a renowned College of Dental Medicine. Vespucci scientists and scholars have played pivotal roles in various scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery of plate tectonics and continental drifts, the first nuclear fission reaction in America, and much of the initial planning and research for the Algonquin Project during World War II. The University's research efforts also include the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and accelerator laboratories with big tech firms such as Amazon and IBM. Vespucci is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the country to grant the M.D. degree. The University also annually administers the Pulitzer Prize. With over 14.5 million volumes, Vespucci University Libraries is the third-largest private research library system in the United States. The University's endowment and annual research expenditures are among the largest of any academic institution, standing at $14.35 billion in 2021. Its admissions are also among the most selective, with a 2020 acceptance rate of 6.7%. As of October 2020, seven Founding Fathers of the United States, four United States Presidents, 29 foreign heads of state, ten justices of the United States Supreme Court (one of whom is currently serving), 100 Nobel laureates, 122 National Academy of Sciences members, 53 living billionaires, 22 Olympic medalists, 33 Academy Award winners, and 125 Pulitzer Prize recipients have been affiliated with and/or graduated from Vespucci University. (( Out-Of-Character Information )) Vespucci University is a faction based on the real-life Columbia University, mimicking the NYU experience with an emphasis on student life. Activities include sports, social gatherings (e.g., beach parties), student clubs/organizations, residential housing, et cetera. Classes, though not mandatory to attend, are also a part of the experience (minus the coursework and exams). Vespucci's leadership aims to work with faculty to create an engaging environment for students who choose to attend classes; the end goal is to reinvent the typical lecture into something enjoyable for all! Those interested in joining the faction as a student can expect a variety of opportunities available to develop their character in any way imaginable, such as internship and work-study programs. The idea behind these programs is to facilitate cross-faction roleplay among the likes of the LCPD and other legal agencies/businesses and steer student characters towards a path they may take once their time in the faction has ended. Members will be given full autonomy on when their character graduates, whether they graduated with honors, et cetera. All student characters should be mindful that Vespucci is a prestigious school (akin to Ivies such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale) and its students would have put a considerable amount of effort into getting accepted, so actively pursuing a life of crime while enrolled would be counterintuitive. However, we have no current plans to blanket ban any form of roleplay, as in line with LCRP's view of less OOC oversight. The faction also aims to approach faculty characters with the understanding that while they are playing a supporting role to the students, they are, and should be acknowledged as the backbone of the University. Those wishing to contribute as a faculty member can expect plenty of roleplay opportunities, too, including faculty functions, access to recreational services, liaising with various agencies/businesses and the local community, mentoring students outside of the classroom, and so on. Prospective faculty are also encouraged to develop a life for their character outside of the work environment to increase their longevity in the faction; one-offs solely created for the educational aspect may find their interest waning unless said character has a deeper purpose and set goals/motivations. IMPORTANT LINKS: ♚ Vespucci University's Discord Server ♚ Note: Join to receive updates and learn more about the inner workings of the faction, etc. History/Notable Events Vespucci's history predates its founding by fifty years, with an early proponent having written to the Church of England, "Liberty is the centre of English-America and a fit place for a Colledge." However, it was not until the founding of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1746 that the City of Liberty considered establishing a college of its own. Thus later that year, an act was passed by the general assembly of Liberty to raise funds for the foundation of the soon-to-be King's College. At its inception, King's College was an Anglican institution headed by the Church of England. 1754 King's College is chartered by George II of Great Britain to "promote liberal education." It is designated "The College of the Province of Liberty, in the City of Liberty … known by the name of King's College." Samuel Johnson, a colonial scholar and Anglican minister, is appointed its first president. Classes begin in the summer in a schoolhouse adjoining Suffolk Church. Johnson teaches all classes until he is assisted in the fall by his second son, William S. Johnson. 1755 Suffolk Church presents King's College with a parcel of land in Hatton Gardens. The College also hires its first regular faculty member, Leonard Cutting. 1758 The first commencement ceremony is held at Suffolk Church for five bachelor's degree graduates. 1760 King's College moves to its new site in Hatton Gardens. The campus consists of a private park and a three-story building with a chapel, dining area, living quarters, and classrooms. 1775–83 Instruction at King's College is suspended due to the American Revolutionary War. Its campus is later seized by both American and British forces and transformed into a military hospital. 1784 King's College reopens under a new name—Vespucci College—after Amerigo Vespucci, the explorer whom the continents of North and South America are named after. The school is placed under a charter by the Liberty State Legislature that declares it the "mother college" of the State of Liberty. 1787 The Liberty State Legislature approves a new charter for "Vespucci College in the City of Liberty," by which the College reverts to its previous status as a privately governed school serving Liberty City. A private board of trustees headed by U.S. Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay is formed, designated "The Trustees of Vespucci College." 1801 Benjamin Moore becomes Vespucci's fifth president. Moore carries out his presidential duties while simultaneously serving as the bishop of Liberty and Suffolk Church rector, and was the first graduate of the College to become its president. 1802 The Philolexian Society, Vespucci's first literary society and its oldest student organization, is founded. 1856 The Trustees purchase the Liberty Deaf and Dumb Asylum on Nickel Street, Middle Park, for $63,000. It is seen as a temporary site for the College. 1857 Vespucci moves to Middle Park and sells its Hatton Gardens campus for $600,000. The campus is later demolished to make way for new developments. 1860 Intercollegiate sports begin at Vespucci with a baseball game against Liberty University. 1877 The Vespucci Viewer is founded as a small, bi-monthly student publication. 1883 The Trustees approve a system for "Collegiate Education of Women," whereby qualified women could take Vespucci examinations and receive Vespucci degrees but could not attend Vespucci courses. 1889 The Trustees approve the creation of a separate women's college that borrows faculty from Vespucci. 1890 Seth Low becomes Vespucci's 11th president. Low leads the College through further change and eventually resigns in 1901 to become the 92nd mayor of Liberty City. 1892 Vespucci acquires 18 acres of land in Varsity Heights for the construction of a new campus. The Trustees select the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White to oversee the project. 1894 A chapter of Sigma Chi, one of Vespucci's oldest continuous fraternities, is organized. 1896 To reflect the increased focus on graduate and professional education, the Trustees adopt the name "Vespucci University in the City of Liberty," with the undergraduate school to be known as Vespucci College. 1897 Vespucci moves to Varsity Heights. The Middle Park campus is sold off and its buildings are demolished. 1902 Nicholas M. Butler becomes Vespucci's 12th president. Butler serves until 1945—the longest tenure of any Vespucci president. 1941 Research into the atom by faculty members Enrico Fermi, Polykarp Kusch, and I.I. Rabi bring Vespucci's physics department into the international spotlight. 1946 Vespucci's enrollment tops 37,000 students—a historic high, with the majority of students enrolling under the G.I. Bill. 1948 Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Vespucci's 13th president. Eisenhower serves until January 1953, when he is inaugurated as the 34th president of the United States. 1954 The Ivy League is officially formed, with Vespucci as one of the eight schools in the group. 1967 The Vespucci Queer Alliance, the oldest LGBTQIA+ student organization in the world, is founded. 1968 Students occupy five campus buildings to protest the construction of a gymnasium in Middle Park West. After eight days, the LCPD clears the buildings and arrests 712 people, including 524 Vespucci students. 1979 The Vespucci Student Council is formed as part of an effort to consolidate activities, policies, and other roles dispersed among multiple student governments within the University. 1983 Vespucci admits its first fully coeducational class, although some women were already attending the University as transfer students. 1989 A chapter of Delta Gamma, one of Vespucci's first sororities, is organized. 2004 Vespucci celebrates its 250th anniversary. A ceremony is held at Suffolk Church for the unveiling of a newly-installed plaque that designates it as the "birthplace of Vespucci University." 2007 Vespucci receives a $400 million pledge from billionaire John W. Kluge—the largest gift ever donated to student financial aid. Present Day Vespucci continues strong as a world-famous institution of higher learning. Renovations are made to several buildings within the Varsity Heights campus in preparation for the 2022-23 academic year. Student Clubs/Organizations Vespucci boasts many clubs and organizations for its students to get involved in; from club sports teams, fraternities and sororities, performing arts ensembles, student governance, and cultural/identity-based groups, there is no shortage of activities available to the average Vespucci student. The following are officially recognized by the University: ((This section is a work-in-progress. As we expand on our list of clubs/organizations, we encourage those who are interested in starting new groups to get in touch with @Neo via forum PM and/or join Vespucci's Discord!)) Delta Gamma Sorority (ΔΓ) Delta Gamma, Zeta Theta chapter, is a social sorority at Vespucci University. ((Further information to be announced soon.)) Sigma Chi Fraternity (ΣΧ) Sigma Chi, Nu Nu chapter, is a social fraternity at Vespucci University. ((Currently looking for someone/a group who'd like to develop this—reach out if interested!)) Vespucci Student Council (VSC) The Vespucci Student Council is the primary government body representing all current students at Vespucci University. The responsibilities of VSC include planning campus-wide events, spearheading initiatives that improve the lives of students, and serving as a liaison between students and university administrators. "We're a team of elected and volunteer students dedicated to bringing life to Vespucci. We strive for equality, fairness, and of course—fun! Our goal for the upcoming semester is to integrate with faculty and strengthen the bond between professor and student. We also plan to work on various issues affecting the campus. We organize events such as fresher's nights and fundraising for the betterment of our borough. We're one big family, and to achieve our like-minded goals, we need to work together." –Henry Hartman, 2022-23 Student Body President Meet your VSC members: University Senior Administration Firstname Lastname President ((VACANT )) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Maecenas sed enim ut sem viverra aliquet eget. Mollis aliquam ut porttitor leo a. Faucibus purus in massa tempor nec feugiat nisl pretium fusce. Turpis massa tincidunt dui ut ornare lectus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus. Consectetur lorem donec massa sapien faucibus. Tellus cras adipiscing enim eu turpis egestas pretium aenean pharetra. Varius duis at consectetur lorem donec massa. Pulvinar mattis nunc sed blandit. Firstname Lastname Chief of Staff ((VACANT )) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Maecenas sed enim ut sem viverra aliquet eget. Mollis aliquam ut porttitor leo a. Faucibus purus in massa tempor nec feugiat nisl pretium fusce. Turpis massa tincidunt dui ut ornare lectus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus. Consectetur lorem donec massa sapien faucibus. Tellus cras adipiscing enim eu turpis egestas pretium aenean pharetra. Varius duis at consectetur lorem donec massa. Pulvinar mattis nunc sed blandit. Firstname Lastname General Counsel (( VACANT )) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Maecenas sed enim ut sem viverra aliquet eget. Mollis aliquam ut porttitor leo a. Faucibus purus in massa tempor nec feugiat nisl pretium fusce. Turpis massa tincidunt dui ut ornare lectus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus. Consectetur lorem donec massa sapien faucibus. Tellus cras adipiscing enim eu turpis egestas pretium aenean pharetra. Varius duis at consectetur lorem donec massa. Pulvinar mattis nunc sed blandit. Firstname Lastname Executive Vice President for University Communications (( VACANT )) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Maecenas sed enim ut sem viverra aliquet eget. Mollis aliquam ut porttitor leo a. Faucibus purus in massa tempor nec feugiat nisl pretium fusce. Turpis massa tincidunt dui ut ornare lectus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus. Consectetur lorem donec massa sapien faucibus. Tellus cras adipiscing enim eu turpis egestas pretium aenean pharetra. Varius duis at consectetur lorem donec massa. Pulvinar mattis nunc sed blandit. Firstname Lastname Executive Vice President for University Facilities & Operations (( VACANT )) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Maecenas sed enim ut sem viverra aliquet eget. Mollis aliquam ut porttitor leo a. Faucibus purus in massa tempor nec feugiat nisl pretium fusce. Turpis massa tincidunt dui ut ornare lectus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus. Consectetur lorem donec massa sapien faucibus. Tellus cras adipiscing enim eu turpis egestas pretium aenean pharetra. Varius duis at consectetur lorem donec massa. Pulvinar mattis nunc sed blandit. Firstname Lastname Executive Vice President for University Life (( VACANT )) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Maecenas sed enim ut sem viverra aliquet eget. Mollis aliquam ut porttitor leo a. Faucibus purus in massa tempor nec feugiat nisl pretium fusce. Turpis massa tincidunt dui ut ornare lectus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus. Consectetur lorem donec massa sapien faucibus. Tellus cras adipiscing enim eu turpis egestas pretium aenean pharetra. Varius duis at consectetur lorem donec massa. Pulvinar mattis nunc sed blandit. University Career Opportunities PRE LAUNCH RECRUITMENT IS LIVE - CLICK HERE!
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  11. Community Update #001 Hello, everyone! It's been a while since we've given an update on this project, with the last being given on May 30th of this year. The reason for this as you will soon come to see, was due to some major shifts in server development that were unforeseen at the time and needed to be corrected, along with a lot of internal restructuring with factions and systems to ensure that when we release we are ready for whatever is coming our way. You may also wonder why this update is titled #001, and this is due to the new state of development that we believed warranted a new line of updates to full explore what all has changed and will be in use when the server goes live. Over the upcoming weeks you will be seeing quite a bit of updates and changes to how the community will function that will be nothing less then groundbreaking in terms of the roleplay we intend to provide to players, and the introduction of systems to accommodate roleplay that a vast majority of roleplayers will not have seen before and will update long-standing dynamics of how we have come to understand what makes a roleplay community. We hope that these developments will bring inspiration to roleplayers wanting to play on the community, and redefine GTA roleplay for years to come of what is expected of a heavy roleplay server. This update was compiled with the passion and dedication of the entire LCRP Staff Team which made this update possible, along with our wonderful faction leaders who's contributions to ensuring we are viable and stable have been an absolute gift. We present to you A New Era in Roleplay. Let's talk about the server development. We mentioned earlier that it would be made clear as to why there hasn't been a development update, and we believe it is finally time to unveil the reason for why that is. After the May update, our Development Team lead by @Nikolai and @Nature determined that the code base of the server that had been in development for over one year had become frankly a bloated mess, due to the changing of teams and devs operating under their own authority rather than a real unified vision of what the final product should have really been. Although a lot of really cool features were developed as have been shown in previous updates, if we would have continued along that path the server would've opened a couple of months ago, but in the long run we would've ran into an unstable game mode that would have been hard to fix so a decision was made to rescript the entire server in a different coding language, along with importing old features that we want while simplifying other processes in order to best suit our needs. This decision was a hard, but necessary one to make for the long-term viability of this community and one that has of course come with costs. At the time there were uncertainties to how quickly things would progress, what things would look like in the end, along with a lot of questions and some internal disappointment. This new product which has been referred to as V2, has been in development so far and is why you haven't heard any updates on it as we were attempting (and succeeding) at getting more concrete details laid down. Our development team comprises of at least 14 developers, who are extremely motivated and passionate at seeing the community get to it's release, and daily are pushing internal updates and completing systems that we can't wait to begin showing off when they're fully optimized and ready which should be really soon. According to the Development Team, we are still fully on track to meet our release date before the end of the year and are confident we will have the server in a completed state for all to enjoy. If this changes, we will make a separate announcement announcing the delay in order to keep you updated. Regardless of what happens, we will be discontinuing feature updates at this time, due to the fact a majority of the features the server will have has already been released in previous development documentation with only a few other features being added for server launch that hasn't already been announced. We will instead be releasing a final development update that will detail new scripts, items, icons, animations, and other miscellaneous work that is being added in on top of existing announced systems. On top of that, any major updates such as when we will begin whitelisting players onto the server, and of course the actual date of launch will be announced in there as well. A lot of development work is more technical then "fun," so we will do our best to show off the "fun," elements of development that you have yet to see, while keeping the more technical side to the development team. We're sorry for taking a while to answer the questions in what was happening regarding the server, but we hope this sheds a bit more light on what is truly going on and that a lot in this update shows that work has been getting actively done in spite of what decisions needed to happen to have a stable product. Any additional questions or concerns will be addressed by Management in a Season 2 of the LCRP Podcasts, set to be resuming soon. Introduction In the last couple of months the Faction Support Team has been pushing forward with the introduction of long awaited systems to the community that is now finally ready for release. However, before delving into all the information about that update we want to say that the Faction Support Team as of the last two months has been lead by me, @Brett who will be administrating the functions of FST until at least post-launch to ensure stability and fairness to the new systems and processes they will be administering. The FST although not a "management," team will have some very important duties and responsibilities that will be critical to the operation and function of the servers new roleplay environment we hope will prove to be beneficial to all players. It will also be responsible for auditing the quality of roleplay produced by factions and businesses to produce related reports to management in order to effectively target server resources into supporting good quality roleplay. It is recommended that everyone stay up to date with FST directives as posted here, as we expect to have a more directives posted before the server reaches release. Now, it's time to introduce what we've been working on! Realistic Server Economy System One of the goals we've been attempting to do in this community is get to a 1:1 or 1:1.5 economic system to make prices and money management in general as close to realistic US economic markets as possible. This means that you will make a realistic salary close to the minimum wage for working in say a Bar, and a Cheeseburger isn't supposed to cost you $500 rather something more reasonable such as $10 and so on. A brief outline of a discussion on this can be found here, but let us take a look at something from that old thread. Although these prices may not be exactly what they will turn out to be when the server launches, this has served as the baseline for our creation of this system that we believe will achieve the results that @Pags a fellow staff member had attempted to lay out from the beginning. In order to be as transparent as possible, we will be posting the entire document put together by FST on how the economic system will operate from a price standpoint. We will be going over some of the highlights in a bullet point summary and provide some explanations below so do not feel the need (although still highly recommended) to go over the entire google doc. $10,000 Starting Money - In a realistic economy, amounts don't need to be extravagant at start. It breaks a good even between what is in your pocket and bank on start, and allows you full access to the server economy without an initial grind. Sunday Weekly Pay/Expenses - An easy way to combat a bit of the fast accumulation of wealth, is to spread it out over a specific timeframe. Having every player not receive an hourly paycheck, but a weekly paycheck will encourage a mentality of smarter financial choices due to having to do a tiny bit of financial planning, but also not have to worry about "missing out," if you are not IG daily. Our salary system also operates on a MINIMUM timeframe of playtime, not a maximum. Meaning, if you roleplay on the server for 2 Hours in a 1 week timeframe. The script will give you the paycheck on Sunday to your account regardless of if you're online or not. And, if you do not meet the 2 hour requirement the script doesn't pay you the money from your salaried job or welfare, but it also does not charge you expenses on your house or vehicle so you lose absolutely nothing if you for example just had a bad week IRL. We also believe this will encourage alternative ventures of capitol, as although the welfare/salary payments are only on Sundays, other avenues such as gambling, drug/weapon dealing, bets, odd jobs, whatever can of course be done to increase your income throughout the week. So there is always a way to make more money on the side, then what your salary/welfare check is able to provide. Welfare vs Salary - Script jobs exist, but the days of grinding for money just to survive is over. Welfare is simply there to allow people who aren't either in a Faction or Business who receive a salary for their work, to be able to still fully partake in the server economy. If you have a scriptwise job such as Taxi Driver, this is counted as "supplemental income," and you will receive the money from that job along with your Welfare Check as it is not a salaried position. We do not believe in allowing people to just go bankrupt for no reason, however if you would like to RP as a homeless individual or a very poor person you have the full freedom to do that as it is your RP story. The money is just for script purposes at the end of the day, you drive your roleplay. Taxes - We have the mentality that all taxes should be something that actually comes from something in use. Income Taxes come from actual players salaries to the government, and sales tax comes from actual players consumption choices. There is also the vehicle insurance which players use with their car that can be classified as a tax, that actually allows tangible benefits to the player character to use. We will not institute taxes on this server just for "realism," but we will institute taxes and tax rates on actual benefits players receive and these taxes will be able to be changed and altered by the City Government of Liberty City. There's a lot of complexities that not even the official document nor brief summary will be able to fully explain, but this should provide a rather strong baseline for what is attempting to be achieved. Some other things not in the document however will be more geared towards businesses which I will bullet point here; FST (RP'd as State Gov IG) will be financing initial business costs and general operation for new players. This means that if you are wanting to open up a business, you will send in a request form to FST for the business, FST will provide all the startup money and even pay the salaries of up to 3 employees of the business (Which will be set depending on the minimum wage law of the server), and the business owner is allowed to keep all the profit earned from the roleplay they provide. Example, all drink sales/admission prices/VIP/services that is provided by a business owner all of that profit is not taxed in anyway and is free to be distributed as the owner sees fit. This is meant to stimulate passive roleplay, and eliminate a barrier to entry for players who want to legitimately roleplay business owners but do not want to spend months grinding script jobs or such just to get the money to do so. We believe in making money on profits from your roleplay, not grinding for money to be able to access roleplay. Restrictions in regards to how this will effect faction businesses, will be detailed more at a later point. FST/Property Team will be conducting checks on businesses to ensure they are roleplaying with the business they have been provided with. There will be an activity requirement of the business to ensure they are opening up and doing the roleplay they stated they will be providing, and if that requirement is not met the business will be sold back to the server and the owner will have to reapply from the beginning if they wish for it to return that is subject to FST approval. It should be noted that FST will only support ONE business of a player, with any expansion or hiring of more employees then the original limit being fully on the business owner to provide for on their own under the normal property process. There will be appropriate forms posted for this process closer to server launch, so just stay stunned for more information. Simulated Market System For the longest time, one of the problems of roleplay has been that there is a lot of roleplay that is realistic, and should have some method of being profitable but due to script limitations simply isn't. Introducing the Simulated Market System (SM) which is here to correct this problem and add more economic dynamics into our roleplay environment. We will begin with it's official guiding google document. Here are some important pieces of information to keep in mind with this system along with what is already stated in the documentation; FST will be hosting forms that can be submitted for roleplay that has been already done, or roleplay that is asking if it can be done. FST will determine the appropriate rewards, and provide them to the roleplayer at earliest convenience. This system will be authorized for monetary rewards and narcotics (such as Marijuana/Psychedelics), in regards to very small operations. Just ensure FST is aware of what is going on and follow all appropriate guidance as we don't want you to attempt to do something that FST will simply not support you being rewarded either due to poor roleplay having been shown, or the idea having too much potential for abuse. We expect the system to be used for both legal and illegal roleplay schemes, but please note it will not be a replacement for legitimate roleplay with other players, merely a supplement to other avenues of roleplay that can be done with appropriate character development and expertise. Appropriate forms for this will also be provided closer to launch. Weapon/Drug Distribution System Weapon/Drug Distribution has always been a bit of a weird system in other communities, however it is our intention to make the system as streamlined as possible and digestible as we can get it. This document is pretty comprehensive in explaining the system, and thus we will allow it to speak for itself. Forms of course for accessing such information will be provided closer to launch. Faction Support Team Recruitment & Promotions With such a wide-ranging portfolio, FST is going to need to ensure it has the manpower to appropriately carry out it's duties and facilitate the administration of all these systems. We will be expanding the current team from it's current four members to ten and applications are now officially opened and will close on 11/3/2022. If you're wanting to be involved in ensuring the operation of all these systems along with the myriad of other tasks the team will be dealing with, go ahead and fill out the application and we hope to see you in the team! That'll end off the updates from FST but shoutouts to @slick, @Karty, @MeowTheEpic, and @Goonbag for their work for helping