#Sheriff Hobbs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ausetkmt · 7 months

Text

Lynching victim Rubin Stacy’s story being told by his family in film screening at NSU

Anne Naves knew something bad had happened to her uncle when her male relatives came home from fishing, each wearing a pall of silence. Dad wasn’t cracking jokes like usual. Grandfather looked grave. And her uncle, Rubin Stacy, hadn’t come back. The next day, someone from the funeral home said a body had been dropped off.

Naves, 8 years old at the time, only discovered the full gruesome truth about her uncle years later. On July 19, 1935, acting on an unproven accusation from a white woman, a masked lynch mob strung up Stacy under a Fort Lauderdale tree, hanged him and shot him 17 times as spectators gawked and children laughed.

The brutality and silence of Stacy’s lynching is revisited in the new documentary, “Rubin,” which will screen on Tuesday, Oct. 3, at Nova Southeastern University. In the hourlong film, the farmhand’s death is recounted through the eyes of his surviving descendants, but mainly through Naves, who was the last living eyewitness to the trauma — and to the secrecy — that followed.

The film, the first to be made by relatives of Stacy’s family, also chronicles the history of lynchings in America, used as a tool of punishment and to foster silence.

“I think (my family) knew that, without telling us (kids) what really happened, they would save us a lot of trauma,” Naves says in the documentary. “The neighbors and our church members respected our silence, too, because they knew that if it could happen to our family, it could happen to theirs.”

For “Rubin” director Tenille Brown, who is a cousin of Rubin Stacy, the film has in recent weeks also morphed into something else: a posthumous tribute to Naves. After filming her interviews for the documentary, she died on Sept. 18 at age 96, leaving behind a strong legacy: She was a Broward County educator for 25 years, teaching at Pines Middle and other schools.

“The biggest piece of the film was Anne,” Brown says in an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “Without her, there’s no story. She’s the driving force. She was ready to talk. She told me to record her. She really pushed me when I didn’t feel confident and said, ‘Record me anyway. Just go.’ ”

The rest of America witnessed the cruelty of Stacy’s lynching long before Naves did. A series of photos immortalize the moment when a white crowd gathered around Stacy’s body hanging from a tree. These images ran in newspapers nationwide, were published by the NAACP, Life magazine and National Geographic, and are now archived in the Library of Congress.

It was a tale of Jim Crow-era racism that Fort Lauderdale would’ve rather forgotten — the brother of a corrupt Broward County sheriff participated in the lynching — but city officials have made strides in recent years to acknowledge the tragedy by placing memorial markers around Fort Lauderdale. One is on Davie Boulevard and Southwest 31st Avenue, also known as Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, near where Stacy took his last breath. There’s another on the 800 block of Northwest Second Street, where he lived, and a third at Woodlawn Cemetery, his final resting place. In February 2022, a section of Davie Boulevard was renamed Rubin Stacy Memorial Boulevard.

“I’m glad they acknowledged it,” says Brown, of Pompano Beach. “These stories make some people in the state uncomfortable, but if they are based on fact, we need to tell the truth. You can’t turn your head. These are things you can’t ignore.”

For Brown, it was these memorials — and Naves’ willingness to break her silence — that motivated her to reconstruct Stacy’s story. To do so, she also interviewed Ken Cutler, Parkland commissioner and historian, and Tameka Bradley Hobbs, library regional manager of Fort Lauderdale’s African American Research Library and Cultural Center.

“My family didn’t want to talk about it out of fear for years,” Brown says. “There was shame. There’s an element of hurt, and you can hear that emotion in Anne’s voice. Now it feels freeing. This is a story that was suppressed for years and by sharing it, this is how we overcome.”

Michael Anderson, a producer for “Rubin,” says the film also tackles what too many school textbooks don’t stress enough: the history of Black lynchings.

“For Black youth to know their stories, they have to know the history of lynchings,” Anderson says. “They still don’t know how lynchings were used as a weapon to keep a community quiet. That’s exactly what it did to Rubin Stacy’s family.”

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “Rubin”

WHEN: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 3

WHERE: NSU’s Rose & Alfred Miniaci Performing Arts Center, 3100 Ray Ferrero Jr. Blvd., Davie

COST: Free, but tickets must be presented for entry

INFORMATION: 954-462-0222; MiniaciPAC.com

#https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/lynching-victim-rubin-stacy-s-story-being-told-by-his-family-in-film-screening-at-nsu/ar-AA1huFAr #Lynching in america #Black People #Black American Lynchings #Lynching victim Rubin Stacy’s story being told by his family in film screening at NSU

149 notes · View notes

mostlyghostie · 11 months

Text

New book stickers have arrived!

I was thinking of which book opinions I needed represented in sticker form before drawing these, the books that first came to mind for each are as follows (all opinions entirely my own):

Either Adored or Loathed This, Not Sure: The Magicians by Lev Grossman- what a brilliant story filled with such unreadably unlikeable characters!

I Need to Read the Sequel Immediately: I have so far started all of the next Robin Hobb books the minute after finishing the previous one. I can't actually sustain that pace unfortunately because they're all 900 pages long.

Extremely Sad, But in a Good Way: All of my favourite books are this- most particularly the Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge books and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead books

Loved, Loved, Loved This Book: The last book I immediately decided was my favourite before I even finished it was The Fortnight in September by RC Sheriff, in which nothing happens except an English family goes on holiday in the 30's. Fucking brilliant.

So Good That I Bought a Fancy Special Edition: The only fancy special edition I own is His Dark Materials, it is indeed very good and important and wonderful.

Shouldn't Have Bought This, Never Going to Read it: 90% of the non-fiction books I buy that aren't about the Beatles sit unread and unloved. I have been meaning to read SPQR by Mary Beard for several years..

Didn't Understand a Word of This: I read 200 pages of Darkmans by Nicola Barker when I was at university and tried to reads the whole Booker longlist once. It made me feel like I'd forgotten how to read English

Relevant to All of My Very Specific Interests: I read Piranesi by Suzanna Clarke in one sitting, slack jawed in surprise at how exactly 'for me' it was. Unreliable narrator! No real explanation as to what is going on! A fantasy about characters rather than medieval England-ish settings and magic systems! So so fantastic.

This Has Not Aged Well: I pushed my way through to the end of American Pastoral by Phillip Roth, but my word.

How about you?

Instagram / Shop

#artists on tumblr #books #booklr #illustration #bookstack #his dark materials #literary fiction #elizabeth strout #stickers

293 notes · View notes

sirfrogsworth · 3 months

Text

That's an... interesting... biography of Marx.

