Editing Paradise City:Urban Geography (section)

===Eastside Ganglands:  ”The Eastside Playgrounds”.===

[[Image:Urban_06.jpg]]

In the Eastside Playgrounds, gangs gain honor by transforming their environment.  At the most basic level, this means writing your gang’s name or symbol on the walls, but it can include projects as ambitious as coating a skyscraper with the gang color, forcing “owned” citizens to be tattooed with the gang symbol, or constantly piping muzak into the street.  At the more extreme end, a few gangs go so far as to impose “themes” on their territory, declaring their turf to be part of downtown Tokyo, or Moon Colony One, or God’s kingdom on earth, or hell.  A lot of gangs make heavy use of drugs to help them complete the transformation, and drug use is often mandatory for people living in a gang’s territory.

Police:  Eastside CityPol carefully protects all important corporate assets in the area.  Other than that, they largely cede the streets to the gangers.  Officers are usually issued with a gyroc pistol and a submachinegun.  The police are relatively tolerant towards the carrying of weapons, even at the periphery of territory that they control.  However, unless it would be too dangerous to do so, they will usually arrest anyone they see with a military weapon (something of LR 1 or less) and see that the individual gets prison time.  They reason that anyone carrying a military weapon was probably planning to do the sort of harm that even they should care about.

Points of Interest:  Camp Inglewood is a paramilitary group that actively recruits new members.  Free food and sleeping accommodations are provided, but work is required in return.  Combat training and multi-faith religious services are offered but attendance is not required.  The group openly encourages its members to join the US military, especially the army, even though this reduces group numbers.  Drug and alcohol use is not tolerated and repeated offenses may result in execution.  Leaving the group is only permitted if the individual is joining a branch of the US military.  Camp Inglewood has occasionally been involved in mercenary work, though only for causes that it judged to be good.