bring this all together as a team effort. And it is my pleasure as their team leader to promote them all from Probationary FST Members to FST Members. Congratulations everyone! Faction Support Team Application Form Faction Activity Check - Deadline A couple of months back, we did a Faction Check for activity as present here for illegal factions and here for legal factions. These checks were conducted not too long after the last updates that were given, and under radically different circumstances then we find ourselves as we approach our deadlines. We will be engaging in another faction check with all the factions, and this will be the final faction check for our pre-launch period. It should be noted however, that these checks come with something unique. And that is, all factions that set up a legitimate faction thread on the forums will be the factions given faction property & resources for server launch. Submissions for this will end with a deadline of 11/6/2022 after which all factions active and with a thread will be locked in while others who set up after will have to wait until post-launch for support. LCN & Government Factions are exempt from this requirement, but all remaining civilian and criminal factions are required to have their submissions in by the deadline. All submissions about the faction checks will be submitted privately to FST via the following form; Faction Check In Form Note: Businesses are not classified as factions, unless they become some type of a corporate entity or if they are owned as a "faction collective property," (EX: MC Clubhouse Bar) which will be detailed more in a separate announcement. Meaning that business applications for individuals will still be getting processed separately from general faction properties. More on this coming soon! Introduction The Events Team has recently been fully established with it's leader @Gatsbeh and their fellow team members @Celibano, @remmy, @Slankey, @yourlittledaydream, @Gamble, and @WatchingEye. In the past couple of weeks, they have been coordinating efforts in setting up a variety of frameworks for server events that will be taking place post-launch as well as establish a brand new collaborative timeline project that we are excited to introduce to everyone. The Events Team will be taking the full lead in establishing interesting roleplay scenarios for the entire community, and will work extensively with factions and businesses to help design and implement events that will serve for the betterment of the communities roleplay as a whole. The Liberty City Heritage Foundation The Liberty City Heritage Foundation will serve as the Event Team's IC organization that archives events, assists news agencies in producing content, and further the server’s lore and continuity. We understand that there are a lot of events that would in the real world be reported on a local news outlet but due to nobody really reporting these incidents they are simply lost into the memories of only the few individuals that were involved in the RP. The purpose of this organization is to keep track of everything of notable occurrence throughout the server and compile them into a RP timeline of events that will be visible to all players with appropriate news clippings and other information for people to understand the story of Liberty City. This organization will also through a form that will be located on the forums, OOCly collect submissions by any player involved in an event they think would be rather important to the lore of the server or even simply something that maybe should appear on an evening news broadcast that would realistically have been able to be gotten by someone such as a bystander recording the event, or even the agency getting ahold of appropriate police reports, etc. As this is an OOC collection of information, it is the job of the Events Team to appropriately disseminate said information into the IC in ways for the appropriate characters who should be informed are informed without giving away details that there is no IC way of knowing that it happened. The process for these events to be transitioned in character is through the many news outlets that are already present. The events will be communicated through points of contact in both staff and the news factions themselves, enabling these factions to broadcast and produce content how they deem necessary. The Liberty City Heritage Foundation will roleplay as paparazzi, stringers, journalists and tipsters on an in character basis, by submitting these events to the News Agency’s as anonymous sources. In addition to the submissions that are disseminated into the IC world by Events Team, we will also use OOC information to assist in the creation of content around the event itself. The information might also be used in the creation of new events by the Event’s Team. We aim to create dynamic and new events for the server, and your information might aid us in doing just that. However, it’s important to remember that the information we want should be centered around factions, significant happenings, changes of power, and notable events. Here is a quick Q&A section on some common questions you may have; Q: How can I submit information or events to the Heritage Foundation? A: The form can be found here. Q: As a news organization how can I receive information from the Heritage Foundation and what methods of contact are available? (OOC) A: Forum PM’s will be the easiest, however for breaking news members of the Events Team might reach out to you via Discord. If you have not already, please get into contact with the Event’s Team so they may keep your contact information so that Staff can reach out to you as necessary. Q: Can I submit lore requests for my faction that we would want on the server to aide with our faction development? A: Yes this can be requested and we will also consult with the Faction Support Team to aid in these requests. Q: How will the requests be passed from a forum pm to the news organizations for in character roleplay? A: The events team will have a couple of dedicated members who will act as stringers and/or paparazzi to distribute the package of information to said news organizations. Q: Is it mandatory for us to send in media content (screenshots, videos, etc.) with our request? A: No, if you don’t have any particular media content about a specific scene all we ask for is a detailed description of the situation, additionally you can provide relevant chatlogs to facilitate that. Q: I wasn’t there in the event but I have information that could assist, could I send that in to the team for recording? A: Yes, even a detailed narration will assist us and the News Agencies in creating content to report on happenings. Q: Is everything that is submitted going to be posted? A: No, not all content will turn into news media, however, multiple submissions could aid us and the press in creating content for the playerbase to consume. But not all content will be available immediately. It is going to be at the discretion of the News Agency. Q: I don’t know if my content is important enough or significant enough. A: We welcome all users and the entire playerbase to submit their events, that is why the Liberty City Heritage Foundation exists. We will act as a filtering method and deem what is necessary to be passed on. If you have any questions please reach out to a member of the Events Team. Introduction The Property Team has recently undergone some changes and it's membership due to @Geo having stepped down from the position of Team Leader in order to assist in other areas of the community. The new leader of Property Team is now @Neo with @K Money as the new Assistant Team Leader. We would like to congratulate Neo on his promotion, and we hope to see great things from the team as time goes on. The Property Team will continue to handle applications for properties as time goes forward, offering support and advice for potential ideas and the successful implementation of those ideas if can be feasibly done. They will be working with the Faction Support Team closely in regards to matters regarding faction/business properties in order to come to comfortable arrangements that would best suit the player making the request, and the general outlook of how the roleplay community in LCRP is to be structured. Neighborhood Apartment Pricing The Property Team has been working hard to not only provide LCRP with over 800 Apartments upon release, but also with pricing ranges for regular apartments once your character is established and thriving in the city! Here is a map that shows the average property pricing for Apartments! Please note, values are subject to change in the future and all apartments per neighborhood may be slightly different! This is an effort made in coordination with the realistic economy, in order to make prices rather realistic to the areas, while also giving an overview of the different classes of areas excluding certain places such as the prison, airport, and city ports. LCRP Online Property Map @Nature and @Geo have been working hard to provide LCRP with an online map that shows all available properties and businesses! Want to lease a business or rent a property? No problem! Load up the map and filter by your choice! We have made the map available for view, but please note that lots of development is planned and the map will be updated / overworked in the near future! We plan on syncing this with the server and integrating real time addition and removal of properties as it happens in-game! View Map Here Miscellaneous Announcements Ever thought about becoming a mapper, even if you may not have the necessary knowledge or skills yet to do so? To have the ability to design interiors, and other relating objects to your hearts content to make the world you roleplay in feel more lively and alive than the default? Well, the Mapping Team is in need of people like you to help develop the designs of your dreams. Hosted by newly appointed Team Leader @Blair after the stepping down by @Crunchy, training sessions will be held to teach inexperienced mappers how to map and acquaint them with the process of designing great and dynamic interiors for apartments, government buildings, art galleries, and other unique venues the way you always wanted to make them. If you have questions or concerns, please direct them to Blair, or otherwise go ahead and send in an application here! The Liberty City Police Department is now opening for what is meant to be it's final recruitment drive in pre-launch. The faction will be accepting individuals with past LEO experience on other communities willing to learn how to properly roleplay a law enforcement officer. This recruitment will last from now until November 6th, 2022 and will be limited to standard Police Officer/Detective positions within the department. If you are interested in joining the faction, this is your chance to get your boot in the door. Signup form may be found here. A decision was made to introduce the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a new legal faction for Liberty City Roleplay. As our community has embarked on the endeavor of providing a more unique experience compared to other GTA Roleplay iterations, it was considered in the server's best interest to provide the most unique, immersive, and advanced interpretation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that GTA roleplay has seen so far. As the sole federal agency on the server, the FBI will be given a lot of flexibility in terms of its capabilities and responsibilities. Our community has decided to remove the well-justified reticence towards such a faction. While keeping the past portrayals of such a faction in previous communities, LC:RP is making an effort to redefine and pioneer the Federal Bureau of Investigation's role in the In-Character environment. First of all, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be given enforceability over federal law the same way it does in modern-day America. It is important to mention that this faction, while highly investigative in nature, will not be solely dedicated to tackling organized crime, focusing on faction takedowns, or being the last layer of defense against crime. The faction will pursue the same role in LC:RP's society as it does in real life: a federal law enforcement agency that also acts as a domestic intelligence and security service. As our FBI will not be an elite, exclusivist extension of the LCPD's Detective Bureau, the faction will be given intelligence, counterespionage, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism capabilities along with its criminal investigations that will take a lesser part in its activity but nevertheless a major part of it. Secondly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will not be restricted in terms of its law enforcement. It will be given the possibility to enforce all federal laws as they are in real life when necessary, with a strong emphasis on enforcing Title 18 of the US Code. It will also make use of powers it receives in other federal statutes if the situation calls for it. As aforementioned, the faction will not focus solely on chasing La Cosa Nostra factions or cartels, but its scope will be widened to corruption, financial crime, counterterrorism and counterespionage among many other important responsibilities. Having been established in cooperation with Server Management, the FBI does not seek to hinder or interfere with the roleplay of other factions present on the server, be them legal or illegal, and has instead been built with the goal of enhancing the immersion of all parties involved in the roleplay. The FBI will be engaged in a wide variety of activities beyond their basic law enforcement duties and it will offer many opportunities for all factions of the server, from street gangs to businesses, from law enforcement agencies to LCN groups, to interact with them. The faction will have a public recruitment process and will not be restricted to nepotism, networking, or any other sort of preferential treatment in its recruitment process and community members will be able to join it provided they meet the minimum requirements. However, it is generally expected that players interested in the faction would have a plethora of experience in law enforcement investigative roleplay and be willing to partake in a very stringent, highly-disciplined, highly-motivated faction, as every player partaking in this faction will join on their willingness to maintain the faction's strong efforts to stay as immersive and true to its real counterpart as possible. Announcements on updated rules and procedures on Faction Takedowns will be announced in an FST Directive here. You may visit the official website of the faction here, but please note there is still development taking place to ensure it's appropriate operation and not all details will be publicly released. We have been planning this faction out for the past couple months, even releasing a teaser in it's role in a press release earlier on October 17th, as a tease to the public of what is to come. This faction is meant to serve a purpose in the community that we feel for Liberty City which is based on New York City, the largest city in America, along with one that has been subjected to severe acts of terrorism such as 9/11 and others as you can read here, and that still has elements of organized crime with international elements attached is too perfect of an opportunity to not utilize such an entity in the server environment. Any questions or concerns may be directed at this time to @Brett regarding the factions purpose, and current leadership of the FBI Faction who will be announced more formally as development comes to a close. Here is information on the LCRP terrorism policy; Closing Remarks Liberty City Roleplay is fully committed and passionate in getting to release, and delivering a server people have been searching for the past couple of years for. We understand that the project is taking a bit longer then anticipated, but just as Rome wasn't built in a day, you can't build a quality server in only one month. We take our map quality, server quality, and roleplay quality very seriously and until it's all truly ready for release if we need to delay to do that we will and we hope you all will continue to be along for the journey that we believe will be well worth the wait with a great payout. Speaking of paying out, we have removed the monthly donation goals for the time being. We believe we have enough reserves from donations to reliably sustain development up to the point of server release, and we would like to thank you all who have donated up to this point for your support and contributions! If you are still wishing to donate, the options will remain open of course as we always appreciate the support, but we won't attempt mislead the community into paying a monthly donation goal that is no longer necessary for them to do, we're not scammers nor do we do this for money. All we offer is a brand new product, with a brand new mentality of how to approach Roleplay. The only question we ask, is will you stick by us to make this community great? Thank you for reading, and congratulations to everyone who contributed to producing this announcement! And here is a gift to you all from LCRP Management;
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  12. Gino Reina From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Gino Augusto Reina, also known as "Gigi Onions", is an American mobster and alleged capodecina or captain of the Dukes/Broker based faction of the Gambino crime family. Law enforcement consider Reina to be one of several links which the modern day Gambino Borgata uses to extend an olive branch to the Calabrian mafia. Early Life Reina was born on October 5, 1969 in Liberty City, to Paolo “Paulie Scat” Reina and Giana (Sirna) Reina, both natives of Palermo, Sicily. His father was a tenured mobster who ran with the Sicilian faction of the Gambino crime family, while his mother worked in the neighborhood as a seamstress. The family immigrated to the United States several years before Gino was born, settling into the East Hook neighborhood of Broker. Gino was raised in the neighborhood of East Hook which at the time had a vast population of Italian-American families. He had an otherwise normal childhood despite his father's lifestyle and the influence it created. Violence was a normalized aspect of his household from an early age. It was not uncommon for young Reina to receive a smack for actions and language his father deemed unreasonable. This instilled a notion in the youngster that violence and punishment would adjust behavior in one's favor, as well as preparing his attitude to be one of a strict and strong nature. By socializing with his peers, Gino was offered a very Americanized attitude which was a contrast to the traditional Sicilian upbringing provided by his family. By his teens, he was nearly completely absorbed by the American identity. Onion Street Gambinos Reina's father along with several other associates and made members of the Gambino crime family operated within an arm of the Borgata comprised mainly of Sicilian mafiosi. When a deal was struck between American and Sicilian mafiosi to allow surviving Inzerillo clan members refuge in the wake of the Second Mafia War, Gino’s father assisted the Gambinos in facilitating the arrangements. Among "the escapees" that made their way to Liberty City's soil were Gaetano and Ennio Petrarca - two Gambino members who have ascended through the ranks into power in recent years. This Sicilian faction, known by the Onion Street Gambinos moniker, participated in several lucrative rackets throughout the borough of Broker - their tentacles extending as far as Beechwood City and even some small parts of Dukes. The roots of Gino's budding criminal career would come from his participation in the Onion Street Gambinos' nefarious activities. As a young adult, along with several other associates of his age group, would often be tasked with collections on behalf of their older counterparts and in some capacity, drug trafficking. Pizza Connection Despite the rules siding against drug trafficking at the time, Gino's father and several other members of the family's Sicilian faction began an international heroin smuggling operation which became known as the Pizza Connection. Heroin from Southeast Asia along with other narcotics was brought into the United States via Italy, where American gangsters would use independently owned pizza parlors as fronts for distribution. Reina, along with other members of the Onion Street Gambinos, assisted in distribution by making arrangements with several Broker and Dukes based gangs. Through this connection, Reina and his father forged a strong relationship with the Sicilian father-son duo Alberto and Saverio "Sammy Bridges" Urzi. Reina's participation in the narcotics scheme, however, was short lived as Federal Agents closed in and launched a suit against many of the individuals involved. Gino's father, Paolo, was convicted for his role. Although implicated in the trial, Gino Reina managed to evade prosecution for his small part in the operation. The incarceration of Paolo Reina was a pivotal moment in Gino's budding criminal career, solidifying his place within the Gambino Borgata as a person of interest. It was the word on the street that the senior Reina's fall came at the hands of an informant, Gambino associate Harold Roselli. Roselli had stacked up a sizable debt between several members of the Gambinos, including Saverio, eventually leading to the closure of his business. Authorities believe Roselli had been using borrowed money to pay off drug debts and purchase cocaine with intent to distribute from Colombian gangs in Broker. He was picked up by the LCPD leaving a drug deal a few nights before indictments came down on Paolo and others. Following the Pizza Connection trials, Reina was consolidated into the Gaetano Petrarca's faction of the Gambino family. He was taken under the wing of a soldier of the Gambino family, William "Billy the Bull" Evola who operated out of Broker. Through Evola, Gino would be taught the ropes of illegal gambling and become put in charge of a sports book that tracked mainly Las Venturas horse racing but also the Stanley Cup and some other large sporting events. Near the end of the 1980s it's alleged through CI statement that with sponsorship from Evola, Gino Reina was inducted into the Gambino crime family along with several other associates in the basement of a house in Steinway. Shortly after his induction, the body of Henry Roselli was found in the trunk of a car parked in Francis International Airport's long-term parking section. Saverio Urzi was suspected to be the triggerman behind the slaying, however due to the brutal nature of the homicide, detectives involved in the investigation alleged that Gino may have had a hand in the murder himself as a form of retribution for his father's incarceration. Arrest and prison In the early 2000s, a decade into his tenure as a poised mafia soldier, Reina expanded his frontiers into the world of fraud. Reina established a business relationship with an associate of the Bonnano crime family named Edward "Tugs" Marrone. Marrone, first-cousin of reputed Bonanno capo Joseph "Mad Dog" DeSantis, collaborated originally on Reina's sportsbook. The pair utilized connections from the community to bolster clientele and protect gambling dens that existed under Reina's thumb. Marrone was the mastermind behind a scheme involving the exploitation of slot machines throughout Broker and Dukes. Devices were used that could predict slot machine behavior and give users a larger window of opportunity to win. Reina and his associates oversaw the operations in Dukes, assisted by affiliates of Marrone. In 2003, an Irish-American co-conspirator and friend of Marrone's, Bradley Maguire, was observed at a casino in Broker exhibiting what security described to be "suspicious behavior." While playing the slot machines, Maguire held a small device close to the game's screen in one hand while he sporadically pushed the machine's buttons. He'd step away from the machine, returning moments later at a second attempt which would subsequently parlay an initial $60 investment into upwards of $1,600 before he would cash out and leave the establishment. Casino security continued to monitor and record footage of Maguire's antics over the course of several days before contacting authorities. He was detained by LCPD outside the gambling establishment shortly thereafter. Maguire's interview conducted by LCPD revealed he was coerced into the scheme by organized crime figures in Broker who leveraged a gambling debt owed to Gino Reina's sportsbook. Reina and Marrone along with six other associates of the Bonanno and Gambino families involved in the fraudulent scheme were arrested on February 8th, 2004. With evidence and testimony stacked against him, Reina pled guilty to fraud and extortion charges and was sentenced to serve a reduced sentence of five years at the Broker Metropolitan Detention Center. Not too long after the trial Maguire was shot dead in an Algonquin nightclub's restroom with eye witnesses reporting nothing more than "three men in large coats who had their backs turned." Reina remained behind bars until April 2007 when he was released on a six month probation period for good behavior. Sicilian Resurgence After his release from prison Gino returned to the borough of Dukes to be reunited with his crime family affiliates. During his time inside, the Gambino Borgata experienced a transient phase of leadership brought on by the incarceration of John Gotti's successor and brother Peter "One Eyed Pete" Gotti. Gotti, maintaining the title of boss while serving a prison sentence, positioned John "Jackie" D'Amico as acting boss to carryout his bidding. A unique situation was brewing within the family simultaneously in the form of a rise of influence in the Sicilian faction of the Gambinos. Gaetano Petrarca's crew, comprised of the likes of Reina, Saverio Urzi, Angelo DeLuca and Gaetano's own son Ennio Petrarca, maintained a stronghold over the rackets within Dukes. A panel of caporegimes made up of Gerald “Jerry Jet” D’Amasio, John Gambino, and Gaetano Petrarca was slowly beginning to push out Gotti's wading influence in the family. D'Amasio, long time friend of Gotti, confided in his concerns of the Sicilians and his growing suspicion of a power move brewing in the ranks. A plan was hatched between the pair to strike first which ultimately led to the shooting of Francesco Calabrese and Ennio Petrarca at a Dukes bar in 2010. While Calabrese was pronounced dead at the scene, Petrarca survived the incident. The murder of D'Amasio on December 21st, 2010 is suspected to have been done out of retribution of the aforementioned incident. With his reputation tarnished for the unsanctioned attack; Peter Gotti would step down from leadership and eventually pass away while imprisoned. With no contest from other prominent figures in the organization, Gaetano Petrarca claimed the title of boss and appointed his son to lead his former Dukes based crew. The remnants of John Gambino's faction after his death was consolidated under Ennio in 2017, making him the de-facto head of the Gambino Sicilian wing and solidifying their resurgence in the modern era. The Octopus In 2014, Reina and his cohorts were once again under the microscope of law enforcement as the culmination of two years worth of investigation brought about a crackdown on the Gambino crime family as well as members of 'Ndrangheta. Dubbed Operation New Bridge, the cooperative effort of FBI in Liberty City along with Italian authorities dismantled an international operation which sought to transport large quantities of heroin, cocaine, and laundered money into North America and Latin America. Twenty four members of organized crime were arrested, the majority of which were Italy-based mobsters. However, several members of the Gambino crime family faced charges in relation to the operation. Reina happened to be one of a handful of Liberty City based mafioso who managed to slip through the cracks and dodge indictments related to Operation New Bridge. Gino was implicated in pieces of CI reports and surveillance information, alleging he had attempted to infiltrate a Broker based fruit import/export company as means to facilitate shipments to and from Italy. He was also captured on several occasions having conversations with suspected members of Calabrian organized crime based in Broker, though nothing concrete was obtained through said phonecalls. Ultimately, Operation New Bridge was key in establishing that a channel of communication between the Liberty City mafia and Italian organized crime still exists, with 'Ndrangheta picking up where the Palermo mob had left off. "The Octopus" still lives, and its tentacles extend from the shores of Italy to the Humboldt river. Captain With the alleged 2019 promotion of Ennio Petrarca to street boss of the Gambino family, a vacancy was created in the captain position of the Dukes faction. Reina, aged into his late fifties, had led a legacy of experience and discipline as a tenured mafia soldier. Coupled with his association to the mafia clans of Sicily, he was regarded as the obvious choice to take the reins of the crew. Tangible evidence of Reina's promotion came from a leaked FBI wiretap recording captured at an Algonquin steakhouse, wherein Petrarca and Reina dance around the subject of the recent leadership changes within the Gambinos. Ennio Petrarca is quoted stating "... we got to stay with the old rules," to which Reina responds, "It's the only way this thing survives." Personal Life Gino Reina married Julia Greco in June 1995. Julia, the daughter of a long-time and well respected Genovese crime family soldier by the name of Angelo Greco, was said to have been introduced to Reina at a 1994 Christmas party by her father whom Gino had collaborated with in several sports betting endeavors. Their marriage would last until Gino's 2004 arrest at which time Julia filed for divorce due to suspected strains on their relationship. The couple had one child, a daughter, named Giana after Reina's late mother. Julia and Giana relocated to New Jersey after the separation and, despite receiving financial support from Reina, maintain minimal contact. Gino would remarry in 2010, his new spouse being the widow of the deceased Gambino soldier Charles "Chuckie Coke Bottles" DiMenna. Charles and Gino had a strong relationship as they made their debut in the mob life during the same era, and often collaborated during their time as associates under the wing of "Billy the Bull" Evola. When Charles passed in 2006 after a heart attack, Reina arranged through his underlings to provide financial support to the family and made funeral arrangements all while behind bars. When he was released from prison in 2007, CI reports alleged that Gino had begun courting Victoria DiMenna and the pair were having a romantic relationship with one another.