I like the pink text as well.

I'm not entirely sure what "crap" they are referring to. All I said was that the idea of a managerial class and "everyday citizen" sounded familiar. I made no commentary about Marx—good, bad, or neutral.

Also, I think several of those mentioned were also pretty crusty.

Hobbes looked a bit like a retired pirate.

Voltaire, though. He was a sassy bitch.

And Descartes looked like he was a bow and arrow away from saving Maid Marian from the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Marx just looked like Communist Santa. He's fine. And I think a Ph.D. in philosophy is probably a good start when devising an economic philosophy.

They both have philosophy right in the name.

Plus I don't know any PolySci majors that I'd trust to reinvent our economic system. I'll ask if they think they are qualified the next time need to Uber somewhere.

33 notes · View notes

justinspoliticalcorner · 4 days

Text

Camaron Stevenson at The Copper Courier:

Republican candidate for US Senate Kari Lake on Saturday seemed to solidify her support for Arizona’s total abortion ban and called on county sheriffs to enforce the law once it goes into effect. “We can have that law, but it’s not going to be enforced with the people we have in office,” Lake said in a recording obtained by The Copper Courier. “No, we don’t have that law. She’s not enforcing the law, so we don’t have them. The only people who can enforce that law are our sheriffs. And we need to start asking the sheriffs if they’re willing to enforce that. I don’t think they are.”

Lake’s statements at a Mohave County Republican Party event clarify her position on the soon-to-be reinstated, total ban on abortion. Despite coming out in strong support of reinstating the 1864 law during her run for governor in 2022, once it was announced that the law would go into effect, she opposed the ruling. “It is abundantly clear that the pre-statehood law is out of step with Arizonans,” Lake said in a statement last week. “I am calling on Katie Hobbs and the State Legislature to come up with an immediate common sense solution.”

Clarifying support for the ban

While many took Lake’s opposition to mean she, like other Republicans facing an election in November, instead supported the state’s 15-week ban, her comments to Mohave County residents seem to confirm that her support of a total ban is resolute—but that an exception should be allowed for victims of sexual assault. “I agree with President Trump, that we need to have exceptions for rape and incest,” said Lake. “It’s very reasonable to ask for that. I know that there’s very few abortions that happen that are [due to] rape and incest, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for that.” Despite this recent display of concern over the law, comments made during Lake’s campaign for governor imply that she has long known the 1864 abortion ban did not include an exception for victims of sexual assault, such as pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. When she spoke in support of the ban on the talk show Conservative Circus, she described it as a “great law” but only mentioned its exception that would “prohibit abortion in Arizona except to save the life of a mother.”

[...]

Pushing police to enforce the ban

Lake’s suggestion that sheriffs enforce the law would mean arresting those found to be in violation of the law as it currently stands, which would include doctors and women who are pregnant as a result of sexual assault, would put local law enforcement in direct contradiction of the state’s chief legal officer, Attorney General Kris Mayes. Mayes was given full authority over prosecution for violations of the state’s abortion laws by Gov. Katie Hobbs and has repeatedly said she would not prosecute the 15-week ban or the 1864 total ban.

#AZSen GOP candidate Kari Lake continues her flip-flopping tour on Arizona's territorial-era draconian abortion ban from 1864, this time by suggesting that its county sheriffs enforce the ban once it takes effect officially.

#Kari Lake #Arizona #Abortion Bans #Anti Abortion Extremism #2024 US Senate Elections #2024 Elections #2024 Arizona Elections #Kris Mayes #Planned Parenthood Arizona v. Mayes #Katie Hobbs

9 notes · View notes

yourbelgianthings · 6 months

Text

costume hcs for halloween in kepler! 🎃

aubrey and dani: coraline (dani) and wybie (aubrey)

jake: sheet and sunglasses ghost

duck: spaceman spiff from calvin and hobbes (idc if anybody else gets this reference it makes me happy)

minerva: once she gets the concept after much explanation from duck, she decides to be a forest ranger (she’s a little confused but she’s got the spirit)

ned: whatever lets him show off the most cool special effects makeup and fake blood

kirby: werewolf

barclay: cowboy

mama: she says she’s too busy to get out of dressing up but actually spends a lot of time decorating the lodge for a big party they have there

juno devine: poison ivy (the dc villain)

hollis: 70s/80s rockstar

keith: something matching with the rest of the hornets

pigeon: a duck (she thinks this is hilarious, duck does not so much)

sheriff owens: he absolutely does not dress up

deputy dewey: a doughnut

detective megan: her regular work clothes but a name tag that says “hi i’m zeke owens”

muffy and winthrop: just a bunch of fur and obnoxious jewelry

agent stern: psych nobody invites him to anything

leo: knight

sarah: mad scientist, so her regular lab coat plus goggles and a beaker full of gatorade

arlo: wizard

indrid: just goes in mothman form

#message from mirph #the adventure zone #taz amnesty #halloween tw #halloween #halloween costumes #kepler wv #the mcelroys

31 notes · View notes

shobolanya · 2 months

Text

my Dirk Gently Supernatural crossover thoughts

i love both dghda and spn so ofc i imagined what could happen if the characters met (note that is is just pure crack but i would love more suggestions)

✦ they would met on one of the two cases in dghda or on one of the spn cases

✦ like sam and dean are just doing their usual thing when this weird chatty british dude, his assisfriend and a gorgeous badass appear

✦ i imagine dirk, todd and farah finding the case because dirk had a hunch they needed to be there and they meet these two FBI guys (who soon turns out aren't real agents) and they team up

✦ anyway they solve the case and sometime in the process of solving it they learn about what they really do

✦ i mean sam and dean learn about dirk being a holistic detective pretty fast but when things get messy the winchesters reveal what they do

✦ now i think they could team up again on some bigger cases (i imagine this being post season 2 of dghda and around season 12-13 of spn)

✦and maybe the universe led dirk to the winchesters so they could help each other

✦ so after they work on more cases more of the characters meet each other and here's who i think would get along with who

✦dirk and rowena become besties and sip tea and gossip; also she understands more about dirk being a holistic detective than he understands himself

✦ dean has a small crush on farah (but who doesn't), he's still married to cas though

✦ tina, farah, jody and donna are the best team ever

✦ CHARLIE AND TINA FRIENDSHIP.

