The Special Judicial Squad was brought in an attempt to salvage public support. In a shape of things to come, the Judges brutally put it down and caused the deaths and injuries of multiple bystanders. In 2051, the first mega-block went up, having demolish a low-income neighbourhood with the promise of new, improved housing within the corporation building the block reneged on this and sparked a major riot among the newly homeless. Talks were in place about splitting the mega-cities into new political entities under the controversial Autonomy Act. The population continued to grow as people moved to the city. In June of that year, to root out an anti-judicial terrorist group called the Patriots, Justice Department locked down New York for most of a fortnight by getting away with this, their power and position was consolidated. and by 2047, Judges were still outnumbered by police five to one, but the police precincts had been militarised akin to the future Sector Houses. (Official and semi-official timelines have placed MC-1s construction in 2031 and the others being planned in 2039, while The Judges novellas turned this into a process from the 2030s to 2050s)īy 2039, the last police academies had closed. The perceived success of MC-1 would lead to the construction of one in California and Texas. The American government would soon formally name the sprawl the Boston-New York-Philadelphia Autonomous Metropolitan District: the first of the new megacities, leading to its eventual name of Mega-City One. Crime rates actually doubled in every place the Judges were sent in, due to anti-judge activity, which Justice Department considered a temporary surge that would settle down. However, 2035 would see hundreds of anti-judge riots from dissidents, fuelled by an ongoing economic slump with inadequate welfare. The Governor of New York attempted to oppose the Judges on constitutional grounds, quietly helping to escalate tensions to help his career - ironically he would be saved from a murderer by the Judges, who exposed his crimes and cemented their position.
Īt first the Judges worked with the existing police forces in the conurbation, with the intention of easing them into obsolesce, and had to force their way through both police and local government. This lead to the rollout of the Judges in 2031 - a proposal backed by the citizens, who voted out the congressmen who opposed Eustace Fargo and President Guerney's plan.
Crime had skyrocketed in the overcrowded sprawl, escalating to the point where an alliance of street gangs under P Street Posse raided the White House itself and successfully intimidate juries into acquitting them. )Ī sprawling conurbation had sprung up in the 2020s, stretching from New York City to Washington and growing. From 2104 onwards, it had been scaled back to roughly New Hampshire through North Carolina. In the early 22nd century, it stretched roughly from southern Maine down through Florida, far into Ohio and/or West Virginia to the west, and to the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor in Canada in its north west. Following the Day of Chaos, the city has been reduced to a secondary power at best. Due to a number of other disasters and crises that have affected the city, and immigration to Mega-City One, the population remained stable until 2134. Originally designed to house 350 million citizens, the population of Mega-City One soon swelled to an astounding 800 million people, a number that would remain constant until the city was devastated by the effects of the Atomic Wars - the Great Atom War of 2070 and later the Apocalypse War of 2104, which reduced its population to 400 million people with living space for half that number. Dredd looks out on the city, by John BurnsĮstablished in 2032, Mega-City One was conceived as an answer to the massive overcrowding plaguing the cities of North America.