    26 points
  13. he Liberty Tree is the foremost progressive newspaper in Liberty City. Founded as a weekly roundup of current events and politics in of politics and literature on 13 April 1851, the Liberty Tree has notably recognized and published new writers and critics, as well as encouraged notable careers. Today, it is a vibrant print-digital hybrid, and one of the most respected and influential titles in the United States. The Liberty Tree is celebrated for its liberal and progressive politics, as well as the range, intelligence and quality of its writing and analysis. It is read across various platforms by decision makers from the full spectrum — academia, government, think-tanks, media and the arts. The mission of the Liberty Tree's critically-acclaimed writers is to analyze, report and explain the defining political and cultural events. Founded in 1851 by International Typographical Union delegates, the Liberty Tree grew in influence and circulation and establishes itself as a significant political and journalistic voice in the late 19th century with its coverage of the American Civil War and major dailies, thus becoming an official receiver of all war news from the government. In turn of the century, the Liberty Tree becomes essential reading across the political spectrum. Liberty Tree wins its first Pulitzer Prize for public service in publishing dozens of documents, official reports and speeches about World War I. During the Second World War circulation of the Liberty Tree increases from 24,000 to 70,000, despite paper rationing. Throughout the turbulent fifties and sixties, nuclear diplomacy is played out in the pages of the Liberty Tree and takes its highest weekly circulation at a vibrant time for the newspaper. The 1980s are a difficult decade for the Liberty Tree. Although resulting in a loss in circulation, the Liberty Tree survives its 130th anniversary, it also merges with the Liberty City Observer, a weekly title covering the social sciences and political affairs. During the mid-90s, philanthropist and businessman Christie Alexander acquires the Liberty Tree Company, saving The Liberty Tree from near-bankruptcy and appointing Irving Rosenbaum as editor. In 1998, libertytree.com goes live for the first time, establishing the paper’s virtual presence and paving way a new era for the newspaper. The Liberty Tree evidently evolved into a digital-print hybrid, becoming more politically skeptical and publishing long reads, narrative reports, essays and profiles. A new generation of political writers is found and consequently re-establishing its position as an influential cultural and political news print. By 2022, The Liberty Tree’s circulation reaches a 30-year high and its web traffic reaches new unparalleled heights. Once again, becoming required reading across the political spectrum while being celebrated for the independence, authority and quality of its ideas and journalism. Jensen Smythe (Editor-in-Chief) Known for his popular podcast, Smythe Daily that covers a variety of topics from politics to culture and his best selling novel, We Happy Few: Brothers in Arms. Smythe is a critically acclaimed and renowned writer and US Army Veteran. He has spent over 12 at the Liberty Tree, focusing on politics, crime, and culture. Nevaeh Knight (Executive Editor) Known for her watchdog journalism and Knight Watch podcast, Nevaeh Knight is a critically acclaimed writer and journalist who gained recognition for her thesis' on Gender and Newsroom Practices and Women's Voice in Journalism. She's been with the Liberty Tree 6 years, focusing on critical topics affecting all Americans today. We’re looking for digitally-savvy and energetic journalists in Liberty City's award-winning newsroom that values splendid writing, accountability reporting, creativity — Individuals with a flair for words, a hunger for politics, public records, an ear for a tale and the spirit to keep pushing when someone says “no.” Below are open positions in our newsroom, with instructions to apply: Investigative Journalists & Watchdog Reporters The Liberty Tree seeks a hard-hitting watchdog reporter with a knack for holding people and institutions accountable. The successful applicant must be a talented writer and versatile digger who is adept at uncovering and finding stories that others don’t want to be told. This reporter must proficient in developing sources and have a proven ability to parachute into potential political major scandals and come back with exclusive angles and stories. Due to the nature of this role, this reporter must must be an exceptional team player with outstanding communications skills. Lastly, our team is committed to high-impact authentic journalism. We are not only eager innovate but also welcome the new ideas our colleagues will bring. Newsroom Interns We are taking applications for paid internships for 2022 in news, culture and data reporting. The Liberty Tree is committed to hiring interns with diverse backgrounds, voices and visions. Be yourself. Bring yourself. Because that’s the only way we will deliver on our mission to provide meaningful journalism to the diverse communities we serve. We hold ourselves accountable for fostering inclusion and opportunity across race, gender, age, creed, identity and experience. OOC: The Liberty Tree aims to realistically portray a liberal and progressive political newspaper for the supposed 'intelligentsia' in contrast to Weazel News. Those with questions or concerns pertaining to this faction may private message @westford Discord: https://discord.gg/ywDmAuxG
    26 points
  14. The Vodyanov Crime Ring The Vodyanov Crime Ring (Vodyanov Crew) is a minor criminal group named after Maxim Vodyanov, a small-time criminal based in Hove Beach, Liberty City. "Almost every case involving Russians is somehow linked to Hove Beach." Liberty City's Hove Beach section has been a headquarter for a smattering of emigre Russian crime gangs since the 1970s when the Soviet Union permitted the first of about 300,000 people to emigrate to the United States. Hove Beach has been home to a lot of immigrants coming from East Europe for the past few decades, and it's no secret that the area had prominent individuals and crews operating within it. Crime has always been an issue, but also an easy way out for young and ambitious people. The Vodyanov Crime Ring was established by Maxim Vodyanov, born and raised in Liberty City by Russian immigrants. Vodyanov was always a big dreamer, a second-generation Russian who was raised by his Russian parents which immigrated to the United States of America in the nineties. Vodyanov never saw himself as a regular American citizen who thrives to succeed and prosper within the broken system. Taking things into his own hands, the inexperienced young guy managed to assemble a crew of people who began working on gaining a reputation on the streets and in the criminal underground. Narcotics, weapons, stolen goods, money laundering - everything was a potential source of income for Vodyanov and his crew. The group began small but over the course of only a few years managed to rise and assemble a ring of narcotics and weapons trafficking, prostitution, burglary, and extortion. The ambition to grow stronger and get more popular in the criminal underground of Liberty City never died; Vodyanov and his crew are now continuing their criminal endeavors and expanding their range of violence. ((OOC INFORMATION : The faction aims to portray a realistic, modern-day Eurasian criminal group consisting of many Eurasian members that operate in Liberty City, specifically Hove Beach. The faction focuses on various criminal aspects such as narcotics and weapons trafficking along with extortion and prostitution. The faction is inspired by real life modern-day Eurasian Organized Crime in New York. The faction does not aim to portray the 80s Russian mafia and won't welcome stereotypical characters. If your character intends to join and is associated with one or more people from the faction, leadership retains the rights to CK your character at their IC discretion at any point in time. The faction enforces a high standard of roleplay and ensures that server rules are followed. If you wish to join or have any inquiries, don't hesitate to forum PM StefanM or send a DM on discord to StefanM#1911. References: "From Russia With Violence // Organized Crime Has New Accent in New York" by Selwyn Raab, TulsaWorld.))
    25 points
  15. Before I get off into making this guide, please note that this isn't just only for street gang roleplayers. It's VERY common for regular everyday citizens to talk in this manner no matter if they're white, black, Indian, or asian over in the east coast. It mostly depends on your generation, personality, and your age wether you talk like this or not. YEEEEEER! - A known greeting in the tri-state area, it can also be used as a hood call. Son - To describe a good friend or person. Ex. 1 - Yeah that's my son Eli over there. Ex. 2 - Yeah that's son over there Deadass / dead - It another way of saying "serious" or "for real" it can be used in many different ways. Ex. 1 - Are you deadass? Ex. 2 - I'm deadass. Ex. 3 - I'm dead about to punch this ni**a. OD, Odee - Overdoing, doing too much, or a lot. Ex. 1 - Nah don't do that bro, thats odee. Mad/Dumb- Very or a lot Ex. 1 - I got mad shoes for no reason, I need to sell some of them. Ex. 2 - You're mad ugly. Ex. 3 - You look dumb good right now. Bugging - To be tripping or acting up Ex. 1 - Bro them crackheads on the ave be bugging out. Ex. 2 - This ni**a is bugging if he think I'm pussy. Facts, Fizzy, Fendi - True Ex. 1 - That's a fact. Ex. 2 - That's a fizz bro. Tight - To be mad Ex. 1 - Bro, some dirty Bohan ni**as hopped me bro, I'm tight right now. Ex. 2 - Hahaha, you tight. Wock, sus, wocky, mixy - To describe something abnormal, shady, or weird, Ex. 1 - He moving wocky bro, you might have to check that ni**a. Ex. 2 - You acting mad sus. Ex. 3 - He be moving mad mixy. Chucking, fronting, capping - To lie or be false about something. Ex. 1 - Stop chucking bro, you got no type of work. Ex. 2 - You not a street ni**a bro, stop fronting. Burger, Food - To be used to speak poorly about someone. Ex. 1 - This ni**a sucks bro, he a burger. Ex. 2 - He can't fight, he food. Brick - Used to describe very cold weather. Ex. 1 - Hell no, I'm not coming outside its mad brick out. Ex. 2 - I needa cop a new moncleezy, it's bouta be brick next month. Cop - To buy or get Ex. 1 - I just copped a calm fit from saks. Ex. 2 - I'm bouta cop some new feets. Feets - Shoes/sneakers Breesh/Beans - Money Treesh, Baba, Skeezer, Smut, Smooch, Smoochie - Another way of degrading women, calling them a hoe. Ex. 1 - Bro, everybody in the Bohan Ps slapped bro, that bitch is a smut. Ex. 2 - Nah you don't want her bro, that bitch is a known treesh. Ex. 3 - She a whole baba. Jatty/Waggy/Wagon - A fat ass. Ex. 1: You seen shorty who walked by? She got the jatty, no cap. Ex. 1: Nah, she really got the waggy though I'm tryna crack that. To kill / bodies - To have sex / sex count Ex. 1: She just gave me the green light, I'm bouta kill. Ex. 1: You get no bitches bro, how many kills you got? Clouted - To describe someone of reputable status Ock - Middle eastern store owner of a deli Ex. 1 - Yo Ock, let me get a baconeggncheese on a roll. Ps - Another way of saying projects. Cyph - To smoke / blunt session Ex. 1 - What's up with the cyphs? Ex. 2 - Yo boy, you tryna cyph? I got a eighth of some fire right now. Blockwork / blockie - Trash weed / mediocre weed Snuff , Duff, Rock - another way of saying punch. Ex. 1 - Yo, if he keep jacking my shit K, I'ma snuff him. Ex. 2 - Damn, that ni**a got rocked. Ex. 3 - He duffed that ni**a. Rock - Can also be used in a way to say "Give him a pass". Ex. 1 - I see him all the time bro, let him rock. Ex. 2 - Yeah he cool, so I'ma let him rock. Mook , battymon, fishmon - Ways of calling someone out on homosexual tendencies. Ex. 1 - Bro, he's mad mook. Ex. 2 - On god that ni**a is a whole battymon/fishmon. Matta - Another way of saying head in Bengali. Ex. 1 - She was giving me some good matta. Ex. 2 - I slammed him on his matta. Figi - Means face in haitian creole. Another way of saying headshot or face shot. Ex. 1 - He got hit by a figi. Ex . 2 - I got this new gun, I'm giving out figis. Blick, Ratty, Chop, Stacey/Kelly, Sitchy/Tizzy etc - A gun. The Boys/Boys, Jakes, Ds - Police officers / cops Shorty - Female Dukes - Mother Word to my mother, Word to my dead- Different ways to swear Is you shitting me? - a way to say, Are you kidding me or Are you joking? That's a neck - A thing to say when somebody says something dumb, it's common to slap their neck afterwards. Ex. 1 - Nah, you just said the dumbest shit ever, that's a neck. YKTV/You know the vibes - You know what's up. TP - Basically means, chill out or stop what you're doing. Ex. 1 - Nah, TP bro you moving hot. Ex. 2 - Yooo, TP bro you know ni**as be cops. BT - Bad timing. Basically means, you mean no good. Ex. 1 - I'm on BT right now. Ex. 2 - Oh he on his lonely? I'm on BT. Dayroom - Being scared / a pussy / a lame Talk to me nice - Respect me / Give me a discount / Cut me a good deal Bev - Beverage Ex. 1 - He eating a bagel with no bev. Ex. 2 - I'm bouta go to the store, I need a bev. Frank/Glizzy - Means hotdog ( but it's another way you can say "suck my dick" Ex. 1 - Eat a frank. Aye yo / Ayo - Something to holler when an individual says something considered homosexual, or when you see something crazy. Ex. 1 - Ayoooo, he's a battycrease. Ex. 2 - Ayoooooooo, pause! Ex. 3 - Ayooooo, that's crazy! Fessing someone up - Violating someone verbally Ex. 1 - He was talking hot so I hadda fess em up on the book. You hurd? - Did you hear what I said? Blitz - to violate / attack someone Ex. 1 He from OMB bro, blitz him when you see him. Toss/Throw/Flock - To shoot. Ex. 1 - If you catch em by his lonely, start tossing at that n***a. Ex. 2 - Nah, yesterday was crazy bro. I got into it and started throwing like Brady. Ex. 3 - If that n**a drop the set, I'm flocking at em. What you jack? - What gang do you claim? I'm not jacking that - I ain't digging it/ Feeling it Bussin - To describe something good Neaky - Freaky Sturdy - Getting Jiggy/Shiggy (Dancing) Shook - to be scared 1090 - Another way of saying grimey. A play on words, there's a gang in NY that goes by "1090 grimey" Ex. 1 - You left em for dead? Nah, that's 1090. Ex. 2 - Bro is you shitting me right now? Nah that's grimey, that's 1090. 550 - Term used by bloods to identify someone as a civilian. Colorblind - Term used by crips to identify someone as a civilian. On Court - To be outside / Active Ex. 1 - You know many opps I caught? I'm really on court, gang. Ex. 2 - You not on court, you be on the porch. Pop his bottle - To cause harm to someone. And much more, these are just some of the words used around the tristate area (NY, NJ, CT) I made this list off the top of my head so I most likely could've missed a few words. If you want me to add onto the list you can just comment down below
    25 points
  16. The History and Services of the Liberty City Metropolitan Transportation Authority The Liberty City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LTA), also known as the Liberty Transit Authority for short, is the current name of the public transportation organization responsible for overseeing mass transit in the City of Liberty, along with associated counties and regions inclusive of the metropolitan area. It oversees all transit lines therein, commuter lines via the East Island Railroad, as well as ensuring the maintenance and well-being of its internal fleet. The LTA is a public-benefit corporation, operating as a non-profit through subsidization by Liberty City and State for the good of those who need to get from A to B. While large, the LTA isn't necessarily bulky or inefficient. Maintaining a 98% on-time rate throughout the Liberty Metropolitan Area, it is seen as one of the most cost-efficient ways to get around, as well as that with the smallest carbon footprint. History The LTA originally came together from a great many of public and private sector transportation companies that preceded it. From the Algonquin-Broker Transit Corporation, to the Liberty City Omnibus Corporation, to the West Side Elevated Rail Company which opened the first elevated railway in Algonquin in 1868, to the monolithic (for its time) Interborough Rapid Transit Company, to many other notable companies, the Liberty City Metropolitan Transportation Authority was a centralization of all mass transit in the Liberty Metropolitan Area in 1965. The decision was passed by the then-governor of Liberty State, who put forth legislation in cooperation with the mayor of Liberty to allow the mass purchase acquisition of what would become the LTA as an out for a city bursting at the seams and transit companies going bankrupt left and right. In the post-war boom of the late 40s and early 50s, Liberty City's inhabitants decided overwhelmingly to turn toward the automobile as a method of A-to-B transportation. At the time, it was faster, more efficient, and while it had a much larger up front cost, it came across as the more affordable option in the long run. Because of this, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, Algonquin-Broker Transit Company, and the Independent Subway System, were operating at significant losses. Commuter rail into and out of the city through Easton Terminal was very nearly shuttered, due to regional railways operating through bankruptcies and the lowest ridership ever seen. As an answer to this, the state and city begrudgingly had to cooperate on a singular goal: Prevent the collapse of public transportation in Liberty, which while currently low on ridership, would undoubtedly need to be able to function into the future. With traffic congestion and the continued influx of new residents, it wasn't an option to allow the transportation infrastructure both above and below everyone's feet to collapse. So, through a legislative agreement between Liberty State and Liberty City, the Liberty City Metropolitan Transportation Authority was born. Under the LTA, all subways and commuter railroads were unified and brought together into a single entity. It was universally agreed that this would allow all lines to maintain operation, and prevent the worry of the entire infrastructure going defunct. With the agreement formalized, subway lines and commuter rail networks were rapidly rebranded under the LTA, and purchase agreements became a rapidly expanding business to modernize and draw people in, to bring the hustle and bustle that had once been. It is almost universally seen as one of the saving graces of Liberty City going into and through the 1970s. As the economic boom subsided and congestion grew, people once again began turning to the subways for cheap and efficient transportation. The booming popularity led to the expansion of the LTA, which through the late 1970s and early 1980s began purchasing and refurbishing the then-dated bus lines, still privately operated throughout the city. As a further point of PR, and the knowledge that it would be nearly impossible to provide a subway station or frequent bus service to Colony Island, in 1983 the Liberty City Skycar came into operation. It acted as an aerial ferry across the Humboldt River, giving regular access to people living on the island to the mass transit network that connected the rest of the city. In the mid-1980s, with trains and buses on the brink, the LTA decided to take a trip back to the roots of the city. An area that was underserved in connecting Algonquin to the adjoining boroughs was the actual rivers themselves. While cargo ships dominated the waterways, they were still a massively open and readily-available method of getting more people part of the way from A to B. As a plan to attempt eased congestion on the bridges, a fleet of modernized ferries were purchased under the LTA label and the first routes began to expand. From the Union Drive West Ferry Terminal to the Dukes Drive Ferry Terminal, and to the Alderney Ferry Terminal as the system hub. Since then, by road, by train, and by sea, the LTA has continued to expand to provide end-to-end service nearly everywhere in the city. Current Administration Director of the L.C. Metropolitan Transportation Authority - Winston A. Graves Winston Graves was a longtime LTA motorman before being promoted to managerial positions. He rapidly rose through the ranks of the LTA, putting effective measure after effective measure into place to help the city and transit infrastructure blossom into what it is today. He took the mantle of the LTA on January 15th, 2021, from his position of Chief of Operations before that. He has boasted a strong commitment to getting citizens where they need to be, on time, and with as little delay as possible. Unlike most of his predecessors, he's an experienced professional in the field, whereas the standard of the office has previously been political in nature. Services/Divisons LTA Bus The LTA Bus Division is the feeder backbone to the city, providing service across the city with connections to most LTA Subway stations. If you want to get somewhere fast, a bus will likely be able to take you to the nearest block from your subway station. LTA also operates limited express services across the city to supplement rail services in the event of outage, as well as to connect to Alderney. LTA Rail The LTA Rail Division is the most expansive in North America. Covering underground and overground heavy rail services through the city, as well as suburban connections, it handles several hundred thousand passengers per day. The crown jewel of this system is the Liberty City Subway system, which maintains frequent service 24/7 across 8 lines, all of which cover 4 city boroughs. The system is temporarily out of service for citywide track service maintenance and rolling stock overhauls, but will soon be providing normal service across Liberty once more. LTA Ferry ((alternatively, LTA Airferry pending ability)) TBD. LTA Skycar TBD. Liberty Taxi & Limousine Commission The Liberty City Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC for short) is the governing body in charge of all private and public for-hire vehicles within the Liberty City Metropolitan Area. Due to recent legislation passed by the state, the TLC has been attached to the LTA for the foreseeable future in an effort to save taxpayer dollars. The TLC's responsibility is to handle the different designations of such vehicles (medallion/yellow taxi, boro cab, black car, hire-buses, etc.), their operating restrictions/licenses, and ensure fair and equitable operation citywide. Liberty City is unique in how it handles taxicabs, providing licensing to only a very specific number of primary taxicabs for the metro area, while allowing secondary-type taxicabs to operate in limited capacity in outlying boroughs. Below is an explanation of the primary types of vehicles you'll see while in Liberty City. Medallion/Yellow Taxi - A taxi with a city-issued medallion and license plate (format 0X00). These are the only taxis allowed to be painted the standard yellow color, and are the only taxis allowed to stop and pick up passengers without being called by phone in Algonquin. These taxis are either owner/operator or operated by a franchise firm, which ordinarily leases cabs to operators for a static fee and/or fare percentage. In rare cases, a firm may outright own the taxi and hire an operator for a salary. These taxis do operate via a central dispatch system. Boro Cab - A taxi operating without a city-issued medallion. These taxis are ordinarily painted an apple green color. Boro Cabs are a recent addition to the Liberty City taxi fleets. They are an attempt to provide more taxi services to the outer boroughs and increase overall capacity throughout the city. These taxis are not permitted to take ‘flag down’ fares in Algonquin, and are ordinarily not found on the island at all unless responding to a phone fare or performing a drop-off. They often have higher fares than medallion taxis, as regulations based on medallion operators do not apply. These taxis do not operate via a central dispatch system. Car Services - Car services operate as unmarked/executive cars, without any explicit markings denoting they are a taxi or hire car. These vehicles are intended to be upper scale, or have added privacy/comfort provisions for persons needing to get from one location to another. These vehicles operate per an on-call basis, without centralization. While licensed by the TLC to operate, they are independent agency owned vehicles and fares are not governed by the city. ((Note -- Everything subject to change. Even the history, if we come across any information clashes. For the moment, this is the LTA Faction Thread.))
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  17. FACTION INFORMATION REMOVED THE INDIVIDUAL HAS BEEN BLACKLISTED FOR HARBORING A HACKER AND ATTEMPTING TO CREATE CHAOS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY Since you decided to create an alternative account and fabricate evidence: Next time when fabricating evidence, at least try to conceal your identity a bit better. Since you're using London timezone, you're basically 2 hours behind my timezone. Here is a screenshot of me contacting you at 1:13 AM, which in your country is 23:13 PM Here is your fabricated screenshot which is cute, but you forgot to edit out the time which basically exposes you using an alt account. And this is you changing your PFP because you're not happy for the ban you've received: So keep making fun of yourself and your friends. I usually refrain from engaging like that, but since you've decided to act smart (which obviously is not the case) I thought it would be good to show your true nature under your faction thread. And trust me, no amount of money will ever get you unbanned.
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  18. DEVELOPMENT BLOG #2 Hello everyone! We are aware that this development blog is a little delayed so we would like to apologize for that! Unfortunately some unexpected events happened and a few of our leading developers had to take some time off to handle various real-life complications. Another unlucky event in our development team is that @MrZian broke his arm, so we also would like to wish him a speedy recovery and a lot of strength. Jumping on to the development status, we have made great progress. We are far from a final product but we are surely getting there, in the end, our goal is to have a script that would last a very long time thus we have to invest a lot of time into creating these features from scratch. Keep in mind that our project will be made totally from scratch and we will not be using another server's script as a foundation to start with. Quality is what will define us! We hope you enjoy reading the features we have below, should there be any questions you may have, feel free to reply below or contact me or Biography directly. EARLY SUPPORTER PROGRAM (CLICK ME) The Early Supporter Program was established with the intent to gain money that can be invested into the community and provide players with the opportunity to explore the Liberty City map, as well as to test features which wouldn't otherwise be available for the general public. The program was established following a staff and community discussion about its potential and perception. It is imperative to note that we are not forcing anyone to donate. Donating is optional and the topic is purely informative for those interested in knowing about the program. By donating, you will be making a tremendous contribution to our community. Your money will be used ONLY for the development of the community. You may donate any amount of money you wish. However, if you would like to gain access to our test server, you need to make a minimum, one-time payment of 15 USD. If you do not wish to have access to a test server, you may donate any other amount of money. LANDING PAGE Starting off with some web development updates, we are glad to introduce our landing page. Going forward, all of our web-development intentions are forwarded towards the User Control Panel, so expect it to be showcased in the upcoming development blogs as well. The landing page is created specifically for marketing to attract new players - in order to do that, we have decided to pick a modern theme and include as much information as we could about us and what we have to offer. We hope that the conversion rate increases and attract many more players on our community before the launch. Note that the page is subject to updates, so if you have any suggestions, we will be incredibly happy to hear them out! Visit our official webpage at https://lc-rp.mp USER CONTROL PANEL The UCP is an essential feature for any heavy-text roleplay server and we plan to make ours superior to any other that you've seen so far. Having recently purchased a premium panel template that will save us some time from designing it from scratch, the panel making is one of the main priorities for now as everything in the game will be eventually tied up to it in the future (ex. character information for each account created, logs for administrative reasons, an MDC for LCPD that will also work in-game, faction center for official factions). We also plan moving all of the forum work such as ban appeals, player reports, bug reports over to the UCP for easier managing. ( UCP Login Screen - work in progress ) ( UCP - First page, WIP ) INVENTORY As showcased in the previous development blog, we only had the CEF done for the inventory. I'd like to introduce the functionality today as well because it is a feature that is essential to have in a heavy-text roleplay community. Along with the inventory system, we also have the base script for the item-framework so it would be easy for us to add items that can be placed in the inventory slots. The inventory will have a predefined weight and if you exceed that weight, you won't be able to carry any other items on you. You can also drop items on the floor / pick them up and in order to equip a gun, you'd have to equip it through the inventory. I'd like to give credits to @Mos for his hard work on this system and the backpack system below as it is not easy to script at all. In the video below you can check out the functionality of the inventory system and how the CEF looks as well. This inventory scrip will be essential for businesses which can practically sell any type of objects to their customers. That way, purchasing goods means that you will actually have them as part of your inventory. Our promise to create the best business environment is turning into action. As a general note, if you're interested into making business ownership an enjoyable experience, please forward any suggestions you might have! BACKPACKS Once a player has a backpack item equipped (clothing item), they will have access to another larger inventory to use. Items can be moved from the inventory to the backpack easily and in the future, backpacks can be stored away or passed on to another player with it's containing items. Once equipped, the backpack item will appear in the inventory system by pressing the "i" hotkey which automatically brings it up. Items can be moved into the backpack by dragging and dropping the item into the backpack icon. Note that a similar system may be used for other type of bags and cases. INJURY SYSTEM An injury system being a standard on typical roleplay servers, we thought of something that would heavily improve and make the injury system more realistic than those experienced on other communities. Apart from the usual damage list, highlighting the body parts where a player has been shot or hit, we present you a unique form of injury animation when a player dies or is forced into wounded state. Characters on our server will be forced into ragdoll animations, meaning that the position in which they are heavily wounded will always be synced on other players' screens. On top of that, players will now have a chance of limping after being shot in the leg, reducing the "chicken running" aspect from shootouts. SYNCRONIZED PROPS Props synchronization is here! Our very talented developer @materia worked hard on getting all kind of props synchronized, tremendous work which will open a lot of opportunities and we will surely take full advantage of it in order to provide you, the players, with outstanding features (such as a bowling system, pool game, forklifts lifting up crates etc. The sky is the limit!). Below you can see two of the aforementioned examples. WHAT'S NEXT? We have so much on the to-do list but we have set some priorities for the next development blog. One priority is the mapping tool that our mapping team will exclusively use. The mapping tool will be similar to the furniture system that will be available for regular players, the only differences being the amount of items and the UIs. Just so you know our progress on the furniture system / mapping tool, the back-end code is done and what is left to be done is the user interface before it is ready to be pushed on the testing branch. There's more tasks for us that are considered as a priority but you'll find out more soon . Stay tuned. ( Mapping tool for the mapping team - work in progress, requires new CEF ) CLOSING NOTE I would like to thank everyone that trusts this project and I once again assure you that we are not here to fail or make false promises. Liberty City Roleplay will surely become the best roleplay community you have ever experienced, but we ask you for patience as creating one doesn't come overnight. We look forward to posting more script-related announcements in the near future but until then, don't forget to regularly check the sneak-peaks channel on the discord channel. Thank you! LC-RP Management Team
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  19. (DE) MONETIZATION OF LCRP Hello, everyone. It is time to put an end to all false allegations regarding the credibility of LCRP and address those who have continuously attempted to brand our community as a scam. To those skeptics, we say this: actions speak louder than words. Our journey has been guided by integrity and commitment to roleplay. In 2021, we declared our commitment to player experience, vowing not to focus on rampant monetization schemes. Today, we stand by that promise. We will make a separate announcement once donations are activated. WHAT'S DIFFERENT? The following features, which have been traditionally monetized, are no longer locked behind a paywall. Multiple donation packages - GONE Furniture monetization - GONE /leavejob - GONE /blockpm - GONE /bleave - GONE XMR radio - GONE WHAT DOES LCRP OFFER? 1. Single donation package for 7,99 USD, on a monthly subscription basis This package provides unmatched benefits to players than previously given, at a much more reasonable price. In addition to purchasing our subscription package, you also receive additional free liberty coins every month, which you can use to purchase individual benefits. There are no other donation packages. You no longer have to spend up to 30 euro to enjoy the game! Unlimited phone number changes 3 vehicle plate changes 1 namechange per month 1 Additional character slot 1 month property inactivity instead of 2 weeks Permanent Forum and Discord rank 50 free Liberty Coins added per month No cooldown for advertisements Access to LCRP's Development server 2. Individual Purchases Players who do not wish to subscribe monthly are given the opportunity to make individual purchases through our liberty coins system. Namechange = 100 liberty coins Additional character slot = 500 liberty coins Phone number change = 100 liberty coins 100 liberty coins = 3 USD. To our loyal players and partners, thank you for standing by us, believing in us, and being an integral part of LCRP's narrative. We're here because of you, and we're committed to delivering the most engaging, immersive roleplay experience possible.