✦ charlie and todd would be friends and she knows mexican funeral

✦ to his shame (not really) so does dean and he would never admit it but he was a fan before the band broke up

✦ dirk would be friends with jack because they are both confused sad cinnamon rolls

✦ also mona would randomly appear around the bunker nearly giving sam a heart attack; after that she would love to stay around jack and cas

✦ rowdy 3 would adopt jack (i got the idea from an amazing fanfic and it is a great dinamic nothing can change my mind, the rowdy 3 would be kind and understanding to jack and they could give him a cool jacket too)

✦ at some point friedkin appears because i want him back he's my dear beloved

✦ priest appears too and he teams up with arthur ketch

✦ bart and dean become best friends

✦ sherlock hobbs and donna are the best sheriff team

✦ rowena could teach amanda some spells

✦ the rowdy 3 can tell apart angels, archangels, demons, crossroad demons etc just by sensing their energy

✦ mona once turned in the impala to prank dean

#i'll think of more #also #please add on #dirk gently #dirk gently's holistic detective agency #supernatural #spn #dghda #thoughts

8 notes · View notes

reasoningdaily · 1 month

Text

“We’re Going to Be Overwhelmed”: How Louisiana Just Ballooned Its Jail Population

Louisiana's governor championed a raft of new laws that double down on punishment, fueling a cycle of incarceration that sends more money into local sheriffs' coffers.

Piper French | March 8, 2024

In February, as the Louisiana legislature debated Senate Bill 3, which would move all 17 year olds charged with a crime out of the juvenile justice system and back into the adult system, Will Harrell, an advisor to New Orleans Sheriff Susan Hutson, went to update the department’s Prison Rape Elimination Act coordinator on the proposed changes. He watched as tears came to her eyes. Teenagers are uniquely vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse in adult jails, and federal law requires they be separated from the adult population, which often translates to solitary confinement conditions. “She knows what that means for these kids,” Harrell told Bolts.

The bill quickly passed and was signed into law by Louisiana’s new governor Jeff Landry on Wednesday. Now, Harrell is scrambling to figure out how to absorb dozens of 17 year olds into the already-overburdened Orleans Parish Justice Center once SB 3 takes effect in April. “We’re already at capacity. We’re under a consent decree,” he said. “I talked to deputies who were there seven years ago when they had kids. And they were like, ‘oh, this is just going to be a mess.’”

“In conjunction with other legislation pending during this special session, we anticipate a massive, unmanageable population explosion at OJC,” Hutson wrote in a statement.

Landry sailed into the governor’s office last November after a campaign filled with crime-and-punishment rhetoric. Despite the fact that Louisiana already has the nation’s highest rate of incarceration, he made one of his first acts as governor convening a special legislative session on crime. In an extraordinarily fast nine-day session which ended last Friday, Republican lawmakers passed all 37 bills under consideration, a grab bag of tough-on-crime proposals that included restricting post-conviction relief, increasing law enforcement immunity, and legalizing execution methods such as nitrogen gas and the electric chair.

Sarah Omojola, the director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office, called it a “one hundred percent” rollback of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, the raft of bipartisan criminal legal reforms passed under former Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards in 2017. “In some instances, this isn’t just a rollback,” she added. “This is taking us back to the early 2000s, late ‘90s.”

Observers are just starting to take stock of what this flurry of new legislation will mean for crime deterrence, and for the state budget. But Omojola, Harrell, and others are already certain that several different measures will work together to significantly grow the state’s pretrial populations, as well as the number of people sentenced and serving time. Other bills effectively eliminate parole, vastly restrict “good time” credits, and mandate prison time for technical violations of parole and probation.

“Of course it’s going to balloon the prison population. Every single time these kinds of laws go into play, the incarceration rate jumps,” said Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, a University of Kentucky geography professor whose 2023 book, Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana, examines incarceration in the state. “That’s just basic math.”

And in Louisiana, that means, once again, a profound and reverberating impact on parish jails and sheriffs. Owing to a unique arrangement designed to address overcrowding and bad conditions at Angola prison back in the 1970s, Louisiana’s local lock-ups house more than half of its state prisoner population.

Jails operate as sort of a carceral shadow system: deadlier than the state prison system, lacking many of its resources and offerings, and run by sheriffs, who are comparatively unaccountable to state officials. East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, a dangerous jail that has for 15 years running been presided over by the same notorious sheriff, for instance, does not allow in-person visits, even though some of the people held there have been incarcerated for years on end. If someone dies in custody in a Louisiana jail, officials have no responsibility to notify their loved ones.

The Louisiana Sheriff’s Association, which lobbies on behalf of the state’s 64 sheriffs, testified in favor of SB 3, despite Hutson’s opposition. “It’s not just a bill that we are supporting, this is a bill that is part of our plan,” spokesperson Mike Ranatza told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This is what we asked the governor to entertain for us in the special crime session…this is what the overwhelming majority of our sheriffs have asked for.”

The jail system runs on “per diem” payments that the state grants local law enforcement in exchange for jailing people who have been sentenced to state prison, payments which this year will total $177 million. More prisoners means more money for sheriffs across the state—and likely future efforts to expand jails, according to Pelot-Hobbs.

“Louisiana law enforcement agencies are uniquely invested in incarceration” because of the per-diem system, Omojola told Bolts. “They financially benefit from people who are being held in their jails without providing any of those programs or resources.”

The origins of today’s jail arrangement has its roots not in tough-on-crime policies, but in a lawsuit filed by four Black Angola prisoners challenging the conditions of their confinement. In 1975, in response to the lawsuit, a federal judge limited Angola’s population. Rather than build new prisons, it was cheaper and easier for the state to transfer some prisoners to local jails to serve the remainder of their sentences. At first, Pelot-Hobbs writes in Prison Capital, sheriffs protested. But after the per diem system was instituted, they began to consider their new prisoners a boon, even asking Angola to send them more people.

By the 1990s, Pelot-Hobbs argues, jails had gone from being a “temporary spatial fix” to “the long-term geographic solution for the Louisiana carceral state.” Sheriffs, now reliant on the per-diem money, organized for jail expansion to hold more state prisoners. Between 1999 and 2019, the state added some 14,000 jail beds. “Other parishes built out huge jails that they’ll never need for their local population,” said Harrell. “It’s like a hotel. You open up the hotel, DOC sends you some kid from New Orleans, they pay you for the hotel rooms. And that literally is why you have the jail.”

This system may financially benefit local sheriffs and the state department of corrections, but it comes at the expense of the people locked up in their jails. “There’s nothing on the inside,” said Amelia Herrera, an organizer with Voice of the Experienced’s Baton Rouge chapter who spent time in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison in 2015 and has a loved one currently incarcerated there. Officials, she said, “will say the reason there’s no type of programs inside of this facility is because it’s a pre-trial facility…But when we have people in there for six and seven years?”

