Here’s to the peaceful transition of power and a belated thanks to George Washington. Washington started a great tradition more than 200 years ago: he voluntarily stepping down from power rather than become a power-hungry dictator. Thanks, George. Here’s just a sampling of reports from elsewhere. One from Kenya and another from Turkey.
Month: January 2009
Adolphus is a nice name for a boy
File this under B for “bad parents.” Naming Children for Nazis Puts Spotlight on the Father That’s putting it mildly. And to think I have a friend who hated being named Nimrod. Better a Biblical Mighty Hunter than Adolf Hitler Campbell, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, and JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell! The children have been taken from their parents. But not,…
30-pound marijuana brick delivered to wrong address
How come UPS never drops one off on my stoop? Well, maybe it’s better that the police don’t mistakenly raid my house. One of my students works for UPS. Not delivering. But in their shipping building. He said (with disapproval) that a lot of his coworkers are street-level drug dealers when they’re not on the clock at UPS. So it…
He didn’t follow orders
I feel like it was just yesterday I wrote: “If police think you might be armed and you won’t follow orders… well, it’s on you. Sorry. It may not be right, but that’s just the way it is.” Here’s a Baltimore case in point.
$815,000 for fired Seattle-area cop
Mike Carter of the Seattle Timesreports: A former Mountlake Terrace police sergeant whose views supporting the decriminalization of marijuana led to his dismissal in 2005 has won his job back and an $815,000 settlement from the city and Snohomish County. However, Sgt. Jonathan Wender will not return to the streets. In addition to the financial settlement, the city has agreed…
BART Shooting (III)–Justice?
I’m very interested in the concept of justice. Especially in situations where there really can’t be any. So let’s just say that the police officer is put on trial and says, “I plead no contest. I didn’t mean to do it. But I did. All I remember was that there was a large crowd yelling and a man was struggling.…
The harms of immigration enforcement
There’s a very interesting article in the New York Times today about how federal prosecution of immigration crimes is taking away from other prosecutions… like gun trafficking, organized crime, drug dealing, and white collar crime. That’s not good law enforcement. A senior federal prosecutor who has worked on a wide variety of cases along the border said that the focus…
S.F. police surveillance cameras report
“A long-awaited study of San Francisco’s installation of surveillance cameras in high-crime areas shows that the effort fails in its primary goal of reducing homicide and other violent crime, but succeeds in reducing such offenses as burglary, pickpocketing and purse-snatching.” “The study found that the program, started by Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2005, is hampered by a lack of training…
7 Police Officers Hurt in NYC Gaza Protest
Hey, guys, check the violence at the door. Or at least don’t take it out on police. The story in the Times. And the Daily News.
BART Shooting (II)
Here’s a link to a The Raw Story and clearer video of the police-involved shooting of Oscar Grant on a Bay Area BART station. Thanks to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s blog for the link. In court, the officer’s actions will be judged by the standard of a “reasonable police officer.” It does not matter what the people shouting for the BART train…