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  20. DEV-COMMUNITY UPDATE #7 Hello, everyone! For this month, we've decided to combine our development and community update into one major update. Server Launch Update Statistics Tasks for the upcoming months of May - June Development Team Workflow Re-structure of the Faction Support Team Introduction of the Faction Senate Improved drug dealing & distribution for factions other than organized crime Massive bug testing session Staff Team promotions Development Feature 1 Development Feature 2 Development Feature 3 In memory of Patrick/ititan Before we outline the update, we would like to announce that one of our community members, known as Patrick/ititan has unfortunately passed away some time ago. Patrick was one of the initial faction leaders of FDLC and as such, helped our community tremendously. We are grateful for all of the effort he put into our community, despite the difference in opinion we had on certain topics. “Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them” – George Eliot We will make sure Patrick will never be forgotten. As a tribute to his work our Modding Team will add a furniture object, as well as a possible livery on one of the FDLC vehicles in his memory. We will be working on adding a texture to the following object: Server Launch Update We estimate that the current progress of the server is at approximately 70-75%. LCRP is requesting more funding from the community in order to speed up the development process and potentially hire more developers. The current available budget is 266.72 USD, with all expenses for this month paid. We will introduce a new monthly "donation goal" section on the forums and we urge all of you who wish to speed up the development process, to participate. All of your money is directed towards server development. Promoting LCRP to your friends will help us significantly. Our permanent factions must be fully operational (in terms of policies and structure) by the end of July. (to avoid confusion, this does not mean we are launching in July but rather an assurance that the community aspect of our development is fully done prior to the features development). We are not yet fully comfortable with announcing an approximate release date. Development Roadmap Update The following features are halted and will instead be developed post-launch to speed up the development process: Backpacks Forging IDs Talking styles Crouching system Email service for the phone system Properties manager for the phone system Mechanic job The following features are now marked as complete: Taxi app for the phone system Help center for the UCP Garbage collector Fire script Aim style for weapons Statistics We have reached a new record of 1, 544 forum registrations. We have reached a new record of 1, 763 discord members. We are continuously increasing the number of members on our Development Team to ensure a speedy development process. Tasks for the upcoming months - June - July Property System functionality Faction System Economy Bug fixes Development Team Workflow We will host weekly/bi weekly meetings with the Development Team as we now get closer to launch. We have re-organized the development process to foster speed and better tracking of development (by reverting to Gitlab). We have re-organized the internal LCRP development tracker in order to produce more detailed feature requests for the Development Team. We will host more frequent testing sessions in order to identify bugs & resolve them in a timely manner. We are currently going through every single feature that is pushed onto the early server and resolving any bugs that are identified by our staff members. We have halted development for features we deem are not a priority prior to the launch of the server. COMMUNITY UPDATE Re-structure of the Faction Support Team The Faction Support Team was restructured completely and will now only be responsible for the oversight of drugs & weapons distribution and will not be responsible for changing server policy regarding the faction environment. The responsibility will instead be transferred to the Faction Senate and Management. As our drug and weapon distribution systems are predominantly in-character, we will be looking for at least 5 to 6 individuals to participate in the Faction Support Team. The other responsibility of the Faction Support Team will be to offer guidance to faction leaders, but in no way "manage" their internal affairs. Introduction of the Faction Senate The Faction Senate is an entity which comprises of faction leaders with the purpose of discussing important faction-related matters and subsequently proposing solutions to Management. The Faction Senate provides faction leaders with the opportunity to discuss issues and raise concerns directly to Management without the need of a mediator such as Faction Management/Faction Support Team. More information may be found here. Improved drug dealing & distribution for factions other than organized crime Members of the community have raised concerns regarding the "Monopoly" approach, namely that it is not a feasible system for street gangs and other criminal factions. This is why we have completely re-written the system and instead created an alternative approach for drug distribution that is aimed at street gangs and factions other than organized crime. This new approach allows such factions to participate in drug distribution, although at a much smaller scale than the "Port of Liberty" approach. More information may be found here. Massive bug testing session In the last month, we focused on bug fixes for the current features with the help of our Staff Team and some of the Early Supporters. We deem it necessary to ensure proper testing sessions & bug fixes are applied now, to avoid any such problems during the launch of LCRP. We pushed a total number of 209 commits in the last month, which represent mainly the bug fixes on our main server branch. Staff Team promotions Senior Admin Team > Lead Admin Team Crunchy Brett Probationary Admin > Admin Danielleunglol Geo Staff Support Team (Probationary > Full) Neo Mondim Garbage Job System Developed by @senti180 The garbage job system we have created is quite different in contrast to what you might be used to on other roleplay communities. The main difference that you will be able to observe is cooperative sessions for players. This means that you can work this job alone up with up to 3 other friends. Similar to other communities, this is a script-wise job, meaning that there is no hiring process done by a business. You can start this job by visiting the blip on the map. Trash will span all over the city at random locations and it will be your responsibility to collect it. Once you've gotten your truck all the way full, make your way back to the unload point to make some sweet stinky cash for you effort. Tattoo Shops Developed by @senti180 Having started work on a few businesses, such as the Clothing Store, we also prioritized the Tattoo Shops system so that you could customize your characters as you wish. At this moment, we use NativeUI as we do not believe a special UI is necessary, mainly due to the fact that it would slow down the development process. We are planning on creating a fully customized menu for tattoos after launch, but we believe this will work out just fine for the first few months. ATM UI Developed by @lightsquare With the help of our new developer, we were able to create an amazing and interactive UI for the ATM system we are constructing. The ATM UI replicates a real life ATM, giving you a more interactive experience when taking money out of our account. ATMs will be spread across the map, providing players with the opportunity to visit and interact with them frequently. We remind you that there is no robbery limit, so a smart decision would be to store most of your (clean) money in the bank, house, etc. to avoid being robbed.
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  21. DEVELOPMENT UPDATE #6 Hello, everyone! Based on your feedback, we will now be focusing on more frequent development updates as opposed to large development blogs. With that being said, we wanted to let you know our team is now focusing a lot more on resolving the bugs that are identified by our staff team. At the same time, we are working on some of the final features for the community that are imperative for our launch. Recently, we created a development discussion where the community voted to see a public development roadmap. We respect your decision and are happy to announce that LCRP's development roadmap is now PUBLIC and can be found in this post or here. As you will see, a majority of the server features are now complete. There are still some which are unfinished and others that we need to start working on. As a reminder, our Development Team is working on resolving bugs on a daily basis! The most complex systems we have left are the economy and the factions framework. LCRP needs your support! Our Development Team is working incredibly hard to create this product. As you all know, we pay our developers for their work and 0% of your donations go to Management. We are now beginning to spend even more funds on this project. We will soon begin our official marketing campaign which means that a percentage of our budget will be dedicated to marketing, hence more expenses. This means that LCRP needs your support, even if it's something as small as a 5$ donation. Something you can expect soon is a more frequent social media presence, an official trailer for LCRP and much more. We would highly appreciate any amount of money that you donate! DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP I. Introduction The following is the official, public development roadmap for LCRP. Here you can keep up to date with the scripts that we are working on prior to the launch, as well as their current state. We do this to be as transparent as possible and give everyone the chance to follow the development closely. Do note that the systems are being tested for bugs. The following markers will be used: Green --> feature is fully scripted Orange --> feature is being worked on Red --> no work has been started on the feature II. Miscellaneous features Inventory System Backpacks HUD Location Display Driving Meter Speedometer Chat Language System Character Creator Players List Drag & Carry ID system Walking Styles Talking Styles Facial Animations Pets System Description Markers Companion System Crouching System Synchronized props Customizable chat Attention calling actions Breathalyzer Spike System Animations System Radio System III. Vehicles DMV System Vehicles Dealership Fuel & Gas Station System Car Thefts Illegal Factions Narcotics System Alcohol System Weapons System Custom Weapon Damage Injury System Combat & Weapon Mechanics System (recoil, spray patterns etc.) Drug Distribution System Concept Weapons Distribution System Concept IV. Phone System Design Contacts Messages Calls Calculator Notes Social Media Settings Bank App Email service (allows you to change certain features of the phone) Properties Manager Taxi App VI. User Control Panel Design Characters Panel Admin Panel Dashboard Accounts & Permissions Entry Quiz Management Forums Rules Social Media Links Store Entry Quiz for players Help Center VII. Script Jobs Garbage Collector Taxi Driver Fishing Trucking Mechanic VIII. Properties, Businesses & Economy Property Framework House Mortgages Property Renting System Bank UI Business Management Economy IX. Legal Factions Liberty City Police Department Fire Department of the Liberty City Judiciary Liberty City Department of Correction Fuel System Developed by @senti180 Our Development Team created a fuel system to ensure that our transportation system will be immersive and realistic. After all, we wouldn't want to have vehicles with unlimited amount of fuel roaming around the map. With this current system, vehicles have a total of 3 attributes: vehicle class vehicle name electric/non electric Depending on the class of your vehicle, you will be able to experience a different max fuel capacity, as well as fuel usage. For example, a Sultan has 15 gal max, and its consumption is relatively low compared to an Infernus. This means that you will have to be wise when it comes to purchasing vehicles and you will need to consider if you will have the finance to maintain the fuel required. We believe this will be a decent system for players who are into vehicles and that should make them feel more realistic and vibrant. Electric vehicles, however, will not be using fuel for transportation. As the name suggests, those type of vehicles will use electric power for transportation. In order to recharge an electric vehicle, you will have to visit a station and park your vehicle near a booth. You will be able to leave your electric vehicle during the charging process. Such vehicles will display a 3D text attached to them, in order to notify you that the vehicle is charging. They will indicate the charging percentage. For non-electric vehicles, you will use the command /refuel, whereas for electric vehicles, you will use the command /recharge. You can /stopcharge electric vehicles as well. Custom animations in RageMP Developed by @Hellceaser We are very excited to share that LCRP will be utilizing its own unique, custom animations. Huge thanks to the Modding Team for their effort to create those. Below you will see an example of some custom animations that we are currently working on! As you can see, we will have the ability to implement custom animation to the server. One animation which we are particularly excited about is the holstering/unholstering of your sidearm. This will be a great addition to law enforcement! In the future, we will also look into adding sound to some custom animations to increase immersion and realism. Spikes for law enforcement Developed by @senti180 Most of you are aware of this simple, yet highly needed system for law enforcement. The LCPD will have the ability to deploy a spike strip as means to disable a vehicle during a pursuit or specialized operation conducted by the Special Operations Bureau, Detective Bureau, etc. Spikes are deployed on the road and once a vehicle goes through them, its tires become deflated. Once that occurs, it will be very difficult for the vehicle to remain control and/or try to evade from law enforcement. This, in combination with the architecture of Liberty City, will make evading a challenging task! Below you can see a video showcasing how this system works: FDLC and LCPD Vehicles & Uniforms Developed by @Jorgensen @TBattle @Derox Our Modding Team has been putting tremendous effort into the creation of mods for some of our factions. In this update, we would like to showcase some of the uniforms and vehicles for the LCPD & and the FDLC. As you will see below, they are all lore-friendly and very detailed. Please note that this is not the final version of the mods you see below as they are all being worked on and improved on a daily basis. We recently funded a local test server for our Modding Team, so expect that our legal factions will work alongside our modders to test their respective uniforms & vehicles. User Control Panel Additions The UCP quiz is of great importance to the roleplay standard that is imposed on the players of our community. Based on some feedback we received in private, a big number of players suggested that we should allow applicants to edit their UCP application instead of being denied. We immediately thought that was an excellent idea and we will explain why: If you are an applicant and you are denied due to lack of effort on a certain question, you have to submit another application which will very likely be handled by a different staff member. The problem with that is the new staff member who is reviewing your application can deny it for another reason, which means you will then have to make a new application and potentially stumble upon the same issue. You get demotivated and you end up waiting more to get your application approved due to the queue. Our staff team will of course have guidelines regarding application review but that is not enough to mitigate the issues above. So, how do we mitigate this? Applicants will be able to edit their application after sending it for review. If the reviewing staff member doesn't like the application, you will get the chance to edit it 2 more times. If you were unable to meet the demands given by the staff member, only then will your application be denied. With this system, your application will always be reviewed by a single member of the staff, as opposed to it being denied countless times and reviewed by various staff members, hence avoiding a double-standard. Another useful feature related to the UCP is that our entry application (which will be mandatory for anyone who wishes to join the server) will be fully dynamic. This means that we will frequently change the questions to ensure that answers are not sold/provided to other players easily. This will not require us to shut down the UCP and is simply a process which will be available to the Lead Admin Team+ Finally, as we plan to move all type of reports to the UCP, the Team Leaders of our respective staff teams will have the ability to dynamically change the tickets available for their team without having to rely on the Development Team. They will be able to: name the ticket edit the contents of the ticket Closing Remarks We would like to use this opportunity to thank every single member of our staff team, whether they are in FST, SST, Admin Team, Property Team, Modding Team, etc. We have made so much progress based on their contribution and we continue to do so. The countless hours spent on this project by our staff members only proves how dedicated we are to make this community a success. Recently, we have begun a very active testing session with members of the SST and the Admin Team, and we want to thank them for doing that as it is very important that we identify and fix any bugs that we encounter. Keep up the good work, guys! LC:RP Management
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  22. LCPD Westminster Station General Information: Features 4 floors all within the same interior for better immersion without having to teleport to a new floor. Overall design based off of the current building, a Post-Victorian industrial style brick building. It holds on to its original feeling with the most forward wall consistently showing exposed brick, as well as the wood flooring still exists on the second floor to stay close to its original architectural design. Modern improvements such as drywall and grid ceilings have replaced the once crude look the building once had. Houses most of detective divisions including Homicide and Gang Squads. Ground floor has small detention facility including all equipment needed to book a suspect including a mugshot station, on-site medical personnel desk, search room, waiting area and holding cells. Floors 2 and 3 will be primarily for the detective divisions along with their accompanying offices for the supervisors, break room, and conference rooms. Floor 4 will house command members, featuring 5 independent offices, a large conference room, a kitchenette and a small restroom. NOTE: *Some objects such as doors are not included in these screen shots for better viewing* Second Floor Third Floor Fourth Floor
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  23. Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Liberty City District Attorney's Office FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, March 7, 2022 Leader Of Latin Kings Set Sentenced To 19 Years In Prison Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Liberty City District Attorney's Office, announced that THIAGO VELASQUEZ, a/k/a “Chago,” was sentenced today to 19 years in prison in connection with his participation in the East Holland set of the Latin Kings and their distribution of narcotics, including heroin, fentanyl, and cocaine. VELASQUEZ pled guilty on February 25, 2022, before U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni, who imposed today’s sentence. U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “Thiago Velasquez was the leader of a violent gang who himself participated in acts of extreme violence. His wanton disregard for his victims has now earned him a lengthy prison term.” According to public filings and statements made in court: The East Holland Latin Kings are a Liberty City-based set, or “tribe,” of the nationwide Latin Kings gang. In order to enrich the enterprise, protect and expand its criminal operations, enforce discipline among its members, and retaliate against members of rival gangs, members and associates of the East Holland Latin Kings committed, conspired, attempted, and threatened to commit acts of violence; distributed and possessed with intent to distribute narcotics, including heroin, fentanyl, and crack; committed robberies; and obtained, possessed, and used firearms. The East Holland Latin Kings' leadership structure resembles the traditional leadership structure of other Latin King tribes. Leaders in the East Holland Latin Kings are referred to as “Crowns,” with the respective Crowns ranked as “First Crown,” “Second Crown,” etc. VELASQUEZ served as the First Crown of the East Holland Latin Kings since in or around 2012 and, in that capacity, oversaw the East Holland Latin Kings' day-to-day operations and also ordered and participated in acts of violence and narcotics trafficking. In December 2020 and January 2022, VELASQUEZ was charged along with several other members and associates of the East Holland Latin Kings, including Santiago Bailo, a/k/a “SB,” and Christopher Rodriguez, a/k/a “Taz,” with racketeering offenses, narcotics conspiracy, and firearms offenses. Bailo and Rodriguez, both of whom also held leadership roles within the East Holland Latin Kings, previously pled guilty and were sentenced to 240 months in prison and 210 months in prison, respectively. VELASQUEZ pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute narcotics. In connection with his guilty plea, VELASQUEZ further stipulated to his involvement in multiple acts of violence: a June 2017 slashing of a rival gang member, an October 2018 home invasion that resulted in the slashing and assault of two rival gang members, and a gunpoint robbery of a drug dealer in or around September 2019. * * * In addition to the prison term, VELASQUEZ, 32, of Algonquin, Liberty City, was sentenced to five years of supervised release. Ms. Strauss praised the outstanding investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Liberty City Police Department. This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation The Latin Kings formed in Chicago in 1954 with the goal of helping Puerto Rican immigrants overcome racial prejudice by forming an organization of Kings. The Kings later expanded to Liberty State in 1986, and continued there under the Bloodline Chapter of King Blood. Today, the Latin Kings are one of the largest Hispanic and Latino street and prison gangs worldwide. The Latin Kings are highly organized and gang leadership exists at the national, regional, and local levels. The gang operates under strict codes and guidelines that are conveyed in a lengthy Constitution, and they follow the teachings of the Manifesto. Membership is governed by a Manifesto and Constitution with established rules and by-laws. The gang originally consisted of predominantly Puerto Rican males, but currently have members of various Hispanic nationalities. ALKQN also has female associates, where they are viewed and treated as equals and are commonly referred to as Latin Queens. the Kings have a unique mixture of intense discipline, revolutionary politics and a homemade religion called 'Kingism'. This makes a potent mixture for troubled ghetto kids whose lives lacked structure and hope. Kingism is a blend of tribal gang rhetoric and religious mysticism. As one member put it, the Manifesto is "considered our Bible", and reading it is to go "from the darkness to the light". Kings of Liberty In the early 1980s, to avoid imprisonment for his criminal activities in Chicago, Luis Felipe (a.k.a. King Blood) fled to Liberty City. Soon after arriving in Liberty City, Felipe was arrested and convicted of murdering his girlfriend. In 1986, while in prison, Felipe created the Bloodline Manifesto and started his own chapter of the Latin Kings known as the Bloodline. Latin Kings associating with Liberty State Bloodline chapter identify themselves as the "Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation" (ALKQN) however. King Blood designated himself as Inca and Supreme Crown of the entire State of Liberty. From 1986 to the internal power struggle that erupted in 1994, the ALKQN solidified its role as a gang through crimes such as murder, racketeering, drug trafficking, and RICO Act charges. The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation stands divided among dozen sets known as ''tribes'' operating in Liberty State. One of those sets are the East Holland Latin Kings, located in the northern region of Algonquin, Liberty City. The East Holland Latin Kings were founded by Thiago Velasquez in 2012. After the imprisonment of Velasquez and all the other key figures, the East Holland Latin Kings were left without any leadership however. As usual under the King Constitution and Manifesto, an election was held to crown a new Inca, the leader of the set. Two candidates rose to the occasion; Mateo Lopez (a.k.a King Scar) and Leo Falgas (a.k.a King Jugg). Mateo was widely popular among the set and known as an intelligent individual, and had therefore won the election for First Crown and Inca of the East Holland Latin Kings. On the same night, he ordered the murder of Leo Falgas to eliminate any threat to his reign.