“You can’t visit,” she added. “They make it almost impossible to keep a connection with the outside.”

As it stands, providing no programming or visits even for people locked up for years on end is legal. Louisiana’s regulations governing how people should be treated while incarcerated in its jails are notably minimal and vague. While the state has a set of “basic jail guidelines” that apply to facilities that house state prisoners, a 2023 report by the University of Texas at Austin’s Prison and Jail Innovation Lab found that they fell short compared to regional counterparts like Texas and Florida. The report determined that the state’s jails have little to no requirements regarding transparency around in-custody deaths, adequate heating and cooling systems, or in-person visiting rights, and that their regulations around discipline are the least comprehensive of anything they reviewed. It also noted that the family members of incarcerated Louisianans contend that the regulations that do exist are routinely flouted.

The state legislature had commissioned the report, which concluded with a set of recommendations for jails to adopt guidelines prohibiting corporal punishment and the denial of basic needs like water or sleep. But when the lab’s director, Michele Deitch, and her team submitted their work last fall, the Louisiana Sheriff’s Association immediately sent a letter expressing appreciation for the work but signaling they would not follow the bulk of their recommendations, citing concerns over security plus limited capacity.

The report was completed several months before Landry took office. Now the new raft of bills passed during the special crime session threatens to turbocharge Louisiana’s cycle of jail expansion, exacerbating the problems already on display in the report’s pages before the state does much to try to remedy them.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry speaking at CPAC conference in Texas in August 2022. (Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

Omojola highlighted three bills proposed by Republican Senator Debbie Villio, HB 9, 10, and 11, which, taken together, “essentially work to make sentences much much longer—and therefore fill our prisons and our jails,” she said. HB 9 aims to abolish discretionary parole in most cases, HB 10 limits the accumulation of “good time” credits meaning that an individual would be required to serve at least 85 percent of his sentence without exception, and HB 11 increases the penalties for even technical violations of parole or probation.

Harrell noted that HB 9 and 10 may have an indirect impact on the pretrial population as well, because they take away people’s incentive to accept a plea offer. With vastly reduced prospects of getting out on parole or getting a sentence reduced with “good time” credits, people may be less keen to accept a conviction and start getting their time over with, and more likely to wait out a trial date in jail. “When that’s taken away from them, they are like, ‘Well, then why should I leave? I’m just gonna stay here in jail and roll my dice and hopefully somebody on a jury will decide that I’m not guilty,’” he said.

Villio, the bills’ sponsor and an ally of Landry’s, contends that these laws won’t increase prison populations as long as judges adjust their sentencing decisions accordingly. In a text message to Nola.com, she said, “It requires a mind-reset on sentencing that in the end should result in a wash. We, of course, will be monitoring that.” When Bolts asked how this sort of paradigm shift for judges would work in practice, Villio said, “I have the utmost confidence in our judiciary,” noting she believes that trainings have already been scheduled.

The Crime and Justice Institute, a policy analysis group, has studied other states’ implementation of similar determinate sentencing laws; Leonard Engel, the group’s director of policy and campaigns, told Bolts their research shows that judges do not ultimately adjust their sentences anywhere enough to make up the difference in years served.

HB 11, the bill dealing with technical violations of probation and parole, is also alarming to reform advocates like Bruce Reilly of Voice of the Experienced. Under the terms of the bill, people on parole or probation who are merely re-arrested, not even convicted, could get sent to prison. “That’s really where the sheriff and jails are gonna get their bread and butter,” Reilly said.

The special session also passed a law requiring 20 year mandatory minimums for carjacking cases that involve bodily injury and established financing to establish a state trooper force for New Orleans. “That’s gonna rack up a whole bunch of new arrests,” Harell said of the state trooper force. “Where do you think those people are gonna be housed?”

Overcrowding is likely to lead to an expansion of the footprint of local jails in what Pelot-Hobbs predicted could be a repeat of the same patterns of the 1980s and 1990s. The Crime and Justice Institute estimates that the additional prison time people in a given year serve under HB 9 and 10, instead of getting out on “good time” credits or parole, will cost the state upwards of a billion dollars over time. And that’s before any budget increases sheriffs could ask for—and they are likely to ask, Pelot-Hobbs said. “We’re going to see sheriffs organizing and pushing to expand their jails for this moment,” she said. “We are going to see sheriffs mobilizing and organizing to get either property taxes or millages or sales taxes to get more jail space to incarcerate the state prisoners. I also think we’re likely going to see them lobbying the state legislature for higher per diem rates.”

Advocates worry that the growth of local budgets and contracts, combined with Landry’s efforts to reduce accountability for law enforcement, will add to the state’s problems with cronyism. “It’s going to fuel the corruption, the closed circle of sheriffs and the folks who contract with them, who will know that there’s more money to be had if they can land the contracts for this jail expansion and for the increased services needed for a larger population,” says Julien Burns, the communications lead for Sheriffs for Trusting Communities. Along with Common Cause, the group has documented how sheriffs receive millions in campaign contributions from guard uniform makers, telecoms and bail bonds companies, and contractors that may hope to secure lucrative contracts with the department.

In the waning days of the special crime session, a discussion finally arose about the collective impact of these bills on Louisiana’s jails, with even conservative lawmakers such as Villio, the sponsor of HB 9, 10, and 11, expressing an awareness of the need for greater programming and services in the jails. “Everybody’s on record, saying the right thing—like if we’re gonna do this, we can’t just warehouse [people]. We’re gonna have to address the issues,” said Harrell. The legislature now moves to its regular session, where some of these issues could be hammered out.

Dramatically expanding jail programming, of course, would mean an even greater expansion of the carceral budget in Louisiana. Pelot-Hobbs said that she doubts that substantive programming will actually materialize in the jails. “I just think it’s a false promise,” she told Bolts. “And even if the promise came true, it’s still just acquiescing to the general kind of commitment to incarceration as the solution.”

Still, in Harrell’s view, allocating such resources is crucial given the vastly restricted terrain for criminal legal transformation in the state as long as Landry is in office. “These tough on crime Republicans are running the show,” he said. “There’s no going back right now, at least for the next four years. And so to the extent people are concerned about the health and safety of people who are currently incarcerated, who will soon be incarcerated under these legislations, they need to understand that programming resources matter.”

Nola.com reported this week that the exact costs of the laws that have already passed in February are uncertain because lawmakers rushed them through, suspending usual rules that would have entailed more attention to the budget.

