One of my students told me that police took 14 guns off the streets of Harlem last night. This after the annual African-American Day Parade. Seven people were shot (give or take one or two). This isn’t in any of today’s papers. Say what?! The parade ended in the afternoon. The tough kids come out at night. Between 11pm and…
Month: September 2008
Amazon Sales Rank
If you’re a published author, maybe you check Amazon.com sales rank (gosh, of course *I* never do). You can read this, this, or this. My book topped out at 500 (that’s pretty good) and is currently hovering around 15,000 [update: 50,000]. That means there are 14,999 books selling better than Cop in the Hoodat Amazon.com. What does that mean? Hard…
Cop in the Hood now on Amazon Kindle
Hey, my book is now available through Amazon’s Kindle. I’m not exactly certain what that means. But I do know it makes me slightly hipper and more likely to be read by tech geeks commuting by train.
Cops and dealers (and The Wire)
Dolan Cummings of Culture Wars has written the best review of my book. I don’t mean the most positive review (though I’m very glad he liked my book); I mean the best written review. They sure writes good with that there English language in England. Along with being the first to juxtapose me, Venkatesh, Homicide, and The Wire (which is…
Crime Alert
Crime alert tip provided by I Can Has Cheezeburger.
The Legal Drinking Age Surprise
The New York Timescame out today with an editorialagainst lowering the drinking age. That surprised me, especially from a paper that says we’re not winning the war on drugs. I started drinking when I was 15. Most people do. Seems to me that the legal drinking age for beer and wine should be 16 or 18. Since kids do it…
Only in Hollywood (Florida)
A Baltimore reader emailed me this: Michael Verdugo is a police officer in Florida who was on the HGTV show Design Star. He’s openly gay and a porn blog revealed that five years prior to becoming a police he was in a gay porn film. The police department he is in suspended him to investigate these allegations. Apparently he could…
The Solution to the Failed Drug War
Jack Cole, the founder of LEAP, has an op-ed in today’s Boston Globe. WAR AND RACE dominate the presidential campaign, but one nation-shaping war with profound racial consequences eludes the political radar: the drug war. I was a frontline soldier in this self-perpetuating, ineffectual effort that has swallowed more than a trillion tax dollars and currently yields nearly 2 million…
27 drug raids in one night
A federal a local task force, HIDTA (“High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area”) busted down 27 doors in what must have been a very long night’s work. I hope people feel safer.
Six shot, one dead
Baltimore Sun reporter Peter Hermann doesn’t exactly crack the case, but he does provide a bit more insight and analysis than you usually find in such a story. Read it here.