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  24. FIRE DEPARTMENT OF LIBERTY CITY LIBERTY CITY'S BRAVEST Welcome to the Liberty City Fire Department's faction thread. This thread is a showcase of our faction as a whole and give people a general understanding of what makes this faction so unique and different from the general types of these factions you'd see elsewhere. Our faction offers a storyline of its development from 1648 to 2021 with only key events that helped shape the current faction's culture and traditions. It is mandatory information for anyone who wishes to join the faction. Please read the "Notable Events" section in order to gain an understanding of how history has shaped the department and how that impacts the faction today, both from an IC and OOC perspective. LORE & CONSISTENCY Our faction follows the history of the New York City Fire Department up until the year 2020 during which the Fire Department of the City of Liberty undergoes leadership changes. While our faction aims to portray the Fire Department of the City of New York as much as possible, we also strive to give people a fun atmosphere and a place to develop themselves as they deem fit. Apart from the abovementioned, our faction's goal is to provide a realistic, unique, and most of all fun environment for people who enjoy this type of roleplay. The concept of our faction is super unique and nothing like it has ever been done on this level within a roleplay server. Our mission is to roleplay the entire Department but instill a sense of company pride into our faction members beyond the scope of what has been attempted on previous servers. The ability to build on what the Fire Department of New York City has done leads to many avenues for roleplay possibility and we are very happy to have the opportunity to do this and show people there is more to this type of roleplay than what was seen elsewhere. ROLEPLAY OPPORTUNITIES The faction offers a plethora of roleplay opportunities. The following information is regarding the aim of each bureau and how that differs from the repetitive roleplay in Los Santos: Bureau of Fire Operations The Bureau of Fire Operations consists of multiple fire houses, under which, various companies operate. Each fire house contains at least 1 to 3 fire companies and each company serves a different and unique purpose at fires or other emergencies. The six company types you'll see within the server are Engine Companies, Ladder (or Truck) Companies, Squad Companies, Rescue Companies, HazMat (Hazardous Materials) Companies, and Marine Companies. The Bureau is the Department's "jack of all trades", with responses including but not limited to fire suppression, search and rescue, contamination incidents, building collapses and major emergencies among others. Bureau of EMS Operations The Bureau of EMS Operations consists of stations across the City of Liberty, under which multiple ambulance companies operate under tours, each tour under a lieutenant, and each station ran by a Captain, or Battalion commander. Companies can range from BLS equipped ambulances with Emergency Medical Technicians, or ALS, Advance Life Support ambulances which are staffed by EMT-Paramedics. The Bureau also operates HazTac Battalions, which operate special operation units such as Rescue Paramedics, HazTac Ambulances and Tactical Response Groups. Each of these specific companies handle incidents such as search and rescue, tactical EMS response, building collapses, HazMat containment and decontamination, and regular EMS operations. The Bureau also handles EMS Command, a citywide dispatch operation which controls every EMS provider in the city. Bureau of Fire Investigation The Bureau of Fire Investigation consists of five field offices assigned to each borough and several citywide units such as the Special Investigations Unit and K-9 Unit. Citywide units provide specialized services and support field offices in day-to-day operations. The Bureau of Fire Investigation (BFI) is the department's Law Enforcement arm that looks into suspicious fires through the city, provides dignitary protection details, and strengthens security measures inside FDLC facilities. After 9/11, BFI expanded its role to terrorism investigations due to the use of arsons and explosives in terrorist attacks. Fire Marshals conduct fire scene investigations, post-blast investigations, interview witnesses and suspects, serve summons, execute search and arrest warrants, conduct surveillance, and enforce fire laws. Bureau of Administrative Operations The Bureau of Administrative Operations consists of the teams of staff that are involved in the administrative side of day to day operations of the Fire Department, based out of the main headquarters in Fish Market, Algonquin. The Bureau is home to the day to day work of the Training Bureau, Community Affairs Division, and the Recruitment and Retention Division. Much of the administrative work is carried out by civilian staff members of the teams who also engage in field work to get an idea of how the department works in it's entirety. However, it is not uncommon to find uniformed members of the department also carrying out administrative duties. DEPARTMENT STRUCTURE DEPARTMENT LEADERSHIP DEPARTMENT ADMINISTRATION DANIEL CARCELLI CHIEF OF DEPARTMENT (( @Karty )) BUREAU LEADERSHIP ALEXANDER JENSEN CHIEF OF FIRE OPERATIONS (( @Jorgensen )) ADAM HUBBARD CHIEF OF EMS OPERATIONS (( Vacant )) NOTABLE EVENTS 1648-1865 The origins of the Liberty City Fire Department go all the way back to the year 1648, when the first fire ordinance was adopted in what was then the Dutch settlement of New Holland. Peter Stuyvesant, within one year of his arrival, appointed four fire wardens to wooden chimneys of thatched-roofed wooden houses, charging a penalty to owners whose chimneys were improperly swept. The first four fire wardens were Martin Krieger, Thomas Hall, Adrian Wyser, and George Woolsey. Hooks, ladders and buckets were financed through the collection of fines for dirty chimneys, and a fire watch was established. In 1664 Algonquin became an English settlement and was renamed Liberty. The first Liberty fire brigade entered service in 1731 equipped with two hand-drawn pumpers which had been transported from London, England. These two pumpers formed Engine Company 1 and Engine Company 2. The city's first firehouse was built in 1736 in front of City Hall. A year later, on December 16, 1737, the colony's General Assembly created the Volunteer Fire Department of the City of Liberty, The city's first official firemen were required to be "able, discreet, and sober men who shall be known as Firemen of the City of Liberty, to be ready for service by night and by day and be diligent, industrious and vigilant." Although, the 1737 Act created the basis of the fire department, the actual legal entity was incorporated in the State of Liberty on March 20, 1798 under the name of "Fire Department, City of Liberty." 1865-1898 In 1865, the volunteer fire department was abolished by a state act which created the Metropolitan Fire District and the Metropolitan Fire Department (MFD). This effectively gave control of the fire departments in the cities of Liberty and Broker to the Governor who appointed his Board of Commissioners. There was never any effective incorporation of the fire departments of the two cities during this period. It wasn't until the Greater City of Liberty was consolidated in 1898 that the two were combined under one common organization or organizational structure. The members of the paid fire department were primarily selected from the prior volunteers. All of the volunteer's apparatus, including their fire houses, were seized by the state who made use of them to form the new organization and form the basis of the current Fire Department of the City of Liberty. The Metropolitan Fire Department lasted until 1870 when the Tweed Charter ended state control in the city. As a result, a new Board of Fire Commissioners was created and the original name of the Fire Department of Liberty City (FDLC) was reinstated. Initially, the paid fire service only covered present day Algonquin, until the act of 1865 which united Broker with Algonquin to form the Metropolitan District. The same year the fire department consisted of thirteen (13) chief officers and five hundred fifty two (552) company officers and firemen. The officers and firemen worked a continuous tour of duty, with three hours a day off for meals and one day off a month, and were paid salaries according to their rank or grade. The year 1865 also saw the first adoption of regulations, although they were fairly strict and straitlaced. Following several large fires in 1866 which resulted in excessive fire losses and a rise in insurance rates, the fire department was reorganized under the command of General Alexander Shaler, and with military discipline the paid department reached its full potential which resulted in a general reduction in fire losses. 1898-2000 On January 1, 1898 the different areas of Liberty City were consolidated, which ushered the Fire Department into a new era. All the fire forces in the various sections were brought under the unified command of the first Commissioner in the history of the Fire Department. This same year Richmond (now Alderny) became a part of the City of Liberty, but the volunteer units there remained in place until they were gradually replaced by paid units. The unification of the Fire Department, which took place in 1898, would pave the way for many changes. In 1909, the Fire Department received its first piece of motorized fire apparatus. Later the same year the fire college was formed to train new fire fighters, and in 1912 the Bureau of Fire Prevention was created. In 1919, the Uniformed Firefighters Association was formed and tower ladders as well as the Super Pumper System were introduced in 1965. Major apparatus of the Super Pumper System (the Super Pumper and the Super Tender) were phased out in 1982, in favor of the Maxi-Water Unit. Other technical advances included the introduction of high pressure water systems, the creation of a Marine fleet, adoption of vastly improved working conditions and the utilization of improved radio communications. On November 23, 1965, incoming Mayor Lindsay announced the appointment of Robert O. Lowery as Fire Commissioner of the Liberty City Fire Department. His was the first commissioner level appointment announced by the Mayor-elect, Lowery, who was the first African American to serve as a Fire Commissioner of a major U.S. city, served in that position for more than 7 years until his resignation on September 29, 1973. In 1977 the Liberty City Fire Department announced that women could take the exam to become firefighters. After passing the written portion of the exam, Brenda Berkman and 89 other women subsequently failed the physical portion. It was stated by an official that their physical test was “the most difficult the department had ever administered, was designed more to keep women out than to accurately assess job-related skills.” After Berkman's requests for a fairer test were ignored, she filed an ultimately successful class-action lawsuit: Brenda Berkman, et al. v. The City of Liberty (1982). 2001 Terrorist Attacks On September 11th, 2001 two hijacked airliners struck the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center. Within minutes of the first plane strike FDLC fire companies and EMS crews made their way to the incident. A command post was set up both inside the lobby of the first tower and outside on the street. Firefighters began climbing stairs in an attempt to rescue any victims they could. The FDLC deployed 121 engine companies, 62 truck companies, 5 rescues companies, 6 squad companies, 27 Chief Officers, numerous specialty units, and countless ambulances to the scene. There were more than 1,000 firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics on scene when the towers collapsed. 343 members of the fire department perished on the scene including First Deputy Commissioner William M. Feehan and Chief of Department Peter Ganci. Hundreds of firefighter funerals were held in the following weeks including 16 in one day on September 29, 2001. Despite the hardship, response time within the city rose only 1 minute following the attacks and many surviving firefighters continued to work alternating 24 hour shifts. The fire department regularly remembers those who have given the ultimate sacrifice and the service remains committed to Liberty City and its communities. 2002-Present Day In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Fire Department has rebuilt itself and continues to serve the people of Liberty City. At the beginning of the 21st century, there were 11,400 uniformed fire officers and firefighters under the command of the Chief of Department. The Liberty City Fire Department also employed 2,800 emergency medical technicians, paramedics, and supervisors assigned to Department's Bureau of EMS Operations, and 1,200 civilian employees. In 2019, Lillian Bonsignore became the first openly gay and the first female Chief of EMS Operations for the Fire Department of Liberty City. She was succeeded by Duncan Rodriguez in December of the year 2020, following the Mayor of Liberty City's decision to appoint Daniel Carcelli as Chief of Department and Acting Commissioner in accordance with the city's charter, bringing major changes to the Fire Department of Liberty City. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION Liberty City Fire Department Forums This thread is a means to showcase our faction to the community here at Liberty City Roleplay. The leadership of the faction has put countless hours and amount of effort into this project to ensure that we can properly portray a modern Fire Department on the East Coast and differ from the other general types of fire and rescue roleplay you seen in the roleplay scene on Grand Theft Auto. Below, you will be able to find some threads showcasing the roleplay of members of the faction, although, they will likely be simultaneously posted on this thread as well for viewing: Rescue Medics FDLC's 32nd Battalion When the Smoke Clears Squad 1 - "The One and Only
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  25. DISTRICTS OF LIBERTY CITY UPPER ALGONQUIN // UPPER MANHATTAN (LIBERTY COUNTY) District Name Archetype's Name East Holland (East Harlem) Lancaster (Yorkville) Middle Park (Central Park) Middle Park East (Upper East Side) District Name Archetype's Name Middle Park West (Upper West Side) North Holland (Harlem) Northwood (Washington Heights and Inwood) Varsity Heights (Morningside Heights) MIDTOWN ALGONQUIN // MIDTOWN MANHATTAN (LIBERTY COUNTY) District Name Archetype's Name Colony Island (Roosevelt Island) Easton (Murray Hill and Midtown Manhattan) Hatton Gardens (Tudor City, Midtown Manhattan and Turtle Bay) Lancet (Kips Bay and Turtle Bay) The Meat Quarter (Meatpacking District and Chelsea) District Name Archetype's Name Presidents City (Alphabet City) Purgatory (Hell's Kitchen) Star Junction (Times Square) The Triangle (The Flatiron District and Midtown Manhattan) LOWER ALGONQUIN // LOWER MANHATTAN (LIBERTY COUNTY) District Name Archetype's Name Castle Garden City (Battery Park City) Castle Gardens (Battery Park) Chinatown (Chinatown, Manhattan) City Hall (Civic Center) The Exchange Fishmarket North (Financial District) (Bowery and the Fulton Market) District Name Archetype's Name Fishmarket South (South Street Seaport and the Financial District) Happiness Island (Liberty Island) Little Italy (Little Italy, Manhattan) Lower Easton Suffolk Westminster (East Village) (SoHo) (Greenwich Village and Chelsea) BROKER // BROOKLYN (KINGS COUNTY) District Name Archetype's Name Beachgate (Sea Gate) Beechwood City (Flatbush and Far Rockaway) BOABO (DUMBO) Downtown (Downtown Brooklyn) East Hook Firefly Island (Red Hook/Brooklyn Navy Yard) (Coney Island) District Name Archetype's Name Firefly Projects (Brownsville, East New York and Ocean Hill) Hove Beach (Brighton Beach and Bay Ridge) Outlook (Prospect Park) Rotterdam Hill Schottler South Slopes (Clinton Hill and Brooklyn Heights) (Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick) (Park Slope and Crown Heights) DUKES // QUEENS (DUKES COUNTY) District Name Archetype's Name Cerveza Heights (Corona, Jackson Heights and Ozone Park) Charge Island (Randall's Island and Wards Island) East Island City (Long Island City) Francis International Airport (John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport) District Name Archetype's Name Meadow Hills (Forest Hills) Meadows Park (Flushing and the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park) Steinway (Astoria and the Queensbridge Projects) Willis (Hollis and Jamaica) BOHAN // BRONX (BOHAN COUNTY) District Name Archetype's Name Boulevard (Grand Concourse, Pelham Bay Park and Van Cortlandt Park) Chase Point (Hunts Point) Fortside (Fordham, Tremont and the Bronx Hub) Industrial (Soundview and Port Morris) District Name Archetype's Name Little Bay (Pelham Bay and Throggs Neck) Northern Gardens (Co-op City) South Bohan (South Bronx - including the neighborhoods of Morris Heights, Mott Haven and Morrisania) ALDERNEY (RICHMOND COUNTY) // ORIGINALLY BASED ON NEW JERSEY BUT WILL INSTEAD REFLECT STATEN ISLAND // District Name Archetype's Name Westdyke (Todt Hill) Leftwood (St. George) Alderney (Downtown Staten Island) Berchem (Rosebank and New Brighton) Acter (Clifton, Stapleton and North Shore) District Name Archetype's Name Normandy (Mariners Harbor) Tudor (Arlington) Port Tudor (Howland Hook Marine Terminal) Acter Industrial Park (Kill van Kull)
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  26. (2022 photo of the bond hearing for Carmelo Polito(middle) and his associates in a 2016 gambling bust)
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  27. Eric Leung was later brought into custody by the LCPD for questioning. He was asked by two detectives on the incident about his day. After investigators traced the phone messages to be sent from a different location at the time of when Eric Leung was spotted on CCTV, detectives knew Eric was not lying and took his statement. Leung later confessed that he was bound for a drug deal with small time dealers from Bohan. Those dealers were brought into court where Carr confessed that him and Nunez were planning to get back at the On Leong Tong's associates from the criminal underworld of Chinatown for the murder of Jamal Curry, a man in his fifties who owed debt to Chinese gangsters during a gambling façade. Jamal Curry was one of the founding fathers for the 2700 Eastblock Apartment Boys, a small time gang and drug dealer ring who were involved in extortion, murder for hire and mainly drug trafficking. Leung, who was apart of Ghost Shadows and had connections to Big Circle Gang, was also punished by the justice system for drug trafficking related charges on behalf of the murder both Nunez and Carr did. Though there was no evidence of Leung being involved, detectives still remain vigilant on finding out where Eric played apart in this as he chose to get into protective custody within Liberty City's prisons. Carlito Nunez (left) and Tyler Carr (right) are picture on the left during the time of Isabelle's murder. Isabelle Yang was a prominent figure in the On Leong Tong. Though many benevolent societies are not criminally involved with rackets like the 90's used to be, Yang was the jigsaw criminal mastermind behind thousands of opioid deaths in Liberty City estimated from 1990 to 2021. Many families have been stricken with horrors of losing people to drug use. Schools have even put an extra budget into Liberty City's districts to promote anti-drug use. 2021 will be a vicious year for the On Leong Tong and it's associates as one of the last dying criminal organizations hiding behind legal figures.
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  28. Hi everyone! A month has passed and we believe that it's time to talk about our future and the changes that will be happening to accompany it. It is no secret that the month of January has been a struggle for the community and we in no uncertain terms will say outright that there were some major mistakes and decisions that were undertaken that resulted in a launch and post-launch period that was less then ideal for the vast majority of those who played. The reasons for these mistakes are plentiful, but this topic isn't to justify, it's to begin taking steps to provide solutions and discuss next steps in a transparent and open capacity to the players of the server. We have through discord, forums, and individual player-engagement compiled a list of issues that we have identified to be culpable for the current state of the server. This will not be an exhaustive list, however it is simply what has been identified as the most frequently cited concerns we have received and what will receive a majority of attention as we move forward with solutions that will also be presented in this topic. Issue 1: Server Bugs & Design Problem: Upon launch, players encountered numerous bugs in scripts from character design, mortgages, property management, factions, vehicles, and a host of other problems which were not identified before launch. And on top of some of these bugs, certain decisions that were undertaken were not conducive to what some would have preferred or had taken favor to that hindered their ability to enjoy the game. Reasons for Failure: Insufficient testing. Throughout the tenure of the server, only around 10 people ever truly tested the script to varying degrees of thoroughness. Although some latency in the testing process is expected due to certain bugs just not appearing to certain people even if they do the same steps, there were numerous rather obvious bugs that seemed to have missed. A rushed process contributed to various bugs slipping through the cracks. Competing interests with too many cooks in the kitchen. Everyone has a "vision" of how scripts should work, and how they should be used. And over the course of three years, and at different points these visions clashed and produced a system that was not consistent in certain elements it was trying to achieve, while also not being incredibly user friendly creating an environment of interesting design decisions that were undertaken in sectors without real regard to if the process ultimately fit in with what a user can comfortable expect to have vs what was actually being forced upon them from a single individuals idea of how it should be done. Solution: The server will be closing to the public on 2/10/2024 and will remain closed indefinitely pending a re-launch of the product after identified server bugs and other design decisions have been corrected to fit more with what a player expected to have and should. Further information on how long this period lasts will be released in monthly updates to the community to be transparent with the process. The entire staff team is being restructured and downsized, with a concentrated effort to be focused on testing the scripts with a more thorough testing process also assisted by the Development Team directly to attack systems from a variety angles to ensure it stands to scrutiny. More GUI development will be coming for various systems to remove unnecessary clunkiness that was experienced by players when interacting with certain features. More focus on Quality of Life improvements to make it easier on the user to bug-fix themselves on the off-chance they run into issues without an admin/staff member present. Issue 2: Server Economics & Properties Problem: The server economy was meant to replicate a 1:1 economic situation with the real world and everything from pricing, paychecks, mortgages, etc were set up to mimic that philosophy to a near complete degree. This although not bad on it's face, meant that certain decisions we made that would take a player a far unreasonable amount of time to truly climb up in the economy. Or to be more accurate, this server would have to exist for quite an amount of years for someone to become the in-game Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, etc which is too much. And on the properties front, there were issues in people having the means to truly build out what they needed to get started and kept producing weird bugs/issues that made things far more clunky then it should have. Reasons for Failure: The "Realism Virus." Around 2016 back on SAMP/MTA, there was an idea that going to more realism in everything was the next step for RP communities. This will actually be an issue down the line more explained, but the summary here is that it allowed for a mentality to develop in this sector that punishes rather then reward players. An over focus on player-to-player interaction as the biggest source of revenue. Although this is great in idea, and may work in a late-stage server. We're nowhere near the capability to have an economy built upon that, and need to ensure that even if you are the sole person on the server that the server actually allows you to have fun on your own at least until other people get on. This has been a baseline in every server since 2008, and one we just tried to quickly to get away from without truly realizing the value it brought. Solution: Complete review of Server Economics. With the following in mind to start off the process. Moving paychecks to hourly, rather then weekly coinciding with activity on the server. Keeping mortgages weekly, but altering the values for length and home prices. Instituting script jobs and other script-economic NPC systems to allow people to grind for money rather then rely solely rely on player schemes and interaction. Focus on updating property customization scripts, and mapping systems to allow players the ability to more easily build out what they wish with little hassle. Issue 3: Realism & Worldbuilding Problem: Let us be perfectly clear before we begin this one. Worldbuilding is an important and vital element of roleplay as a genre, and will always remain a core of any community that claims to be conducting "roleplay." However, when that world building is built from a top-down style to be forced upon people rather then a bottom-up style driven by the players and endorsed is stifling, and indicates a lack of trust in others to build something with you as a community. On the realism note however, a disclaimer here as well to say that realism alone isn't an issue. We don't want people roleplaying that they are super-human and can jump across buildings and fly or something like that as that would be Powergaming. Instead though, when we identify realism as a problem is when it transforms the game from being a fictional story with fictional characters in a fictional world to simply a copy-paste carbon copy of something in-real life, everything stops being fun and becomes some weird simulation of "pick your realism." It's how the game begins to feel more like a job, then something fictional. Gaming at it's soul, was built as an escape from real life. People don't play Call of Duty, Minecraft, The Sims, Fortnite, Cyberpunk, Assassins Creed, etc and frankly even the game we play GTA (If you actually played the single-player), because they expect it to be some copy-paste edit of real life. Sure, there may be some elements of real-life in some of the games released, but it's not it's entire identity and at best functions as something in the background rather then at the forefront. Ever since 2016 from SAMP, there has been this weird push towards "realism," in just about everything. In LSRP on SAMP that was the transformation of the Los Santos Police Department into a Los Angeles Police Department carbon copy rather then the fictional department it was supposed to be. The San Andreas Sheriff's Department (Which sure, a state level sheriff's department? Kinda weird from a realism perspective, but people had fun), into the Los Santos County Sheriff's Department modeled after the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Even here, we modeled the Liberty City Police Department after the New York Police Department with basically everything being a carbon-copy of that agency and did the same throughout for multiple factions/agencies. This didn't lead to a more fun environment for most, it lead to a more restrictive period. More "correction," of your roleplay in favor of a standard established in somewhere you never cared about until someone made you care. In short, if you are the fan of any form of "Roleplay Quality Management teams," this is a direct result of this line of thinking. Reasons for Failure: We fell into the same trap as late-stage LSRP, GTAW, and other communities post 2016. It started orienting it's entire community towards realism and making everything it made to be modeled after that. And deviations from it were just dismissed outright, and creativity stifled. We tried to force top-down world-building, rather then simply endorse player-created world-building as the world developed. Roleplay is an act of creation, not dictation. (Mayoral election event, for example which also was something far too early nor was ultimately necessary.) Solution: Complete rebuilding of factions (LCPD/FDLC/FIB/City Gov/LCN) with a focus on creativity, shifting away from basing on realism and instead on simply what people in charge would love to do with it. Complete removal of server lore and it's associated questions from the server apps. This does not mean lore won't matter as it will, but will act more as a function of document good lore players provide, then dictation that people must learn and know for entry. Forum restructuring to prepare for the eventual re-launch with all necessary changes, and endorsing the new direction. Active vigilance against the "Realism Virus," for basing future decision making when it comes to IG RP ideas and values. It will be an active battle, but a necessary one. Conclusion We made mistakes, and we our owning up to them. We understand that a variety of people will have a variety of opinions, reactions, and responses to this announcement and we endorse it. Building a community & server is not easy, and it takes a while. Some may find it easier to just quit and leave this be, but from the conversations we have been having we still have a Development Team which is active and wanting to ensure we bring this project to success for years to come, staff members who are willing to spend hours making properties, testing systems, and helping out in anyway they can along with faction leaders still wishing to put in the effort and get things going. Not only that, but we still have numerous foreign partners looking forward to opening up their branches of this project for other language communities, and players in various sectors who have spoken with us wanting to continue this and valuing the resilience having been there in the early days of other projects knowing the growing pains it suffers. The decision to close the server down for a time is not permanent. We are not going anywhere yet, but we do need to take a step back and reevaluate to the new reality. There are a lot more changes being planned and will be announced in our monthly updates as they are made, and we will be keeping the Dev server open to the public as before if anyone simply wants to see some of the progress being made as we make them in the script. Do not expect a timeline for this, just stay up to date and know we are far from over at this point in time. Thank you all for being with us, and I hope this announcement helps explain the situation as well as the future.
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  29. "Six Block" is an unofficial name for the impoverished neighborhood of Northwood, Liberty City. It is the 33rd precinct of Liberty City. The name derives from the addition of the two digits in the precinct number. Six Block is a dominantly Dominican neighborhood, and is home to the Northwood chapter of the Dominicans Don't Play street gang. It is located in Upper Algonquin, and bordered by Varsity Heights in the South, North Holland in the Southeast, and the Bohan bridge in the East. Dominicans Don't Play (DDP) is a Dominican-American street gang founded in Algonquin, Liberty City during the 90s. They are scattered across Liberty City and mainly congested in Bohan, Northwood, and North Holland. The DDP is the second largest Dominican-American street gang in Liberty City, behind their rivals, the Trinitarios. Despite this, they came into power during the fall of the Cali Cartel and hold a decent share of the cocaine market in Algonquin and Bohan due to their ties with current Mexican drug cartels. Despite proudly representing their Dominican heritage, they have adapted heavily to recent changes in the demographic of Northwood. Many African-Americans operate and work as the limbs of the organization though they do not maintain membership and do not hold any high ranking positions in the organization.