The state’s decision to double down on incarceration, Pelot-Hobbs added, will affect public spending in other areas, too. “As money gets more and more directed towards these kinds of expenditure projects, less funds are going to be available for road construction, levy construction, schools,” she said. “The criminal legal system never operates in a silo.”

#Louisiana #Criminal justice

5 notes · View notes

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

Text

Video footage released Friday night showing armed individuals sitting near a ballot drop box in Mesa, Arizona is heightening alarm over right-wing intimidation efforts as early voting kicks off across the United States.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office told a local ABC affiliate that it is investigating several individuals who were watching a Mesa voting location on Friday. The department confirmed that two individuals at the site were armed.

A clip posted to social media by ABC reporter Nicole Grigg shows two masked people dressed in tactical gear observing the ballot drop box.

"This is obviously totally incompatible with liberal democracy and an open society," MSNBC's Chris Hayes wrote in response to the video.

Maricopa County, the largest county in Arizona, emerged as a key election-denial flashpoint in 2020 as Trump supporters baselessly accused local officials of engaging in fraud to deny the former president a second term. President Joe Biden narrowly won the state in 2020, a victory that was subsequently confirmed by a GOP-led review of the vote count.

Two years later, in the midst of the critical midterm election season, Arizona is once again drawing national attention as right-wing groups animated by false fraud narratives mobilize and harass voters. Making matters worse, election deniers are running for key posts in the state, including governor and secretary of state.

Earlier this week, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs referred to the U.S. Justice Department a report from a Mesa voter who said that a group of people gathered near a ballot drop box filmed and photographed him and his wife as they attempted to vote.

The person said he was accused of "being a mule," a reference to a ballot-stuffing conspiracy theory that's become popular in right-wing circles.

Justin Heywood, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, told VICE that "the county supports the referral to the Department of Justice on this potential case of voter intimidation."

"We have received four reports forwarded by the Arizona Secretary of State's Office," Heywood said. "We encourage any voter who feels threatened, harassed, or intimidated to report it. It is unacceptable and unlawful to impede any voter from participating in the election."

In another complaint that Hobbs forwarded to local election officials, a voter said there were "camo-clad people taking pictures of me, my license plate as I dropped our mail-in ballots in the box."

"When I approached them asking names, group they're with, they wouldn't give anything," the complaint continued. "They asked why I wanted to know, well it's because it's a personal attack."

One individual who was watching a ballot drop box in Maricopa County earlier this week said he was with a group called Clean Elections USA, which declares on its website that it is "asking every patriotic American citizen to join us as we organize to safeguard our elections with a legal presence at every ballot box in each and every state that has them."

The organization's about page features an image of a person submitting a ballot crudely labeled "dead person's vote."

Concerns about right-wing voter intimidation efforts reach well beyond Arizona.

"While poll watching has been an element of electoral transparency since the 1800s, the practice grew in prominence in the 2020 election cycle due to former President Donald Trump's unfounded allegations of voter fraud," the Associated Press reported in August. "Trump's debunked claim that the 2020 presidential election results were fraudulent has motivated thousands of his supporters to scrutinize elections operations nationwide, intensifying concerns of voter intimidation."

"A survey of county elections directors in late May found violations in 15 North Carolina counties, where officials observed poll watchers harassing voters and attempting to enter restricted areas to view confidential voting records," the outlet noted.

In addition to intimidation efforts at polling sites, recently released police bodycam footage shows cops arresting people accused of voter fraud as part of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' newly formed Office of Election Crimes and Security.

While a Miami judge on Friday dropped charges against one 56-year-old man who was arrested for supposed fraud, rights groups have warned that such arrests could have a chilling effect on voter turnout.

As Politico reported, the man "was among 20 mostly Black defendants arrested in August as part of a voter fraud crackdown led by the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security. The first wave of arrests, which were announced during a high-profile press conference in mid-August, focused on people previously convicted of felonies who voted despite not having their voting rights restored."

"Yet since those arrests, new information was uncovered showing that most of the defendants were told by state officials that they could vote," Politico added. "In each case, the defendants registered to vote without issue. Election officials with the DeSantis administration processed the voter registrations, which caused confusion among the defendants who believed they were legally allowed to vote."

The ACLU of Florida said in a Wednesday statement that "the timing of these arrests and the respective announcement in August, less than a week from the primary, made clear then that the purpose of this office is to investigate and intimidate Florida voters."

In other key states such as Georgia—which could determine control of the U.S. Senate—voters are running up against barriers established by Republican officials and lawmakers as part of a nationwide voter suppression push.

"Under the state's new Election Integrity Act, Georgia citizens can challenge a voter's eligibility on the state's voting rolls an unlimited number of times," The Guardian reported Saturday. "Right-wing groups, spurred by baseless claims that the 2020 election was rife with voter fraud, have mounted thousands of organized challenges across the state, putting even more pressure on the election process for voters, poll workers, and election officials."

"While most have been dismissed already," the newspaper observed, "more challenges cropped up ahead of early voting."

38 notes · View notes

huntsvillehq · 9 months

Text

The last day of the Faire, the sky was overcast, with rumbles of thunder in the far distance. As Mayor Nat stepped up to the podium set up in front of town hall, a small crowd gathered to hear the announcement. She proceeded to declare Pandora Flowers as the winner of the costume contest, and withdrew the sword to present to the winner of the tournament, Morgan Vovk.

Before she could, though, Quinn Buckley from the commune ran up on stage and grabbed the microphone from the podium.

“Listen! You have to listen. This, all of this, is because of a being far greater than us! It sent the creatures from the woods to test us! To separate the weak from the strong. It judges us because it wants us to be ready before it reveals itself. We have to listen! We have to—“

Sheriff Henry attempted to take the microphone from her, but she struggled against him, still shouting into the microphone.

“It’s real! I felt its presence! Those that listen will be saved!”

Thunder rumbled, closer than before, much closer. A loud crack of lightning illuminated the sky, blindingly bright. Beyond the clouds, briefly visible in that split second, loomed a shape, unrecognizable and massive, both bulbous and gangly. As quickly as it appeared it was gone, and what remained was the sizzling body of Tristan Wilde, struck by the lightning. The sky opened up, then, as thunder boomed directly above, and rain and hail pelted the town.

“It’s there! You all saw it! It’s real! We have to submit!” Quinn wailed, as Henry attempted to pull her off the stage. “I can prove it! I can walk amongst them untouched! I’ve been chosen! You can be chosen too!”

Her cries fell away in the deafening downpour, and those that had gathered scattered to find shelter in the nearest buildings. Whether or not they saw something or, if they did, if they believe what they saw, remains to be seen.