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  30. Introduction As a faction, Weazel 5 Liberty aims to portray a major Entertainment/News Corporate under a Television Network. Weazel 5 Liberty is based on Fox 5 New York. The faction follows the history of Fox 5 New York up until the year 2021 in which the station undergoes leadership changes. As a faction we'd like to give a new direction to roleplay surrounding a news agency by incorporating other areas of entertainment. As evident by its real-life counterpart, Weazel 5 Liberty shares mostly conservative views. We aim to portray what modern-day media in the United States of America is. We suggest everyone interested in this faction to read more about Fox News and their impact on the political and cultural divide in the country. Whilst Weazel 5 Liberty promotes right-wing politicians and ideas, the Liberty Tree which is based on the New York Times will be it's opposite. The Liberty Tree will instead be a more left-leaning newspaper. This is done to balance the flow of information, as well as to completely change what modern-day media is on roleplay communities. This will boost political roleplay, create opportunities and most importantly - create an immersive entertainment industry that mimics it's real life counterpart. It's important to note that whilst Weazel News is a parody of Fox News in the GTA universe, we are not doing a parody of Fox News. Instead, our faction is based on Fox News. The only aspect of the GTA universe that we've adopted is the name (Weazel) to be in accordance with the lore and continuity. So, while our main aim will be the goings on of Liberty City for News report purposes, we aim to work with other roleplayers to incorporate other elements of the entertainment industry into our roleplay as well as work with other legal factions to broaden the roleplay we will offer. In addition, we're looking to incorporate some amazing roleplay such as weather forecasting and more. Any faction enquiries pertaining to Weazel 5 should be directed towards @Biography. History (WIP) Weazel 5 Liberty is the flagship station of Weazel television network, licensed to Liberty City, United States. The first iteration of the station founded in Alderney, Liberty City in 1938 as an experimental station by Allen B. DuMont. Eventually moving to Algonquin and receiving its commercial license to begin citywide broadcast in May of 1944 being the third network to receive such license in Liberty City. It would be one of the few television stations to continue broadcast during World War II making it one of the oldest continuous broadcast in the United States. By the 1970s, the station was one of the strongest independent stations in the country despite two of it's rival stations eventual status as national superstations. It was the highest-rated independent in Liberty City. From the early 1970s to late 1980s Weazel 5 was a regional superstation available in large portions of the Northeast, including much of upstate Liberty, portions of Pennsylvania and New England. Eventually operation of what would become Weazel 5 Liberty would wind down as market of television became more competitive with major competitors securing affiliations with top stations at the time. However, operations would eventually branch into FM Radio with a deal from the Federal Communications Commission and went on air in 1958. In 1985, Weazel News Corporation operating in Los Santos, San Andreas which had a controlling interest in several Vinewood based film studios would announce it's intention to purchase six of the independent stations operating within Liberty City, including DuMont's station. One obstacle to the takeover of DuMont's station was Weazel News Corporation's publishing of the Liberty City Post since 1976. Federal Commmunications Commissions rules at the time did not allow for common ownership of newspapers and broadcast licensing in the same city and despite parting ways with the paper, it would go on to reacquire it five years later. With Weazel's acquisition of WLW this would go on to form the cornerstone of the Weazel Broadcasting Company when it launched in October of 1986. With the station rebranding to Weazel 5 soon after with broadcast continuing from Algonquin. In 2001, as a result of the September 11 attacks, Weazel 5's, as well as eight other local television stations and radio services, went offline after transmitter facilities were affected by the events of the day. The station transmitter briefly moved location and was the first time a move had occurred since the 1970s. As of 2021, Weazel 5 Liberty continues to offer the best in News coverage across Liberty City as well as weather, sports and entertainment. Shows & Services (WIP) As a television station native to Liberty city as well as daytime and primetime entertainment and sports coverage, Weazel5 offers the following; The News On Weazel 5 Hosted by Weazel 5's talented Broadcast team, broadcast from Weazel 5's state of the art studio facility in Weazel's Algonquin headquarters as well as locations across Liberty City. Catch up on the days news with our midday and evening teams and follow news as it happens. From filming on location and interviewing guests in the studio, we aim to bring you the highest quality of service on The News On Weazel 5. Weazel 5 Weather Helmed by our very own Senior Meteorologist, Bellamy Badeaux, presents real time weather updates alongside predicted forecast for the upcoming week so you can plan your week activities around the weather! With his many years of experience, Bellamy aims to keep you in the know! Be it the sun will be shining down on our beautiful Downtown Liberty, or severe washout with heavy downpours! Tune into the weather alongside the midday and evening news bulletins. Advertisements Need to get your business on the map? Weazel 5 offers advertisement packages catered to businesses individual needs. With radio advertisements, Television advertisements and more. Structure WIP Research awaits.. Career Opportunities Broadcast Intern Description: Our entry level into the Weazel5 Broadcasting team, prospective applicants will be working alongside other members of the broadcasting team to assist in production and editing of Weazel5 content across all live or otherwise content. Interns are expected to learn on the job with the main aim to integrate themselves into the team, learning all there is to the Broadcast team of Weazel5 and taking part alongside our news anchors, presenters, radio presenters and meteorologists. At the end of internship, interns will have learned an understanding of how to set up broadcasting equipment and create/organise events on-air and off. Prospective applicants should be aware progression may lead to future opportunities to host their own on-air content. Ideal Qualities: Creative and forward thinking approach to work. Open-minded to learning. Attention to detail. Desire to learn and develop as they work. Able to research and fact check appropriately in line with their work. An understanding of IT and range of software packages is desirable. Degree in Meteorology (Required for those looking to branch to Weather Forecast) Editorial Intern Description: Our entry level into the Weazel5 Editorial team, prospective applicants will be working alongside other members of the editorial team to assist in creation of high quality content for the Weazel5 website. Writing about news in Liberty City as it happens to be sent to editors for review to be published on the website. When news happens, interns will be expected to contribute and help with coverage and work as part of a team on team-based projects as they learn and integrate into the Weazel5 editorial team. At the end of internship, interns will have learned an understanding of research techniques, fact checking, writing creative content and editoral work including spell checking, grammar checking etc. Ideal Qualities: Creative and forward thinking approach to work. Open-minded to learning. Attention to detail. Desire to learn and develop as they work. Familiarity with word processing software. Familiarity with photo editing software. (Not required) Character Development This thread serves to show the community our faction development involving everyone in the faction. However, as a civilian roleplay faction. All of our members put countless hours into their character development in the faction and outside of the faction. Our members are the people who make the faction what it is today so, we'd like to showcase some of our members individual character threads where you can follow their individual character threads: Credits Forum Thread: @Jorgensen Fact Checking & Lore Assistance: @Biography Graphics: @Justitiae And everyone else involved in the faction who makes Weazel5 the faction it is!
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  31. Some of my artworks ......................................................................................................................................................
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  32. @Tyrant Since you decided to create an alternative account and fabricate evidence: Next time when fabricating evidence, at least try to conceal your identity a bit better. Since you're using London timezone, you're basically 2 hours behind my timezone. Here is a screenshot of me contacting you at 1:13 AM, which in your country is 23:13 PM Here is your fabricated screenshot which is cute, but you forgot to edit out the time which basically exposes you using an alt account. And this is you changing your PFP because you're not happy for the ban you've received: So keep making fun of yourself and your friends. I usually refrain from engaging like that, but since you've decided to act smart (which obviously is not the case) I thought it would be good to show your true nature under your faction thread. And trust me, no amount of money will ever get you unbanned.
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  33. Cosa Nostra in Liberty City: Is Bohan the new stomping ground for Lucchese captain Richard Caporaso? Written by Stanley Hearst, May 2nd, 2021. The Caporaso Crew, also known as the Little Bay Crew, is a crew operating in Liberty City under the supervision of the Lucchese Crime Family. Bohan is considered to be a longtime Lucchese stronghold, and Caporaso is keeping the tradition going after taking over in 2019. The crew was formerly headed by Edward "Eddy Stereo" Scimano, a veteran Lucchese mobster and a known figure around Bohan. Richard "Richie Two-Step" Caporaso, 55, from Alderney, is believed to be an aspiring captain of the Lucchese Crime Family. His ascension within the Lucchese family was fast and is said to have been a major power play in the criminal underworld. Caporaso got initiated into the Lucchese Crime Family in the new years eve of 2002, together with several other soldiers of the family. As a soldier in what eventually became Edward "Eddy Stereo" Scimano's Bohan crew, he went on and cemented his position as he started extorting garages around Little Bay and other Bohan neighborhoods. He married his high-school sweetheart, Gabriella Gazzo in February 2003. Among the guests were many known criminal figures and several other inducted members of the Lucchese Crime Family, all seen at the Richmond County Country Club, where the wedding took place. Caporaso was released from an eight-year prison sentence in 2019 after being involved in a racketeering case, served at USP Leavenworth. He was arrested on a racketeering case alongside 13 other Lucchese associates in 2011 but kept his mouth shut and did his full sentence. As a reward for his loyalty, the administration decided to reward Caporaso the control of Scimano's Bohan crew operating in Little Bay, an old Lucchese stronghold, in an attempt to cement their power within the Liberty City underworld. Richard Caporaso's mugshot, taken 2017.
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  34. OOC Information: This is a work in progress as of this moment, but I will be able to lay out some things for people to understand when looking at this faction. This is not a stereotypical Irish faction, we are aiming to portray a modern day Irish American criminals, this is going to be a loosely organized Irish American gang rather than the Irish mob, and for right now it is about working on the faction for launch. Also, keep in mind that as of the moment is this a one man show, this is coming from ground up and so far I am the only person who is doing this faction specifically, so if you are interested in this project and wanting to see it develop, you can contact me on the forums @GypsyViper and we can get this ball rolling. Keep in mind as well, those who are associated in the group and put themselves directly into the faction as apart of the said faction means that you agree that leadership has the rights to CK your character if we see it fit to so within reason of course, and within the guidelines the server establish. Credit to the homeboy @voucher for making the image above.
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  35. Ennio Petrarca From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ennio Petrarca is a Sicilian mobster and member of the Gambino crime family, known by his peers and mob cohorts as "Sonny" and "il Lupo" (the Wolf). A prolific hitman, he became the Gambino family's newly appointed acting boss after the 2019 indictment of Angelo DeLuca. Early life Ennio was born in Palermo, Sicily. His father, Gaetano Petrarca, was a former made member and tactically ruthless hitman for the Passo di Rigano Mafia family known as the Inzerillo clan. At just the early age of 11, Ennio was entrenched in the lectures and traditions of his father. Having already fostered the reputation of a loyal and trusted soldier of the Inzerillo clan, Gaetano Petrarca was a particular favorite of Salvatore Inzerillo himself. Through a string of marriages, the Inzerillos were closely related to both the Di Maggio and Spatola families in Palermo as well as the Gambino family in Liberty City. In 1978, Salvatore Inzerillo became a sitting member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission, closely aligning himself with Stefano Bontade to counter the growing power of the rival Corleonesi clan headed by Salvatore "Toto" Riina. The Second Mafia War In May 1980, prosecuting judge Gaetano Costa signed 53 arrest warrants for members of the Spatola-Inzerillo-Gambino clan in an effort to dismantle the heroin trafficking network. Costa was murdered on August 6, 1980 by Gaetano Petrarca at the behest of Inzerillo. The decision to murder Costa went against the approval of the Sicilian Mafia Commission, jump-starting what became known as the Second Mafia War. As Inzerillo was leaving the home of his mistress, he was gunned down by a machine gun and rendered unrecognizable in May 1981. The death of both Inzerillo and Bontade, who was murdered a month before Inzerillo, was a result of Salvatore Riina's takeover of Cosa Nostra by brutal force. It is speculated that Inzerillo was murdered by Riina's most lethal hitman; Pino Greco, who later kidnapped and tortured Inzerillo's son Giuseppe after he vowed to avenge his father's death. Tommaso Buscetta later testified that it was Pino Greco who symbolically hacked off Giuseppe Inzerillo's arm, the very same arm he swore to avenge his father with, before shooting him in the head. Gli Scappati In 1984, Gaetano Petrarca was able to utilize his ties with Inzerillo's relations with the Gambino family to seek refuge in Liberty City. With the intervention of the Gambino family, many Inzerillo remnants were allowed to seek refuge with the agreement that none of them return to Sicily, including off springs. The Inzerillo remnants became known as "gli scappati", the escapees. The Petrarcas settled in the Broker borough, a priority that was coordinated by Giovanni "John" Gambino and facilitated by Paolo "Paulie Scat" Reina. Ennio was 17 years old at the time of his arrival into Liberty City, adapting to the Americanized attitude of the peers he's come to know throughout his late teens. John Gambino served as capodecina, or captain, and was the head of the Sicilian faction to the Gambino family. He also served as the convergent point for the Gambino family's heroin trafficking operation. Despite the ban on drug trafficking, Gaetano Petrarca aligned himself with Gambino's crew and solidified his allegiance to the Gambino family by becoming heavily relied upon to murder at the behest of Gambino family boss John Gotti. In retaliation for the 1986 car bombing of Gambino underboss Frank DeCicco, Petraza was tasked with killing two Genovese family associates who were stopped at an intersection in Bohan. He became an influential figure in the Gambino family and ascended to the position of capodecina (captain) in 1987. As his influence in the Gambino family grew, Ennio Petrarca formed a strong bond with Dominic Maresca, another associate who was consolidated in Gaetano Petrarca crew. By 1991, under his father's tenure, Ennio garnered the reputation of an enforcer and assisted those involved with the facilitation of heroin from Southeast Asia to the gangs in Broker and Dukes. Along with his cousin, Francesco "Frankie Breeze" Calabrese, Ennio's involvement in the Pizza Connection was none other than to facilitate the distribution of the Pizza Connection's supply of heroin. After the conviction of Paolo "Paulie Scat" Reina and Alberto "Al Brown" Urzi in their involvement with the Pizza Connection, their off springs were consolidated under Gaetano Petrarca's crew in the late 1980s. In the midst of this arrangement, Ennio crossed paths with Saverio "Sammy Bridges" Urzi and Gino "Gigi Onions" Reina. Together, Urzi and Reina combined their efforts into cementing their connections with Dukes and Broker gangs to distribute heroin. With sponsorship from Gambino soldier William "Wild Bill" Evola, Reina was formerly initiated into the family alongside Urzi. Petraza's capabilities as an enforcer for both Urzi and Reina's heroin distribution network also proved to be a valuable asset to Gambino soldier Angelo DeLuca. DeLuca's path with Gaetano Petrarca crossed in 1985 as the two began investing in legitimate businesses and orchestrating DeLuca's loansharking operation. In 1994, Ennio and his cousin Francesco were tasked with killing Bruce Hinkerson and Edward Reynolds, two drug dealers who had a severe gambling debt owed to DeLuca. They were ambushed behind the alleyway of a local deli in Bohan, a tactic that was well-executed with no leads. In Christmas of 1999, Ennio and his cousin were formerly inducted into the Gambino family, becoming one of the very few members to be brought into the family after committing murder in that era. His reign as practically the spitting image of his father earned him the nickname "il Lupo", the Wolf. Calabrese's death Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Petraza crew was able to slip through the cracks of law enforcement's efforts to dismantle the Gambino family influence. Gambino family boss John Gotti passed away in prison in 2002. His brother, Peter Gotti, retained his position as boss while serving time in prison and the leadership of the family fell in the hands of Gotti loyalists such as Arnold "Zeke" Squittieri until his imprisonment in 2005. John "Jackie" D'Amico would later replace him as acting boss before eventually being imprisoned in 2008. A panel of caporegimes comprised of Gaetano Petrarca, John Gambino, and Gerald D'Amasio controlled the day-to-day operations of the family. D'Amasio was known to be very envious of Petrarca's quick rise in the family and in secrecy divulged false information to Peter Gotti that the Sicilians were planning to take control of the family. Gotti, fearing his grip over the family was deteriorating, gave the order to D'Amasio to have Ennio Petrarca killed to keep the Sicilians in line. On December 9, 2010, gunmen open fired on Ennio and his cousin Francesco as they were leaving a bar in Dukes. The hit led to Francesco being killed immediately, but Ennio managed to survive. Ennio gave no description of the attackers to law enforcement, insisting it was just a robbery gone wrong. Petraza's suspicion of D'Amasio grew as Gambino family soldier Andrew "Large Andy" Patigalio boasted about a bump in rank to his peers. Patigalio would later be reported missing by his family on December 12th. It is rumored, but never proven that Patigalio was kidnapped, tortured and then murdered for his involvement. Dominic Maresca, a tenured Gambino soldier and protege of Petrarca is alleged to have been the gunman behind Patigalio's disappearance. On December 21, 2010, D'Amasio was shot and killed at a McDonald's drive-thru line in Broker. Witnesses who were present at the scene described the suspects as Hispanic males with no ties to D'Amasio's mafia affiliation. Sicilian Resurgence in the family The Gambino crime family, in the year 2011, transitioned into a new era of Sicilian rule with the uncontested decision for Gaetano Petrarca to be appointed as the new boss. With the death of Peter "One Eyed Pete" Gotti and the Gotti family completely disbarred from any influence, Petrarca was able to bolster the Gambino administration by appointing Angelo DeLuca as his underboss and Ennio Petrarca as captain of the Dukes based crew. In conjunction with the remnants of John Gambino's crew, Ennio Petrarca and his subordinates participated in lucrative ways to earn money through rackets such as illegal gambling, extortion, and drug trafficking. Under Gaetano Petrarca's tenure, the Gambino family was completely safeguarded from any investigative efforts to dismantle the new administration until 2015 when his heart conditions and constant hospitalizations interfered with his leadership. On November 16, 2017, John Gambino died of natural causes and his faction were later consolidated under Ennio Petrarca's Dukes faction, allowing him to emerge as a main contact for the Sicilian Mafiosi who traveled to and from Liberty City. Angelo DeLuca, the Gambino family's second-in-command, maintained control of the family up until his 2019 indictment from loansharking charges. Acting Boss In 2019, after amassing a great deal of influence throughout his criminal career with the Gambino family, Ennio Petraza was appointed as the new acting boss. According to the Italian Polizia di Stato (State Police), Petrarca's business relations with the Sicilian Mafia have flourished through their combined efforts to traffic heroin into the United States and throughout Liberty City. Through his second-in-command, Dominic Maresca, the Gambinos have infiltrated numerous legitimate businesses. With Ennio Petrarca's ascension to acting boss, the vacancy of the captain position in the Dukes faction was filled by Gino Reina, a long-standing soldier in the Gambino family with strong ties to several Sicilian Mafia clans. Personal Life In 2012, Ennio Petrarca's married Caterina DiBello. During Ennio's tenure as a Gambino soldier, he was introduced to Caterina at the funeral of his cousin Francesco "Frankie Breeze" Calabrese by her uncle, Thomas DiBello. DiBello was a Gambino soldier who collaborated with Dominic Maresca and spearheaded a small delegation of associates to apprehend Andrew Patigalio, one of the alleged gunmen behind Calabrese's death. The couple share a son together, Lirio, named after Ennio's uncle.
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  36. Associates of Dukes-Based Boss Money Brims Set of the Bloods Gang Indicted for Racketeering, Including Predicate Acts of Robbery and Firearms Offenses A superseding indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Broker charging 17 members and associates of the Boss Money Brims set of the Bloods street gang with crimes related to their participation in a robbery crew that used guns and violence to steal property over a nine-month period in 2017 in Dukes. The 16 newly charged defendants were arrested today. “As alleged, members and their associates of the Boss Money Brims set of the Bloods committed numerous, violent armed robberies, victimizing families in their homes and employees and patrons of local businesses, including a barber shop." “We are working tirelessly with our law enforcement partners to ensure that our community is protected from the threat posed by violent street gangs such as this one.” “Members of this gang allegedly attacked innocent people in their own homes, believing they could act without consequences,” stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Waterford. “Our goal when we open an investigation into violent gangs is to take out the leadership. This case is a perfect example of how we don’t stop simply by making a few arrests, we will continue to investigate and track down all those involved in their criminal activity and stop them from literally terrorizing a community in their lust for violence.” “Targeting and dismantling criminal groups, and preventing violence that is often associated with their illegal activities, continues to be among the highest priorities for the LCPD and our law enforcement partners,” stated LCPD Commissioner O’Brian. “I commend and thank the attorneys from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Liberty City for bringing this case forward, and the LCPD investigators for their hard work to keep our communities safe and further reduce crime and disorder.” The Boss Money Brims set of the Bloods is comprised primarily of members residing in and around the project housing of Dukes. As alleged in the indictment and other court filings, between May 2017 and December 2017, the defendants participated in 11 robberies or attempted robberies, brandishing or using guns during most of the crimes. The defendants targeted individuals they believed would be in possession of large amounts of cash, electronics, jewelry or narcotics. Upon receiving a tip about a promising victim, the Boss Money Brims would assemble a crew to carry out the robbery, and the participants adopted various roles for the crime, including lookout, getaway driver and gunman. Several of the charged robberies are described below: Home Invasion and Shooting On October 11, 2017, Tyron Simpkins, Robinson and other co-conspirators robbed a house in west Alderney, where they believed a jewelry store owner kept jewelry and cash. Simpkins and several co-conspirators forced their way into the house brandishing guns, and restrained the victim’s family members using zip ties. Simpkins shot the victim in the stomach before fleeing with jewelry and electronics. The victim received medical treatment and survived. Targeting Homes with Outdoor Indian Flags In at least two robberies, the defendants looked for homes where Indian flags were flying because they believed the residents kept gold and cash inside. James Dupree posed as a deliveryman wearing a United Parcel Service (UPS) jacket to enter a house, where he and other co-conspirators restrained two young girls at gunpoint. The crew been charged with racketeering, including predicate acts of Hobbs Act robberies, robbery under Liberty City law and related firearms offenses. If convicted, each defendant faces a mandatory minimum sentence of at least seven years’ imprisonment and a maximum of life imprisonment. The charges in the indictments are allegations and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The government’s case is being handled by the Office’s Organized Crime and Gangs Section. Assistant United States Attorneys Max R. Sullivan and Barbara M. Lue are in charge of the prosecution.
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  37. ENVIRONMENT CONSISTENCY POLICY The following information is LC:RP’s official stance on the community’s environmental consistency. This information is to be followed by all members of the community. Policy on New York City, New York and New Jersey New York City and New York are replaced by Liberty City, Liberty. Detailed information pertaining to the history of Liberty City can be found here: A History of Liberty City - The Liberty Heritage Foundation - Liberty City Roleplay Influential figures that are currently occupying influential positions such as Bill de Blasio, Andew Cuomo, Terence A. Monahan do not exist and are replaced with their in-game counterparts. Individuals who are from New York City, New York and do not occupy important positions exist, but are referred to as being part of Liberty City. For instance, Rudy Giuilani was a Mayor of Liberty City from 1984 to 2001. * Every person of interest before the year 2020 is considered a part of the canon, lore and history of Liberty City and Liberty State and may be discussed and referred as such in-character. An exception to this is the Italian-American crime families' leaderships who went through a change in the leadership during 2011 to accommodate the server. * A person of interest is any individual who held key government positions in the local government of New York, the state government of New York, the Senate of New York, or key societal figures, such as police chiefs/commissioners, councilmen, etc. This also covers criminal/mob figures; all large-scale criminal organizations that existed in New York before 2020 are part of the history of Liberty City. In our universe, Liberty City consists of 5 boroughs: Bohan, Dukes, Algonquin, Broker and Alderney. Alderney, despite being initially based off Jersey City, New Jersey, we have decided to roleplay it as a borough of Liberty City, and draw inspiration and reference from Staten Island instead. There are various areas in Alderney that bear resemblance to Staten Island too, especially having been described by official sources as a ‘rubbish dump’ due to the disposal of waste at Fresh Kills Landfill which remained the largest landfill in the world until its closure in 2001. Not only this, but we feel the incorporation of industrial sites also represents a bit of Staten Island, especially with the West Shore regarded as an industrial area. With this, we feel that there are more complications with roleplaying Alderney as Jersey City, New Jersey than Staten Island as it completely changes the administrative and political division in the city, meaning that we would need to accommodate for two, major police forces on the server, more than two forms of government, and will introduce a wave of other faction, modding and development-related problems in our community. Policy on Los Angeles, California Los Angeles and California are replaced by Los Santos, San Andreas. All influential figures that are currently occupying influential positions such as Gavin Newsom, Eric Garcetti, Michael More exist, but they are referred to as being part of Los Santos, as opposed to Los Angeles. For example, Michael More is the current chief of the LSPD. Policy on San Francisco, California San Francisco and California are replaced by San Fierro and San Andreas. Since there are currently no RP communities using San Fierro, players are able to refer to San Francisco, California’s history and current influential figures and effectively render/consider them San Fierro’s. The only exception to that rule is the city and state’s name which in our universe are treated as San Fierro, San Andreas. Policy on Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas, Nevada is replaced by Las Venturas, Nevada. Since there are currently no RP communities using Las Venturas, players are able to refer to Las Vegas, Nevada’s history and current influential figures and effectively render/consider them Las Venturas’. The only exception to that rule is the city and state’s name which in our universe are treated as Las Venturas, Nevada. Policy on Miami, Florida Miami, Florida is replaced by Vice City, Florida. Since there are currently no RP communities using Vice City, players are able to refer to Miami, Florida’s history and current influential figures and effectively render/consider them Vice City’s. As with the Las Vegas rule, the only exception to this rule is the city and state’s name in our universe will be treated as Vice City, Florida. Policy on proprietary items, brands and labels Official names, brands and labels part of the GTA universe may be referred to as their in-game name or real life names. For instance, “Sprunk” can be referred to as “Sprite”, “Pißwasser” as “Budweiser”, etc. Players will not receive administrative sanctions for this. Other brands that exist in real life such as "Nike", "iPhone", "Samsung", etc. but have not been introduced with different names in the GTA universe are allowed and they exist. Players can refer to their real names in-game. Policy on vehicles & firearms In order to avoid confusion between players on Liberty City Roleplay the lore-friendly names provided by vanilla GTA 5 vehicles, or server-side mods, shall be followed by players at all times. As such, when a player interacts with a vehicle they may not roleplay it as a real-life make or model. For example, if a player interacts with an Ubermacht Oracle, they shall not refer to it or roleplay it as a BMW 5-series. If a player interacts with an Annis Elegy Retro, they shall not refer to it or roleplay it as a Nissan Skyline. This is to provide a confusion-free roleplaying experience for all players thanks to the depth of the vehicles provided by Rockstar Games. This means that no real life vehicle makes, models or manufacturer tuning brands shall be referenced or mentioned in any way as they all have lore equivalents. Firearms, however, will not be restricted due to the lacking depth of lore provided by Rockstar Games and the limited number of options and types available in the game. The restrictions that come with this are that any firearm roleplayed must be similar in firearm type, caliber, weapon length, feed mechanism and general similarities - So long as it's realistic to be roleplayed within the United States. For example, the Shrewsbury Assault Rifle may be roleplayed as any full-size Kalashnikov rifle chambering an intermediate cartridge with a full-length barrel. The Shrewsbury Heavy Shotgun would be more restricted to a Saiga 12 shotgun, for example, or other similar magazine-fed shotguns. The Shrewsbury Compact Rifle has the similar freedom as the Assault Rifle, however with a short barrel only. Weapon size is an important boundary to stay within and cannot be abused to roleplay a long firearm as if it were much shorter in the hopes of not being found. This policy is designed to allow players the freedom of roleplay while also ensuring everyone remains within the lines of realism and roleplay, while also not allowing for any abuse where one party may gain an advantage over the other in roleplay. Policy on realism and immersion Realism is a prominent aspect of our community. However, due to game mechanics and other issues, re-creating the real world is not completely possible. For instance, our legal factions are based on their real-life counterparts (The FDLC is replacing the FDNY, the LCPD is replacing the NYPD, etc.) however factions are constructed in a manner that allows them to have their own individuality. Whilst key culture from their real-life counterparts is adopted, factions are evolving and creating their own culture based on in-character events that also shape the socio-economic and political environment. Players must portray realistic characters, meaning properly roleplaying emotions. Policy on political parties In accordance with our realism policy, Liberty City's political environment will be a duopolistic one where two main political parties will dominate the political field. Like a market, a political system is often dominated by two groups, which exclude other parties or ideologies from governing or enforcing their agenda. Despite there being eight registered political parties in New York, three will exist in Liberty City, two of whom will dominate either of the two branches of government. The established political parties are as follows: Main political parties: Republican Party (Liberty State GOP) Democratic Party (Liberty State DEMS) Third party(s): Independence Party (IPL) New York party strength/control will not apply to the political environment of Liberty City, meaning that either the Democratic or Republican Party can dominate the political environment at any given time depending on elections, and not based off real-life modern or historical patterns/results. Members of a third party may propose or endorse one of their own as a candidate for a political election, or support a candidate from either of the two main political parties. Our stance on a unified government is unfavourable as it may be unfair for the opposing political party to pass legislation or deliver favourable policies. A unified government describes a situation in which one party controls both the executive and legislative branches of government. Instead, we will encourage a divided government; should one political party secure one branch of government, the opposing party secures the other in order to encourage healthy political competition and avoid general abuse and toxicity under a system of unified control. Policy on Population & Crimes in Public In our universe, the population of Liberty City does not only consist of our in-game player population. This means that players must take this into consideration when committing acts of crime in public, therefore common sense must be applied. This does not mean that every single player will receive an administrative punishment if they do commit an act of crime in public. Victims of crimes, however, are allowed to submit a player complaint if they believe the crime against them was portrayed poorly or in an unrealistic manner. Each incident will be treated on a case-by-case basis by the admin team. This rule is especially important with regard to serious crime such as kidnapping, murder, armed robbery, etc. If you wish to commit such crime and you are reported, you will need to justify your reasoning. Factors to consider are but not limited to: does your character have the opportunity to commit the crime in a more secluded location, e.g. was this the only opportunity to conduct the act? what is the location where the crime was committed? was the crime committed "in the heat of the moment"? do you have a realistic and reasonable explanation as to why your character has committed the crime? did your character take necessary actions to conceal their identity in an attempt to avoid being caught? did any roleplay occur prior to the act and if so, was it reasonable? did the incident start at another location but ended up in a different area? E.g. vehicle, foot chases, etc. As it is difficult to identify which location would realistically have "high amount of population", each case will be treated on a case-by-case basis. Once again, this rule does not mean it will affect every single case of crime that was committed.
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  38. EAST ASIAN ROLEPLAY GUIDE CHAPTER I - Character Design When creating your character, it is important that you ask yourself what kind of home life your character grew up in. Questions like below will make it easier to have a strong start in terms of realistic portrayal: Did the character attend Sunday school where they were taught their ethnic language, traditions, etc? Were the character's parents strict on tradition and raise them as such? Did your character grow up in a religious household? Is the character rebellious and resisted against any of these teachings? Did the character grow up speaking English, their ethnic language, both, etc? Did the character grow up in a working class family, middle class, etc? Depending on their family’s social class, was there a natural need to turn to crime for income? Generations: 1st: Characters who are 1st generation should avoid the trope of coming fresh off the boat because of x reason and then joining x east Asian faction. This is a trope that's been overplayed with poor quality and should be avoided. Instead, players are advised to roleplay a 1st generation who has already been living in the United States for some time. 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc: The general rule of thumb is with every generation forward, you'll likely be somebody who has been "Americanized" with some flavor of your ethnicity and tradition still playing a part. This should, however, be taken into context of your character's background/backstory. Character Names: This is largely personal preference but it is advised people roleplaying as Asian Americans should follow an Anglicized First Name (American) + Ethnic Last Name format as it visually and contextually reads as 2nd + generation. Note however that it wouldn't be outlandish for a 2nd + generation person to have a fully ethnic name. CHAPTER II - Ethnic Origins Korean factions: Setting: In the present day, long over are the highly publicized feuds between rival criminal groups in Alderney City’s Koreatown. The enactment of federal RICO laws followed by the crackdown of Asian OC in Liberty City in the 90s and the slow gentrification of Koreatown has had an adverse impact on the size and success of crime groups there. As a result, the size of youth recruitment pools has been drastically reduced. This has further led to the fragmentation and outright dissolution of some criminal groups. The groups that are left over now are either remnants of the past or young organizations looking to make a name for themselves with the power vacuum present. Some have taken the initiative to transition into more white collar spheres such as monopolizing the Korean construction business in Liberty City. Notes: Factions interested in portraying a Jopok (The more organized side/tier of Korean organized crime groups) and Kkangpae (A blanket term for Korean gangsters but often used in reference to street level criminals) should not start off as a fresh off the boat immigrant group. Instead, factions are advised to portray an organization whose core membership base is largely or almost all Korean American and whose elders/leaders who already immigrated to Liberty City in the nineties. In relation, said elders/leaders would also realistically speaking have ‘retired’, served prison time, or adapted their operations to a much more underground level. Chinese factions: Setting: Following Rudy Giuliani's crackdowns & the Golden Venture incident in the 90s, the Flying Dragons, Ghost Shadows, and Fuk Ching died out in Liberty City's Chinatown. With these crackdowns also came a string of arrests for members of the tong, injuring their reputation and causing them to lose relevance in the community. A generation of gang members has gone by since the 90s in the early 2000s with smaller cliques and gangs running around Chinatown, however they were not as prominent as the tong gangs once were. In the current day, Liberty's Chinatown has three influences: the remnants of the Tongs (now old men, mostly social clubs which participate in illegal gambling & other lesser crimes), small-time Asian-American street gangs & hustlers (less prolific than in the 90s, yet similar), and low-profile, organized syndicates (commonly influenced by Chinese Triads, black societies and snakeheads). Notes: Factions interested in portraying tong organizations should stray away from large named tongs and rather represent smaller "social clubs" made up of middle-aged/elderly first generation immigrants that dot New York's Chinatown for ease of continuity. Factions interested in portraying Chinese organized crime groups should be made up of second generation and beyond Chinese-Americans. Japanese factions: Factions interested in Japanese American criminal roleplay are advised to form a Japanese American enclave in the area of their choice with a criminal underbelly. There can be potential for said criminal underbelly to have connections to a Yakuza organization but it should not overtly be a Yakuza as historically, their activity and presence in the United States has been limited. CHAPTER III - Social Norms Regarding gender roles in East Asian criminal orgs: East Asian criminal organizations are almost entirely male dominated. It is expected and will be enforced OOCly that factions portray this social dynamic where women are merely tools for monetary gain. Roles like being a drug mule, bait for a honeypot scam or being part of a prostitution ring are what players should expect to undertake if they wish to roleplay as a female character. Regarding homosexuality in East Asian criminal orgs: Characters who are homosexuals should realistically go out of their way to hide their true sexuality. If exposed, the character should consider themselves greenlit. Furthermore, factions are expected to take it upon themselves to address the issue if it arises or risk losing face among their peers in Liberty City’s criminal underworld. CHAPTER IV - OOC Expectations Factions should consult with the FST, EA WG, and the faction which controls the area, if any, before creating their faction. This is to avoid having factions which merely spawn out of thin air to create conflict. Factions are expected to have done meticulous research on their choice of EA ethnicity and the type of organization that they are trying to portray. Mere repeats of tropes will be a tell tale sign of poor portrayal. Seek advice if needed. If you see poor portrayal, reach out and offer advice backed by a credible source. CHAPTER V - Helpful Sources Directly relating to Korean OCG in New York: https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-rise-of-the-green-dragons-kidnappings-murder-and-gang-warfare/76033/ http://mafianj.com/asian/koreans.shtml https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/147234NCJRS.pdf http://www.nypress.com/news/manhattans-invisible-korean-power-GWNP1020060517305179976 https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/nyregion/28plea.html https://books.google.com/books?id=ReMCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=korean+power+gang&source=bl&ots=BJsbVBRQvJ&sig=ACfU3U2yNr2EuvNjp0oXF10LXaVmiH-inQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwixh8OVw-HxAhXNElkFHT-oBegQ6AF6BAg0EAM#v=onepage&q=korean%20power%20gang&f=false Gangs and Immigrant Youth (Criminal Justice Recent Scholarship) by Kyung-Seok Choo Korean OCG in the United States: https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/148396NCJRS.pdf http://mafianj.com/asian/koreans.shtml https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/147234NCJRS.pdf https://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/orgcrm96.pdf https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Photocopy/149225NCJRS.pdf https://www.state.nj.us/sci/pdf/streetgangs-1993.pdf https://laist.com/news/4-men-arrested-for-hate-crime-invol https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1119147/files/fulltext.pdf https://www.csun.edu/~smr78195/aas345/report/fall04/koreatownpaper.htm https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/60589284.pdf https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/northern-virginia-korean-night-breeders-gang-leader-sentenced-210-months-extorting Korean OCG in General: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kkangpae https://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-korean-underworld-from-its-birth-to-its-rise-and-current-stat Jung Doo-hong and the Gangster Body: Kkangpae in Contemporary South Korean Cinema Chinese OCG in New York: “The relatively small amount of research on crime in Chinatowns has focused on tongs, a term coined in the United States by Americans for Chinese gangs. There had been some reference of the term tong used towards secret societies in China such as one with the express purpose of overthrowing the Qing Dynasty, but for the most part the term tong is exclusive to American Chinese gangs.9 These gangs developed from 8 Chin, Ko-Lin. Chinatown Gangs: Extortion, Enterprise, and Ethnicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 50. 9 Reynolds, C. N.“The Chinese Tongs” in the American Journal of Sociology 40 (University of Chicago Press, 1935), 618. organized crime groups based in China known as Hung, or as they were later called, “The Triad.” The tongs, were essentially Hung branches in the United States.10” (SUNY) “The nature and culture of the Hung would cross over into the tong groups that plagued the streets of New York City in the early 1900s. While the Hung were stationed exclusively in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the tongs in the United States adopted their practices. Many of the traditions, and methods in which they functioned were adopted from these Hung groups. Tong members would emulate the triad initiation ceremony and take an oath based off of the thirty-six triad oaths of loyalty, and bow to the god of the triad societies practiced by the Hung groups in China.11” (SUNY) https://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/bitstream/handle/1951/69890/fulltext.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://apnews.com/article/41022e6a6daa474399bde0f948710d47 https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-deadly-battle-for-control-over-new-york-s-chinatown https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/22/nyregion/33-suspected-chinatown-gang-members-are-indicted.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/08/31/arrests-cripple-smuggling-ring-police-say/afb71938-6632-45c3-bb66-de5c2d74a4a0/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/11/21/Chinatown-gang-target-of-indictments/8132785394000/ https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/218463.pdf https://www.wnyc.org/story/182468-new-york-takes-fresh-look-casinos-decades-old-gambling-parlors-still-bustle-chinatown/ https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/nyregion/gambling-raid-in-chinatown-reveals-a-difference-in-cultures.html https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/hsi-investigation-leads-life-sentence-chinese-gang-leader Chinatown Gangs by Ko-lin Chin Chinese OCG in the United States of America: http://www.mafianj.com/asian/tongs.shtml https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/147234NCJRS.pdf https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-07-17-me-16555-story.html https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/organized-crime Chinese OCG Internationally: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256032254_Black_Societies_and_Triad-Like_Organised_Crime_in_China https://irp.fas.org/threat/pub45270chap3.html#r17 https://themobmuseum.org/blog/chinese-triads-launder-billions-through-vancouver-buying-luxury-real-estate-cars/ http://lbms03.cityu.edu.hk/theses/c_ftt/phd-ss-15457829.pdf Japanese OCG in the USA/Japan: “Later in the day, another hooded witness made an appearance. Also a Japanese national, this anonymous informant had been a U.S. resident for ten years, and he described yakuza activity in New York. Card games, with stakes in the many thousands of dollars, were being run by a combination of yakuza, yakuza associates, and Italian American hoodlums. The customers were both Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans. He believed that the Italians, who wore guns and sold stolen goods at the games, were actually in charge of the action.” (Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld) “From government commissions and committees, from news reports, books, articles, and movies, the subject of organized crime from across the Pacific had crept into the U.S. consciousness . . . and onto the agenda of law enforcement. By the late 1980s, Asian organized crime had become a priority for the FBI and other U.S. law enforcement agencies. Yakuza money launderers, Chinese drug smugglers, Korean prostitution rackets, and more were now of pressing interest to American cops. New hearings were held before the U.S. Congress in 1992, in which the yakuza’s reach into the United States was detailed. The billion-dollar developments in Hawaii were highlighted, as were similar investments on the mainland from New York to California. It had taken U.S. law enforcement some fifty years to acknowledge the existence of the Mafia; now, some twenty years after the modern yakuza had landed in America, the Yamaguchi-gumi was suddenly a topic of national discussion.” (Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld) “On April 21, 1982, the manager of the powerful sokaiya group Rondan Doyukai, a gentleman named Shigeru Kobayashi, attended a stockholders’ meeting at the Chase Manhattan bank in New York. Kobayashi sat through Chairman David Rockefeller’s opening remarks, and forty minutes of questioning from the floor—undoubtedly fighting the urge to silence the dissenters—and then turned and addressed the crowd. Said Kobayashi: “We represent your stockholders from Japan. I am happy to be here at your general meeting. Now I have the honor of seeing Chairman Rockefeller. . . . He is a great man because he met with His Majesty the Emperor when he visited Japan a couple of years ago, and very few people in Japan can shake hands with the Emperor. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation for your high dividends.” (Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld) “Nonetheless, Asian cops in the intelligence division had noted reports of yakuza shakedowns of Japanese businesses and individuals. The NYPD was dubious of any large-scale ongoing criminal operations in the area, though. Said one officer at the time: “If there were any rackets, like prostitution, the Five Families would be interested. You can’t do anything for very long in to america 315 New York without the traditional mob becoming aware of it. In the bar business, you have to deal with them. They’re in restaurant supply, in liquor, and related activities. I think New York is just geographically inconvenient for the yakuza to get anything going in. That’s one reason they have done so much better in L.A.—less structured organized crime.” (Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld) "Yakuza activity in the United States is mostly restricted to Hawaii, but they have made their presence known in other parts of the country, especially in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as Seattle, Las Vegas, Arizona, Virginia, Chicago, and New York City. The Yakuza are said to use Hawaii as a midway station between Japan and mainland America, smuggling methamphetamine into the country and smuggling firearms back to Japan. They easily fit into the local population, since many tourists from Japan and other Asian countries visit the islands on a regular basis, and there is a large population of residents who are of full or partial Japanese descent. They also work with local gangs, funneling Japanese tourists to gambling parlors and brothels. In California, the Yakuza have made alliances with local Korean gangs as well as Chinese triads. They allied with Vietnamese gangs to use them as muscle, as they had potential to become extremely violent as needed. The Yakuza saw their potential following the constant Vietnamese cafe shoot-outs and home invasion burglaries throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. In New York City, they appear to collect finder's fees from Russian, Irish and Italian gang members and businessmen for guiding Japanese tourists to gambling establishments, both legal and illegal. Handguns manufactured in the US account for a large share (33%) of handguns seized in Japan, followed by handguns manufactured in China (16%) and in the Philippines (10%). In 1990, a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver that cost $275 in the US could sell for up to $4,000 in Tokyo. By 1997 it would sell for only $500 due to the proliferation of guns in Japan during the 1990s. The FBI suspects that the Yakuza use various operations to launder money in the U.S. In 2001, the FBI's representative in Tokyo arranged for Tadamasa Goto, the head of the group Goto-gumi, to receive a liver transplant at the UCLA Medical Center in the United States, in return for information of Yamaguchi-gumi operations in the US. This was done without prior consultation of the NPA. The journalist who uncovered the deal received threats by Goto and was given police protection in the US and in Japan.” (Wikipedia) Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld, Expanded Edition by David E. Kaplan, Alec Dubro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza https://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/24/us/signs-of-old-japanese-crime-group-are-seen-in-us.html This guide is prone to changes and does not represent a final version.
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  39. 1 Police Plaza, LCPD HQ General Information: Serves as the LCPD Headquarters Consists of 6 floors inside of 2 maps Houses many departments of the PD within this building from recruitment all the way to internal affairs Home to bureau chiefs, chief of police and the commissioner Some rooms have been left untouched or mapped with low props to allow the faction to customize the spaces via the furniture menu Some doors are not mapped for viewing, and will be added via the furniture menu SECOND FLOOR- RECRUITMENT/TRAINING THIRD FLOOR- CRIME LAB/CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE DIVISION/EVIDENCE ROOM FOURTH FLOOR- PUBLIC AFFAIRS/INTERNAL AFFAIRS/LEGAL MATTERS/BREAKROOM FIFTH FLOOR- BUREAU CHIEFS/RECEPTIONIST/MEETING ROOM SIXTH FLOOR- CHIEF OF DEPARTMENT/WAITING ROOM/COMMISSIONER/RECEPTION/RESTROOM/ROOF ACCESS
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  40. LCPD East Island Precinct General Information: The building features 3 floors. First floor features the main entrance to the building which leads to a lobby. It features open-plan offices along with a locker room for employees. Second floor features supervisory offices, a briefing room, security area, evidence room and a holding cells area. Third floor features command staff offices and precinct's Commanding Officer office, along with multiple civilian staff offices. Click on an image to enlarge First Floor Second Floor Third Floor
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  41. A Unified Roleplay World (An honest talk about our vision and attempts so far) Dear LC:RP Community, Before we get into the details of this wonderful project that we want to focus on, we want to inform you that we are taking one step further to ensure that your donation for the support of our community is spent accurately. We have decided to create a monthly, public update where every single expense will be shown in a report, detailing how the money you’ve donated towards this project is spent, where it is going, and how this affects our development. The information will be announced on our discord. For the past 4 months, our community has developed at an incredible pace and reached far beyond our expectations. Our teams have grown every other week and worked tirelessly to ensure that Liberty City Roleplay becomes a reality which we’ll see sooner than we have anticipated initially. This community was founded not only to provide a different roleplay environment and create unique roleplay opportunities for you; we are carefully crafting and refining every single aspect of Liberty City Roleplay which previous communities have failed to do so, abandoning broken roleplay practices and creating some unique concepts ourselves. Our community is based on clear principles and values which reflect everything that we say and do and also transpire into our general developments. Full transparency, honesty, self-criticism, and giving you a voice is what we’re all about. We’re entirely focused on creating an enjoyable player experience, devoid from toxicity, personal intrigues and greed; we acknowledge that this is a game before anything, and for most of us a hobby or a way to escape our reality to clear the mind. This is the justification behind our community and what we represent. Our team has decided to unify roleplay communities and create an interactive roleplay world, allowing players to experience a roleplay world that is totally interactive. GTA V allows the creation of roleplay servers based on different states in the USA. We want interaction between states, allowing players from Liberty City to be involved in the geo-political environment in Los Santos and other states (if and when they are created). Examples such as cross-state events, media coverage of politics, business, law enforcement, the opportunities are endless. This is a project that we started, so please read the following information about details regarding its current progress. Having the above in mind, we have developed the Environment Consistency Policy which will be accompanied by this announcement to provide context on the issue. This policy, suggested by a large number of community members, seeks to provide guidelines regarding the portrayal of our in-character universe, and to avoid a conflict of interest with the real world and the GTA universe; as such, we adopted what we consider to be a fair and neutral ground in terms of portrayal. GTA cities would replace their real counterparts, but we would not contain the in-character world to a strictly GTA bubble where Liberty City would be treated as an isolated island with no contact with the outside world; we decided to merge our IC universe with the real OOC world in a blend that wouldn’t step outside of or conflict with the GTA universe. To extend this idea even further, we explored different options regarding other cities besides Liberty City. Currently, around 90% of active roleplay communities on RAGE Multiplayer use Los Santos as their in-character environment, with the most active heavy-RP server being GTA World, and LC:RP being the only community offering Liberty City, if not the first one ever to have a serious development in this regard. We reached out to GTA World to establish a mutual agreement where we would merge the in-character universe together, and essentially have Los Santos in the LC:RP environment acknowledged, and vice-versa. Out of transparency, the proposition that was sent to GTA World Management alongside all correspondence is made public for the community: Our proposal to GTA World regarding a "Unified Roleplay World" https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Yc1Q0FB4lkMDIczwHbnCWn_V8XTAXhK8z53nbAPIus/edit?usp=sharing All of the correspondence between LC:RP and GTA World: Unfortunately, our effort to create an interactive universe for both Los Santos and Liberty City was met with unprofessionalism and degrading jokes. As stated in our offer to GTA W’s Management, all we wanted to achieve was a positive working relationship and the ability for players to acknowledge the existence of both states and allow them to interact with each other, as well as to create cross-state events, media reporting, etc. This proposition was made with the general roleplay community in mind, not to advertise the community, not to use unfair or manipulative practices, but to create a better roleplay experience for the common player. We tried to enhance our Environment Consistency Policy to be beneficial and have a greater positive effect, not only in our community, but the rest of the roleplay community of RAGE Multiplayer. Despite the unsuccessful attempt, we will proceed with our end of the offer, thus acknowledging GTA W’s version of Los Santos, acknowledging their IC events and other influential individuals when necessary, as well as allowing our news agencies to report on the geopolitical environment on GTA W’s Los Santos whenever an information needs to be conveyed (whether this is for a character or faction development thread, or just general media reporting). We are convinced that this is a step in the right direction for those interested in serious roleplay and we are happy that we made this decision. For us, advertising GTA W is not a problem and we will not request monetary compensation or make absurd demands for creating a better roleplay environment. With that being said, we are happy to work with any other community that is based on a different state/city within the GTA universe, willing to create a roleplay environment that is interactive. We are also happy to work with GTA World at any point and we do not hold grudges, all we want to achieve is a unified roleplay world, which would be a ground-breaking innovation! Please let us know what you think of this idea and whether this is something that will make you happy! To conclude, in the coming month we will introduce our next development and community blogs to keep you informed of the current progress of this community. As some of you know, we now have 2 more additions to our Development Team, making it a number of 8 people. This is tremendous progress and we are very happy to continue working on this project, which will soon become a reality. Thank you all for the support, this is motivating us to continue working! LC:RP Management
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  42. DEVELOPMENT BLOG #1 ( Highly recommended to listen whilst reading! ) Hello! First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of development content but we wanted to ensure that all systems we had on paper were approaching a final stage before showing them publicly. Going forward, since we have the core LC-RP script set up, development should go a lot smoother and I'm expecting more frequent development blogs. Back to our topic, I am very excited and happy to see that our community has grown tremendously over the past months. We were able to achieve that without offering too much insight into our development and our team is grateful that you have trusted us and followed this project! You must have noticed that we have collectively decided to put the community first and move back to Rage Multiplayer. We have been keeping this as a secret for the last months, awaiting the right moment to surprise you. We believe that there is no better way to announce such a big move than showcasing several fundamental features that our community will need. Some of you were smart enough to figure out what was happening and therefore our "surprise" was recently exposed! Many of you are probably wondering why we are moving back to Rage. We have constantly stated how much the community means to us and this was one of the reasons behind our decision to leave Rage in the beginning. We wanted to offer the best gameplay possible, but unfortunately found several problems which would have affected your gameplay in a negative way. We made the difficult choice to abandon the progress on FiveM, but we know it is worth it and we know you will appreciate it! One of the first features which has been finalized is the in-game login process. In alliance with our effort to create a new era of roleplay, we have decided to use a modern approach when it comes to greeting our community members in-game. The aesthetically pleasing login page will give you a sense of a new, dark and grimey world, impatiently awaiting you to experience it! In order to create an account, every player will have to go through an application process through the UCP, which will be showcased in another development blog. ( Login Screen ) CHARACTER CREATOR Once you have registered and entered your login details, you will be presented with a magnificent character creator, allowing you to shape your character however you like. The grab and drag option will allow you to navigate through the variety of options in an easy and simple manner. Having total freedom over the character creator, you will have the ability to prepare a character matching your desire in a matter of minutes! MOVING TOOL (SA:MP REPLICA) One of the most important aspects of every serious text-based RP community is undoubtedly the furniture system which includes an easy to use moving tool. A lot of servers have struggled finding the right balance, eventually resulting in an overcomplicated, complex system, stealing a lot of your time. On Liberty City Roleplay, you will no longer experience the struggle of a difficult furniture system and moving tool. Creating a simple and easy to use tool has been a priority and our talented developers have implemented a feature that will indeed bring you back to SA:MP era. ( Work in progress - requires redesign ) INVENTORY SYSTEM A new era of roleplay underlines the importance of features which have not been yet tried on roleplay communities. One such feature is the inventory system. Are you a player who has often struggled with storing your personal items and weapons realistically? Are you a player who always wished a modern, simple but yet very efficient inventory system that could enhance your roleplay? If so, you will be pleased to see what we have created! @Mos has already created an inventory system and back-end functionality and is awaiting for a list of items to be added in. A more elaborated video showcase will be posted on the next devblog, showing the functionality of the inventory framework. ( Work in progress - requires items to be added in the actual script, background functionality finished) CROUCHING SYSTEM Thanks to @materia, we were able to implement a crouching system that is well synchronized and is available at a press of a hotkey. This crouching system will allow players to set different crouching levels by pressing a hotkey. It is perfect for those interested in stealth. The feature will be available for use to all players and we are certain it can be utilized creatively by both legal and illegal factions. NEW DONATION METHOD I would once again ask those who wish to help us with the Development Process to donate to the project. Any money received is solely funding the community and is hugely appreciated but not required. Once you donate, you will receive a private message on the forums as means of confirmation for your donation. We have replaced the Patreon Subscriptions with a Paypal Donation System that allows anyone to donate any amount that they'd like, everything done through the forum, without having to sign up on another 3rd party website. Until we update the plugin with an automatic database, after a donation, you are asked to private-message a Lead Administrator or Management member to receive your Discord and Forum perks. Why donate? All of the money we have received so far (although not a lot) has been invested in the server's development. Donations to the server are fully invested in the community and are highly appreciated. Currently, our Development Team has been working very hard, almost for free, due to the low number of donations. We have no words to describe how grateful we are for dedication and we ask that our community rewards them for their commitment. COMMUNITY UPDATE INFORMATION Over the next month, you will receive a community update from Biography who has worked very hard on the legal aspect of roleplay. We are very happy and excited to showcase you what he and his team have worked on! We have worked very hard on getting rid of useless OOC regulations which served no real purpose, but to demotivate players and destroy roleplay opportunities. Such mistakes will not be repeated here! CLOSING NOTE As a closing note, I would once again like to thank you all for being part of our big family. We have grown enormously and with that comes the responsibility of ensuring the development process is continued. However, we must also ensure that the final product is ready and completely working. Our Development Team has worked very hard to deliver and so has our Staff Team on discussing various topics regarding the community. We have been following the proposed suggestions closely and we will continue to do so.