The storm raged on through the night, as the creatures wandered the streets unperturbed by the rain and hail. The lights of the town flickered and then, as lightning staggered across the sky, everything went dark.

(Those that ran to find shelter found themselves stuck for the night. Below you’ll find the (randomly selected) groups. You can choose for your characters to have seen the shape in the sky, to have not seen it, or to have seen it and not believe it.

Everyone can continue/finish their event threads, as all this took place on the final day of the Faire (the 29th). You may also time-jump threads, headcanon threads, or make new threads for the plot drop. The event officially ends on August 5th, at which time please do not make any more event starters, however you can continue all threads until completion.)

Town Hall

Aslan “Dodger” Ozdemir Bocephus “Beau” Romero Birdie Tilton Cain Barlowe Eagan Connolly Emma “Em” Dunford Evangeline Cruz Falco Romero Fletcher Cole Helena Theriot Hex Sif-Sidon Jessica Sinclair Kirby Louis Ryan Nickleby “Nick” Dalton Ocean Quinn Odette Abbott Olivia Hart Poppy Sarasa Prudence “Pru” Wheaton Ransome “Rance” Slade Saffron Aubert Scout Garcia Sierra Nevada Starlynn Flowers

Fire Station

Absinthe Capone Arachne Arthur “Arty” Drake Conrad Greene Corvin Delancey DJ Cruz-Dutton Harlow Cole Hawthorne “Hawk” Romero Izan Castillo Katarina “Rini” Roberts Lachlan Ramirez Logan Ferguson Lorcan Hara Luciana “Lucy” Rivera Mercy Wainwright Pandora “Andy” Flowers Phoenix Romero-Sawyer Rainn Scott Reggie Alson Ricardo Reider Ruben Hobbes Samantha “Sammie” Thompson Sebastian Keane Tae-Hyun Cho Theodore “Teddy” Collins Zain Madan

Police Station

Andrew Richardson Antonio “Toni” Estrada, Jr. Celia Ortega Elijah Atkins Emrys Rosser Finn Cunningham Halley McGillivray Hunter Hilton Jahi Karim Jane Doe Jareth Reid Kestrel Sideris Lincoln Abernathy Luke Matthews Mateo Suarez Morgan Vovk Pascal Mendoza Quinn Buckley Salem Salazar Vincent Lewis Violet Beauregarde William Monroe Wolf Lykaios Zachary Ryan Zarina West

Huntsville Bank

Alexander “Xander” Garcia Cabell “Cab” McCay Cassius Romero Catherine Wayne Christopher Winters Briana Ryan Dahlia Cruz-Dutton Frances “Frankie” Wallace Gabriel “G” Westfall Genesis “Sissy” Boone Harvey Langston Josie Reigh Mallard “Duck” Romero Mason Greene Maya Rae Mylene Karimi Raj Aiyangar Raphael Knightley Riley Saunders Sandra Quispe Sare Holmes Sasha Medvedev Spencer Holmes Valeria “Val” Moreno Wylie Bateman

Post Office

Avery Cowling Benjamin Cade Bowie Bardot Bram Williams Carter Behrens Cassandra “Cassie” Slade Eilana Kapur Freya Atkins Guillermo “Mo” Reyes Jasmine “Minnie” Sinclair Lennon Davies Leo Brockton Liam Jefferson Matthew Walker Mia Vazquez Monet Vogel Nathaniel Dawson Ondine Konar Paloma Ortiz Reed Hendrix Silas “Cyan” Canne Tari Park Wren Romero Xavier Cade Zoë Clark

Huntsville Library

Artemis Hayes Axel Addams Calloway “Cal” de la Luna Casey Nestor Claire Forbes Clara Jones Finch Sanders Floyd Blackward Hank McGillivray Iniya Beckett Ivy Oberon James “Jamie” Brennan Jeconiah “Jack” Abbott Jett Liu Kieran “KB” Barnes Michael “Mikey” Beauregarde Nicolas Garcia Parker Russo Peter “Rusty” Craven Peyton Wilson Reza Kogoya Roman Forest Rosemary “Rose” Felton Sicilia “Lia” Flowers Tamaraa Jillian “Jill” Adler

#huntsvilleevent03 #huntsvilleplotdrop03 #huntsvilleplotdrop

8 notes · View notes

h3rmitsunited · 1 year

Text

A Blanket Bed in the Corner

Summary: A short one-shot of what happened between Dirk and Todd when they went back to Hobbs house between Panto and the House Within a House. If you like a little bit of angsty, touch-starved, slightly traumatized yearning, then you’ll like this probably.

Read on Ao3. Words: 2108

I got to thinking about @clockworkcheetah ‘s post about Todd not being super touchy with Dirk in S2, and this sort of just spat out of my brain, so *throws this out on the floor* here.

They get to Hobbs’ small house late that night. He gives his cat a few scratches, throws a pile of blankets and pillows at the two of them and then wanders off to bed, looking worn out.

Understandable. Getting involved with Dirk’s… stuff does that to you.

So, it’s quiet now.

Todd felt strange leaving Farah behind at the sheriff's station. They’d spent two months straight not being further apart than one of them in a shitty motel bathroom while Farah walks down the hall to grab a vending machine dinner, apart from the last couple days when Todd ran off after a rabbit, or Farah talked to her brother at the boat, or today when she went with Farah and found the weird pink-haired dude that’s locked up at the station now.

He feels her absence like the loss of a limb, having become so innately accustomed to her, the mere presence of her existence a glue on his disintegrating life. It writhes like crawling bugs under his skin, an aching panic that settles into his bones telling him that there is something wrong.

It’s whispering, screaming, clawing at him like, ‘she’s gone, you idiot, Farah's not here and she has to be here and, of course, she's been taken too, and now you're alone, and you're never going to find Dirk or Amanda or anyone, and you're going to die alone, choking on your own lungs because there's nobody here to shove the pills down your throat and, shit, this is what Amanda felt all the time, and fuck, I'm the worst person in the whole world, she deserves to hate me forever-‘

Except Farah is okay. He’d watched her wave him off with a tired smile, an understanding in her eyes, and a not-so-joking joke about how she needed a little girl time.

And Dirk is here.

Dirk is here.

He's here.

Todd looks over at him, biting the insides of his cheeks. He looks exhausted and freaked the hell out, which, once again, understandable, considering he got ‘thrown through a doghouse by a zombie, Todd’, plus almost getting shot with a shot gun and then, the sudden presence of Panto Trost, sword carrying crazy person from Wen-da-fuck-does-this-get-normal; all of this casually adding up to a bunch of shit that Dirk really doesn’t need to deal with barely a day after getting out of Blackwing.