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  43. Player Support Team [OPEN] Recruitment opens: Recruitment closes: Results: TBA I. OVERVIEW The Player Support Team consists of trusted individuals who have demonstrated excellent communication skills, as well as contributed to the community via engaging in important discussions, etc. The Player Support Team is the backbone of the LCRP Staff Team. It is ultimately responsible for providing assistance to members of the community, as well as the Admin Team. Unlike other communities, LCRP has adopted a different and more secure staff-entry system, ensuring that only highly-motivated and skilled individuals become part of the Player Support Team. The LCRP community is committed to providing outstanding administrative services to its players and this system is a reflection of that. II. RESPONSIBILITIES Testing new features and reporting bugs Handling character applications Technical / General User Support Participating in internal discussions surrounding the development of the community III. REQUIRED SKILLS - Adaptability to change A successful PST candidate will have the ability to adapt to change quickly. LCRP is a fast-paced, innovative project not afraid of change. If you have a close mind and are unable to adapt to change, you will not be considered for the position. - Resilience A successful PST candidate will be able to recover from difficult situations quickly and efficiently. Often times, PST will be responsible for de-escalating situations between players, hence difficult situations are expected. Reviewing server applications, assisting players and testing features might be considered a heavy workload. Inability to be efficient means you will not be considered for the position. - Creativity The community's philosophy implies that creativity is a must requirement for all LCRP members, specifically individuals in the various staff teams. Examining issues from different angles and using creativity to resolve them is an essential skill required for the PST. - Decision - making A successful PST candidate will be able to make confident decisions which may sometimes be disliked by other members of the team or the players. The ability to make decisions in a quick manner is an essential skill required for the PST. - Communication The most important aspect of the PST is the ability to communicate with fellow staff members and players in a professional and efficient manner. Inability to communicate properly or be understood will lead to issues, hence this a successful candidate must possess this skill in order to be considered for the position. IV. REQUIREMENTS In order to be considered, the applicant must meet the following eligibility criteria: Age of 18 Shown activity within the community's discord and/or forums Not currently part of a Staff Team on any other GTA RP community Ability to work in a team Excellent communication skills V. Process Ensure you're aware of the recruitment process before you apply. 1. Application This is the initial phase of the recruitment process. The application is divided into 4 major parts, each consisting of several questions. The applicant must answer all questions truthfully and to the best of their ability. There is no minimum or maximum word count and the effort provided in the application is up to the applicant. 2. Evaluation This is where the application is analyzed by members of the Admin Team. Final decisions are not made on the basis of overwhelming support, but decided by members of the Senior Admin Team. Management oversees the process. Applicants are either moved to the next phase or denied. All applicants are provided with a written answer informing them of the reason(s) behind their denial. 3. Mock scenario During this phase of the recruitment process, the applicant is provided with a scenario they will likely encounter if accepted in the Player Support Team. The applicant is required to provide a detailed answer, explaining how they would handle the situation and justifying their actions. 4. Evaluation This is where the Lead Admin Team evaluates the answer to the mock scenario provided by the applicant. A final decision whether the applicant is accepted in the Player Support Team is made by the Lead Admin Team, overseen by Management. VI. APPLICATION Please access the application here.
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  44. Back in its prime, The Velentzas Crime Family was one of the most prominent and dangerous Greek-American organized crime groups operating within Dukes, a borough of Liberty City. Tracing its roots back to the post-World War II era, characterized by an influx of Greek immigrants, the origins of this syndicate can be attributed to the Kourakos clan—a lineage hailing from Maniot-Greek origins and led by Peter Kourakos. Yet, it was under the adept leadership of Spyredon "Spiros" Velentzas that the syndicate experienced a real ascent to prominence during the latter part of the 1980s. Boasting a membership that exceeded thirty individuals at its peak, the syndicate flourished by methodically establishing and controlling illegal gambling operations, spanning from games of dice to horse-racing parlors. Their prosperity was further bolstered by cultivating a tightly-knit rapport with select members of The Lucchese Crime Family—an alliance that furnished protection in return for a share of the gains. The trajectory of this mob group took a dramatic turn on June 20, 1992, when two pivotal figures within its hierarchy, in tandem with the leader of the organization, found themselves ensnared by a set of racketeering charges. Velentzas, confronted with an extensive array of charges including murder, loan sharking, gambling, and tax fraud, was found guilty and sentenced to a lengthy twenty-year term of imprisonment. Subsequently, as additional evidence implicated him in the homicide of Sarecho "Sammy the Arab" Nalo came to light, he was sentenced to life in prison, forcing Fotios Dimopoulos to have no choice but to assume the crown and restore control. Fotios Dimopoulos struggled as a leader, finding it challenging to maintain an iron grip over the gambling operations controlled by the Greek-Americans under the Velentzas regime. Capitalizing on this vulnerability, the Albanian-American Rudaj gang seized the opportunity and decided to extort him. Backed up by the The Gambino Crime Family, the Rudaj faction orchestrated an assault on Fotios' associate, Antonis Balampanis, who oversaw a gambling establishment dubbed "Soccer Fever". This move was strategically aimed at wresting control of the gambling enterprises spanning Broker, Alderney—their home turf—and Dukes. The attack was met with resistance from the Greek mafia. Left with no alternatives, they opted to escalate matters into a full-blown conflict with the Albanians with the intent to claim their territory back. This war endured for several weeks, culminating in the death of Dimopoulos, killed by a fatal bullet to his head. The aftermath saw a substantial portion of the organization incarcerated or met with a similarly tragic fate. Amidst the turbulence, the remaining core members agreed to a diplomatic, behind-the-scenes pact with The Gambino Crime Family with the aim to stop the hostilities with the Albanians. Abel Karahalios, the nephew of a prominent Greek-American mobster closely connected to Spyredon Velentzas, leveraged the arrangement. Karahalios and his people secured a part of their territory, albeit smaller in size, and reinitiated their operations. This compromise, however, meant relinquishing their control over the gambling dens. The Albanian threat was ultimately quelled by the intervention of federal authorities. A sweeping investigation was launched, resulting in the prosecution and conviction of Alex Rudaj and his goons on federal racketeering charges in 2004. This marked the downfall of the Albanian dominance. With that said, the lifeline that sustained the crew financially stemmed from Abel's exclusive ownership of his uncle's ouzo distillery and enterprise—the renowned Apollo Pub. This establishment not only served as the group's hangout, but also as a legal front and money maker. Since that turning point, Karahalios has adeptly regrouped and solidified its footing. A number of stable business affiliations has been meticulously achieved, with the Italian crime families and various other smaller organizations. This strategic development has fostered an era of recalibration, enabling the Greek-American crew to establish itself and even flourish.
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  45. Hey all! As the title says, it's a guide on how to drive in a GTA RP server. For reference, we will be using Liberty City. This guide mainly focuses on vehicles, character's choice for cars, driving on different terrain and more. With this guide, I'm will be trying to explain my point of view about driving for those who have either forgotten or aren't that familiar with this topic. I personally find driving in GTA satisfying and doing it on a roleplay server, I intend to always try and understand who is my character, how would they drive depending on their personality and even what car would they use. Most people reading this will already know everything I am going to talk about and it's entirely normal. The first topic will be Intersections and traffic lights. At intersections and/or traffic lights, it's understandable, that no one wants to wait a few minutes in GTA, waiting behind the traffic light to go green and since the map will not be that populated, that you would have to always obey it, an more common understanding is that people will stop briefly at intersections or behind traffic lights, look to either side and if it's clear, proceed to drive. An example An example on how not to drive (This may vary depending on your character, but this sort of regular driving isn't RP.) The second topic will be about How should you choose your car for your character? This topic is more difficult to really pinpoint on how, because it depends on multiple different variables regarding your character and how they are developed. When you create your character, you need to understand what is their lifestyle like... are they more of a spender and wanting to live luxurious or is your character someone who is living in a low-class area and doesn't have a lot of money. The choice of your vehicle will reflect your character to others and will add more immersion in general to the whole roleplaying experience. Not to mention it's not very realistic for a character who lives in a low-class area and be driving around in a super car. As LC-RP has the option to purchase already a vehicle with a weekly payment, this can add a lot of interesting factors for roleplay. Of course it's common for people to try and purchase more and more expensive vehicles for themselves as a sign of power or wealth. Purchasing high-end vehicles, such as super cars should be logical and make sense for your characters development, if you're roleplaying as someone who has had it all since they were young or are you someone who has made their way up from the slums in to the high-life and managed to make their first million. Our third topic will be Driving on different terrains An important thing to consider when driving on terrain other than asphalt, is your vehicle. As an example, it is not realistic to drive high-speed off-road with a super car, due to the vehicle being very low, possibly creating mechanical problems within the bottom side of the vehicle, as in reality, dirt and rocks would be thrown in to the bottom of the vehicle when driving, the faster you go, the more force the debris gets and chance of creating an malfunction increases. You can definitely drive off-road in a super car, but you should keep your speed at a relatively low number when going and taking into consideration bumps and holes. While Liberty City does not have a lot of off-road/dirt tracks, it's still important to consider this when driving on them and understand how it works. An example of good driving on dirt An example of bad driving on dirt (This may vary depending on the vehicle of choice. Off-road/4x4 vehicles would be suitable to drive on a road like this with higher speed.) Our fourth topic will be Driving with a wrecked vehicle This topic will be focused around driving with a vehicle that has been severely damaged and what is the correct way of manipulating a vehicle with that condition. Driving a wrecked vehicle, as in real life, means that your vehicle is under some sort of mechanical/visual damage that is altering the driving capability of the vehicle. This should be considered when your vehicle is damaged heavily and proceeded with caution when operating it. A wrong bump or an impact could be very dangerous to the driver and people around. When your vehicle has received damage like this, when possible, a mechanic should be contacted or a towing company, but as a last resort, the vehicle may be operated with low-speed to the mechanic shop in order to get it repaired, but only if there is no other possibility. Driving the vehicle to a repair shop means that the driver should maintain relatively low speeds and focus on their surroundings at all time. Our fifth topic will be Driving over bumps/sloped roads In Liberty City, there are quite a few bumps in the asphalt and it should be important for the driver to be vary of these when driving so they do not damage their vehicle. Bumps should be driven over with caution and low speed to minimize the damage done to the vehicle and possibility of an accident happening. These sort of small bumps as the sidewalk may cause visual damage to your vehicle when driven over them with high speed or create internal motor damage. An example on how to tackle a bump Often driving around Liberty City, people will encounter sloped roads. It's important to understand in these situations the danger of proceeding to a sloped road with high speed. One of the main reasons why it should not be done is for the safety of others. When driving towards a sloped road, you are at that time approaching a blind spot, where you can not see what's on the other side. This will put you and others in a great risk. In terms of realistic driving, having jumps like these are very uncommon and should be tackled with caution. An example on how to drive on sloped road (Low speed, making sure your wheels won't go airborne) An example on how NOT to drive at a sloped road (High speed, car is going airborne) Final conclusion Driving in a roleplay server heavily depends on how is your character developed, what are his characteristics and so on. A character that is a petrol-head may often drive with higher speed and lacking regards to the law or someone who is drunk, can often drive recklessly while a person who is associated to the organized crime group may want to drive with more caution to not pull attention to themselves. When roleplaying, there is a big difference between driving 'recklessly' & 'recklessly'. Driving recklessly means that you are just breaking the IC law, speeding and not obeying the traffic laws in any way, while driving recklessly means that you are constantly crashing in to poles, walls and so on without any roleplay. This can and may result in actions taken by the staff team as this is not on-par with roleplay standards. A special thanks to my Imponte Ruiner for taking a few hits for the sake of this guide.
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  46. E/S 823 Gangster Stone Crips G Stone Crip is a set of the Crips gang also known as "Grimy Shooters" or "Gun Squad". They’re predominantly located in Broker, Liberty City. This particular set of the Crips is a little different from the Crips located in Los Santos because they’ve also adopted certain symbols that are similar to LS gang symbols. The G Stone Crips were at war with a local gang known as BMW (Broker's Most Wanted), the war was sparked in 2011 when a member of the BMW gang shot and killed the G Stone Crip's leader. On the following the death of the Gangster Stone Crip's leader, numerous back and forth shootings were linked to the war between the two gangs. In 2013, the LCPD claimed that it had decimated the BMW gang by arresting all of their members on various charges resulting in most of the BMW gang members incarcerated. The G-Stones settled a truce with most Bloods in their turf to go against the 6 Tre Outlaw Gangster Disciples in Beachwood and are allies to Zoe Pound, most notably H-Mob. G-Stone 90's Firefly Projects/BrownsVille FireFly Projects otherwise known as the Browns a/k/a Brownsville for its notorious brown bricks that have been noted for being in many popular movies like "MELTDOWN" and "Stay Real Or Die Lyin" When the 823 G-Stone Crips took about in 1994-1997 from founders Cyke, Face-Lo & others. Although Brownsville is home to the G-Stone Crips it is also home to one of the rival gangs in Brooklyn the Gangster Disciples.— Today the Broker District Attorney Rick Gonzalez and Liberty City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea announced that 34 alleged members of two rival Fireflies-based street gangs were variously charged in a 122-count indictment, including attempted murder and criminal possession of weapons. An indictment is an accusation and not proof of a defendant’s guilt. The Gangs The gangs are known as WOOO (We On Our Own) and CHOO, and are two rival street gangs, who are sworn enemies, according to the information provided. It is alleged that they operated within Firefly Projects, but expanded their violence into neighboring areas, like East Schofield. Often, their operations were around local Broker complexes. A two-year-long investigation titled “Operation Boxed In” looked into the violence between these two rival criminal organizations beginning February 1, 2018, and ending with the indictment on January 28, 2020, by the LCPD’s Broker North Gang Squad and the District Attorney’s Violent Criminal Enterprises Bureau. WOOO and CHOO members allegedly engaged in a type of gang war, where members of each group would search for rival members in rival territories and then shoot them on sight, the indictment states. This dangerous game focused on embarrassing the rival members and gaining dominance over each other’s neighborhoods, prosecutors said. “We allege that these gang members’ primary activity is to track rivals and to shoot at each other on sight on the streets of Broker,” District Attorney Gonzalez said. “This is outrageous and will not be tolerated. I am confident that this takedown, which is focused on drivers of violent crime, will have a measurable impact on public safety by targeting the offenders who commit the violence in our communities.” 100z Cloccz Canarsie/Apple Floss Canarsie (/kəˈnɑːrsi/ kə-NAR-see) is a working- and middle-class residential and commercial neighborhood in the southeastern portion of the borough of Broker, in Liberty City, United States. Canarsie is bordered on the east by Hove Beach, East 108th Street, and the Beachgate Canarsie Line (L train); on the north by Linden Boulevard; on the west by Remsen Avenue to Ralph Avenue and the Paerdegat Basin; and on the south by Jamaica City. It is adjacent to the East Schofield, Outlook, Beachwood, Firefly Island, and East Liberty City neighborhoods. Canarsie, Broker, is sometimes called “Floss” or “Flossy.” The name comes from the rap song “Brooklyn” (2007) by Fabolous, which contains the lyrics “Canarsie flossing.” Early on Monday night, six people were shot in Canarsie in just 14 minutes during three connected drive-by shootings. As the night went on, six more would be shot on the streets of Canarsie and East Liberty City. Police officials believe the gun violence in Broker stems from a street gang war over the death of a well respected gang member back in February. There were at least 17 people shot on Monday leaving two dead in their wake in an explosion of gun violence that has been raging for several weeks that may have links to a street gang war.
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  47. FDLC EMS Station 20 Interior General Information: First floor houses the front desk lobby and stairwell to the upper floor. Behind the lobby is a resupply garage with with miscellaneous tools as well as a restroom with showers. The second floor has leads to a series of lockers and a medicine closet that is under lock and key to authorized personnel. Down the hallway, 3 offices emerge belonging to the Lieutenant, Captain, and a general use office for all personnel to complete paperwork. Past the offices, the kitchen sits in the corner of the L-shaped building and can host a full house of hungry paramedics. A stairwell to the roof resides next to the janitor supply closet. The recreation room can be used as a training and briefing room and sits right next to the crew sleeping quarters. FIRST FLOOR SECOND FLOOR
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  48. COMMUNITY UPDATE #AUG21 Greetings Throughout this community update, you will be informed of the important community aspects that might be of interest to you or your friends. Our community first emerged on the 1st of September, 2020. This means that we have been in development for 11 months and 16 days. Almost one full year. None of us noticed how quickly time has passed by. Time truly flies when we are having fun. Liberty City Roleplay is now a broad topic of discussion on many roleplay platforms. As a result, we have been gaining forum and discord members on a daily basis, and thankfully we are also collecting donation often which helps us our development tremendously. Over the past few months, we have received many messages, majority of which indicated that the members of our community are excited for this project to become a reality. We understand that many of you wish to escape the repetitiveness of Los Santos or simply to find a better community which has an emphasis on serious roleplay. We hear you. Staff Team Update Senior Admin Team > Lead Admin Team Louie Staff Support Team > Admin Team Brett Staff Support Team (Probationary > Full) Bauer Charlie Crunchy Katja LackingAName Modding Team (Junior > Full) Jorgensen Weatherguy Mapping Team (Junior) DepressedFilmbro Faction Support Team Guidelines & The LC:RP Entry Exam As stated months ago, we are doing our best to re-brand the concept known as Faction Management. Our Faction Support Team has worked very hard on creating several guidelines which are aimed primarily for new players, but also for all members of the community. Those guides are very important as they will be used to determine if a player is to be accepted on the server. The LC:RP Entry Exam is mandatory for everyone that wishes to create a character and play on our server. We promised that we would ensure high standards for our players and we are once again delivering on our promise. In order to pass the LC:RP Entry Exam, members of the community must read our: Environment Consistency Policy History of Liberty City Character Development Guide Policing Guide Investigative Roleplay Guide Tactical Roleplay Guide Civilian Roleplay Guide Other guides which will be included in the near future In-game Rules Forum Rules Once the player is familiarized with the above, they must take the LC:RP Entry Exam which will be available on the User Control Panel. As evident, our entry exam will be very sophisticated and ensure that those who wish to play on the server are aware of our lore, consistency, what roleplay is and our rules. This is done to ensure that those who are accepted are aware of what our community is about. The guide will contain both open-ended and close-ended questions. I will not share more info on the exam, but I can only say that we plan to make it dynamic, so that people don't share/sell their answers to potential applicants! La Cosa Nostra Roleplay La Cosa Nostra Roleplay This type of roleplay is often poorly portrayed on other communities and usually conducted in a very unrealistic manner. A lot of communities end up with dozens of crime families that did not go through a process to establish themselves as such and often times, practices are based on the 80s and 90s as opposed to a more modern approach to organized crime. At LC:RP, the La Cosa Nostra Roleplay will be illustrated via the 5 prominent NYC families, 3 of which will be available to the players upon launch: Gambino, Bonanno, Lucchese. This is a path that no other community has ever explored and we are very interested to see how this is going to play out. As mentioned, we wanted to create a unique and realistic experience for those interested in LCN RP. The leadership of the 3 families was established based on the individuals' involvement in the La Costa Nostra Working Group which was created several months ago. With this approach, we aim to deliver something that has never been done before. The lore of each of those factions was discussed and created to fit with our Environment Consistency Policy, as well as to ensure the smooth transition of real life leadership to the leadership in our universe. Parts of the lore will be strictly OOC, but other parts will be revealed ICly through various means that we have in store. The three families available will be managed by the most elite LCN RPers to create the framework and tradition of how modern LCN works. This, however, is not permanent – the idea is that any player with enough effort, time and knowledge will be able to move up the ranks and eventually take the reins. Once the server is open and we gain a steady playerbase, we will offer players of the community to apply for the 2 existing families: Genovese and Colombo. Any and all questions regarding this announcement and/or LCN RP in LCRP are to be asked in the Q&A topic. Player & Faction Reports We plan to move all of our reports to the UCP where only the involved parties, as well as members of the Admin Team will have access. In addition, a limit will be imposed on the number of times an individual may reply to the report. This is done to: prevent uninvolved parties from replying to the reports prevent spamming from the parties that are involved keep the main forums clean and friendly (I always thought reports bring a sense of toxicity when they are available for all members of the community) Internal Faction Complaints It is clear that in the past, most of the legal factions such as LSPD, LSFD (*on other communities) have dealt with immense amount of drama and intrigues. A lot of the internal reports made between faction members were covered up or punishments were not adequately delivered due to OOC friendships. At LC:RP, internal faction complains will be investigated by members of the investigative section of the FST. Hence, the investigation process including the verdict will be delivered by the FST. This is something that has never been done before, so we would like to see how it plays out. If it is effective, we will proceed with the system. If not, we will make the necessary changes. Note that this only applies to: LCPD, FDLC, OAG, Judiciary, DOC, Government of Liberty. Faction Statuses We are happy to announce that LC:RP will not be utilizing official/unofficial statues when it comes to recognizing factions and their dedication to the community. Instead, we will be awarding factions with a "certificate of endorsement". This system is different as faction leaders will not be able to apply for such endorsement. Factions will only receive endorsements when LC:RP Management deems it is necessary. Faction which become endorsed by the community's management can receive a plethora of benefits, depending on the faction's needs. More information may be found here. Closing Remarks Our community is getting stronger with each day that passes by. Our staff team grows and each and every one of us is fully dedicated to this project. Approximately a year since our development, we have come a long way and we will soon be able to completely revolutionize what roleplay is. A new era of roleplay is ahead us and we are thrilled that you will be a part of it! LC:RP Management
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