And they hadn’t even talked about that. They… well, they sort of have, but not really. Not in any way that matters, but he doesn’t even know if Dirk would want to talk about it. Todd certainly wouldn’t, but Todd’s also coming off the tail end of about a decade of severe emotional repression and self-hatred that’s left him feeling like he doesn’t deserve to have someone listen to any of his crap because he’s just a worthless shithead who shouldn’t have friends. He’s working on that, though, but habits die hard.

He wants to be there for Dirk though. He said he was his friend, back two months ago before everything went to shit. He hopes that all this didn't change Dirk wanting that from him, unless Blackwing, like, zapped his brain to make him not want to have friends. Dirk barely told him much about what that place was like as a child, but from what he’d said, he wouldn’t put isolation-inducing brain zaps past them.

But maybe this is too much. Maybe Dirk thinks that the fact that Todd and Farah spent two months looking for him was kind of creepy and pathetic and Todd is just way too clingy and needy to keep around and he’s just finding the right way to say fuck off without sounding like too much of an asshole.

Todd realizes vaguely that he could also just be thinking all this because it’s like 2am and he’s exhausted and his body is adjusting to taking cat drugs that make his brain feel a little weird and Dirk being here, and alive, and here, is fucking with his head... like a lot.

He becomes aware that he's been sitting on Hobbs' couch for like fifteen minutes, just staring at the wall, still fully dressed. He's surprised Dirk hadn't said anything, or maybe he had, and Todd wasn't paying attention.

Todd glances over and now, Dirk is lying flat on the pile of blankets and pillows that Hobbs had dragged out. He's on his back, eyes open, looking blankly up at the ceiling. The look on his face, Todd’s not sure what he’d call it, but it’s…

Well, it's a bit concerning.

He’s not going to read into what prompts him to do it, but he's walking across the room before he can register the action in his brain. He sees Dirk's eyes flick towards him, but he doesn't move, only parts his lips slightly to release a heavy breath before darting his eyes back up to the ceiling.

Todd waves a hand at him, leaning over the make-shift bed. Dirk rolls his eyes, landing them back on Todd and frowns, confused.

"Scoot over."

Dirk's look of confusion deepens, and he opens his mouth, hesitating quietly for a moment before snapping it closed again. He presses his lips into a tight line and then moves to the side, watching Todd carefully now.

There’s not really enough room for both of them, not enough room for two normal man friends to lay down normally next to each other. But… well, fuck it. Todd draws in a breath and flops onto the blankets, half of his side hanging off the edge onto the worn carpet, carefully keeping just enough space between their arms so that they aren't touching, but close enough that he can feel the echoes of warmth coming off Dirk's body.

He liked doing this with Farah too. He hopes that she didn’t mind it too much. On the run, it was only the two of them together for two months, neither of them big on touching, especially since Todd got pararibulitis, so they didn’t do more than just lay next to each other (other than that night they got drunk at that restaurant and sloppily made out in the back alley, deliberately not talking about it the next day). Just knowing that she was there, that she was in the same shitty boat that he was, tired and scared and unsure of what was going to smack them in the faces next, not knowing if they’d ever find Dirk or Amanda or any semblance of peace again; it helped.

It made him feel real. Alive. Physically present in the world.

He wonders if Dirk had anything like that, if there was anything he could cling to during his long nights wherever he had been to make him feel like a person again. He doesn't think so, but he’s not really sure he wants the confirmation.

Dirk breathes in sharply through his nose. It's dark, apart from the dim light over the oven in the kitchen. It’s glowing a soft yellow through the narrow archway behind them, trailing over the top of Dirk’s face.

He’d never seen him like this before. Never laid on a bed and looked at him, studied the angle of his nose, the hard line of his jaw, the way his throat worked as he swallowed, the flutter of his eyelashes, the soft parting of his lips.

The urge to touch him surges through his body like a pararibulitis attack. Consuming and electric. Todd bites the insides of his cheeks to try to hold his composure. He’s not sure if he succeeds.

Dirk's lip quivers.

There's a tense, heavy silence that blankets over them, like the world tilting for a second as air is pulled into Dirk’s lungs. He's staring up at the ceiling like it could have the answers to a question Todd knows that he doesn't even know.

"I missed you," Dirk breathes out shakily. It's quiet, barely audible, but in Todd's ears, it's an explosion. It shatters something in his chest, and he doesn't think he'll ever be able to piece it back together again, and, god, he doesn't fucking care.

Todd shifts his arm, just the tiniest bit closer. He can feel the tickle of their arm hairs brushing together, sending bolts of lightning over his nerves, but not, like, bad ones. They're good. They're so good.

Todd wonders if Dirk can feel him staring at him. He doesn't mean to, knows that it's a little weird, a bit creepy, but Dirk is here, he’s here, and Todd is so fucking scared of blinking and finding that spot on the blankets suddenly empty. To find out that Dirk had never even been here in the first place. That finding him had been a dream or a hallucination or something else that would break his heart if it wasn’t just this.

"I missed you, too," Todd whispers back. Dirk flinches like he'd forgotten Todd was even there, his throat bobbing as he swallows hard.

The distance between them feels too far, like a wide, endless canyon, impassable and dangerous.

Dirk turns his head slowly, meeting Todd's eyes. His are bright. The soft light from the kitchen makes them shine like stars, and his hair is wild, errant strands sticking out in all different directions. Dirk had been running his hands through it anxiously since Panto showed up, too much restless energy to stay contained. A dark strand hangs loosely over his forehead.

He could reach out, brush it back into place and let his finger stay pressed lightly against Dirk’s skin, trailing it down the side of Dirk's face, smoothing those rough, worried edges. It feels like too much, too soon, too close.

Dirk’s lips turn down, eyes still carefully studying Todd. It seems like he feels the same way, like his connection to the whatever is tattling on Todd’s thoughts, that roiling tension in Todd's body that is screaming at him to get closer, and his eyes flick back to the couch, his expression closing off. He licks his lips and frowns.

"You should get some sleep. I can't imagine having to be on the run from the FBI has been very restful." He speaks softly. Kind and quiet, but Todd can hear the tone of dismissal in the words.

Todd doesn't want Dirk to pull away, not now. Not when he just got him back. He moves to shift forward, but he feels the light press of fingertips against his forearm. Dirk's eyes are piercing into him, sad and tired.

"Todd," he whispers, his voice crackling like he’s moments away from breaking into tears. His eyes dart to the couch again, panicked. "Please."

Dirk presses his lips into a line and looks back at Todd, his expression pleading with him to understand, like he doesn’t know what he needs himself, like he needs Todd to know for him.

Todd’s not good at this though.

He wants so badly to just push forward, to show Dirk that he’s here for him, that he wants to be here for him. Wants to drag him into a hug and touch him and know that this is real, that Dirk is real. And here. And alive.

But he can see in Dirk’s expression that he’s not ready for that. And as much as Todd wants to push, wants to touch, and hold, and never fucking let go… he doesn’t.

It hurts, aching like a bruise, but Todd swallows it down and nods.

Because it's fine. He's fine, and this is fine, and he’s here for Dirk, whatever he needs, because they’re friends and he wants his friend to feel okay. To feel safe.

Todd briefly nudges Dirk’s arm with his own, catching his eyes and giving Dirk a soft smile.

"Good night, Dirk."

Dirk hesitates before returning Todd’s smile with a sad apologetic one of his own. His fingers brush over the back of Todd’s wrist before dropping back onto the blanket.

Todd pushes himself up, the chill of being separated from Dirk creeping into his skin. He drags one of the blankets he’d been lying on up from the ground, tugging it until Dirk shifts and it comes free and then tosses it carefully out across Dirk’s body, turning quickly back to the couch to lay down. It’s enough, he thinks, that he can see Dirk from here. Can see Dirk watching him still, pulling the blanket around his chest tighter, curling onto his side, still facing Todd on the couch.

Todd sighs, letting his eyes close.

"Good night, Todd."

In the morning, the blanket bed is empty.

#dghda #dirk gently #todd brotzman #dirk gently’s holistic detective agency #brotzly #not like explicitly but like my fics will get there eventually if they kept going so…

6 notes · View notes

hjbirthdaywishes · 2 years

Text

April 29, 2022

Happy 44 Birthday to Tyler Labine.

#Tyler Labine #Happy Birthday #Sheriff Sherlock Hobbs #Sherlock Hobbs #Sheriff Hobbs #Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency #DGHDA #Dirk Gently #April #2022

2 notes · View notes

ausetkmt · 1 year

Video

youtube

EXCLUSIVE Update: Insiders Speak Out On Viral Video Of Inmate Beating

These Deputies Tried to KILL THIS MAN

Camden County Sheriff Jim Proctor claims he is launching an investigation after surveillance video showing five jail officials brutalizing Jarrett Hobbs in and out of a jail cell at the Camden County Jail in the City of New Brunswick, Georgia went viral.

Hobbs was arrested for driving under a suspended license and possession of a controlled substance. The 41-year-old was held in isolation about 15 days after the unprovoked attack.

He did not receive medical attention and was charged with 9 counts of assault, battery and obstruction. Insiders are claiming employee misconduct is common in the jail.

Dr. Rashad Richey and Jackson White discuss on Indisputable.

#Camden County Georgia #Georgia #New Brunswick Georgia #Police Abuse #systemic racism #Police Violence #Black Lives Matter #white lies #physical violence in a jail #EXCLUSIVE Update: Insiders Speak Out On Viral Video Of Inmate Beating

21 notes · View notes

r-rook-studio · 1 year

Text

#City23: 1st Week of February

Crossposted to Cohost

I've written about my #City23 projects here and on Tumblr. You can check out my last post. I still have two #City23 projects I'm working on: a fantastical version of Nottingham during the high middle ages and a contemporary fictional city in Maine called Cape Crescent.

As noted in that end-of-Janaury post, I spent most of January (minus a break) working on the area around Nottingham's Bar Gate and Cape Crescent's "main street": Pine State Highway. That was a bit of a struggle since I felt like I was filling in "gaps" for a city that hadn't been sufficiently sketched out yet, but did give me a sense of what the locals in both cities are like.

Nottingham

For February '23 in Nottingham, I'm focusing on Nottingham Castle. While Nottingham was not anywhere near the size of London at this time, the castle, a royal residence, meant that the city was far more cosmopolitan than one might expect, with large French, English, and Jewish communities. The castle isn't just a physical space, it's a symbol of the sheriff's authority as the royal appointee. Thus it's the headquarters of a sizable faction and a base of its power.

This week, I started with the outer bailey, and I think I may camp out a bit. The first line of yards, gardens, and buildings within the castle's outermost wall, the bailey is the home and workplace of many common folks in the sheriff's service. I started with a random guard-generator, including what after-effects from last night are distracting the guard:

Distractions from Last Night

None: Attentive

Gambling debts

Caught cheating in love or at cards

Unrequited infatuation

Family disputes

Lost a brawl, wants revenge

I also started work on the castle's large outer stables and kennel (because I'm in charge, I've decided there's a separate royal stable and kennel further into the castle). My Robin Hobb fandom is showing through. This gave me three NPCs in quick succession: Kado the stable boy, his best friend (and likely crush) Nin who assists in the kennel, and the late stable master and kennel master Warinfried. Kado and Nin have some arcane talents (including some that haven't occurred in Sherwood), and Warinfried's body was buried in the tunnels below the castle without removing the necromantic ring he stole from the sheriff. This could be why folks in the outer bailey's brewery have reported seeing signs of a ghost. If Warinfried is haunting the castle now, who knows what he might do to revenge himself on Kado, who murdered him, or Nin, who Kado was trying to protect? I've also name-dropped Wainfried's patron, Raimund, the castle's steward/seneschal and a son of the sheriff, who I'd love to develop a bit more.

So far, the castle is a lot of Norman and Breton dudes, so over this next week, I'd like to diversify the population a bit.

Cape Crescent

In Cape Crescent, I wanted to begin digging into two explicitly hostile factions: the cult-like Grove and the loosely Pentex-inspired Ghost Bay Foundation. Over the past week, I've worked on Pine State Realty, a mid-sized real estate agency near the middle of town that doubles as an administrative front for Ghost Bay Foundation. Over the past week, I've identified three NPCs who work there:

Ramji Davindran dropped out of grad school to come work in Cape Crescent and discover why his sister disappeared. He covered his tracks well, and so far the only person I've found who knows about his real purpose is...

Cornelia Richards, the office manager, isn't supposed to know much about the Ghost Bay Foundation or the realty's real purpose but knows almost all of it. She may even know more than...

Ted Cliff, the "owner" of the real estate agency and a Ghost Bay administrator, is supposed to know way more than he's actually figured out about the employees he keeps around to create a more compelling front.

#city23 #tabletop rpgs #tabletop roleplaying #ttrpg design #ttrpgs

4 notes · View notes