The Obama administration said it favors shorter jail sentences for crimes involving crack cocaine. … Under current law, a person caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine gets the mandatory minimum sentence of five years, while it takes only five grams of crack cocaine to trigger the same sentence. … “Our stance on this is we shouldn’t be lowering the…
Month: April 2009
Bike Rapid Response
Strange Queensday Attack in the Netherlands. In the BBC video, notice the first police officer on the scene rides a bicycle. Not a car. Not a man on foot. But a cop on a bike. If the goal is rapid response (at least for short and medium distances), we need more bikes.
Safe Injection Facilities Conference
There’s a one-day conference on Safe Injection Facilities (a legal place where addicts can shoot up) at John Jay College on May 22, 2009. The conference organizer is looking for somebody to provide a law enforcement perspective. Any police out there interested in talking about what police officers think about such programs? Email Rick Curtis. It will be fun, interesting,…
Drugs and the Taliban
In the New York Times. Instead of fighting a war we can’t win, we could buy the drugs. Burn it if we want. Sell it if we’re smart. It would be cheaper and better than sending soldiers into harm’s way. Perhaps just $300,000,000 a year. That’s what they say the Taliban makes in drug profits (though I suspect it’s higher).…
Corrupt Narcs in Philadelphia
I wishit weren’t always the Narcs. And now, because I’m older and wiser (and somewhat shamed by comments to other posts), I’ll add that it isn’t allnarcs. Most narcotic officers do their job and do it well. But corruption always has a vice link. Always. Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker write in the Philadelphia Daily News: RED FLAGS were everywhere.…
Plane Scares New York City
Here’s a dumb recipe for a photo-op: take one 747, fly it low around Manhattan, circle around a bit, and follow it with two F-16 fighters. Who was the idiot that thought of this brilliant idea? This is pretty inexcusable. And it sure better not turn up in an “Obama 2012” campaign ad. The Police Department acknowledged that it had…
Vice
I don’t know if I should be proud or ashamed I love ViceMagazine. It’s anti-consumer attitude is completely and unashamedly support by consumer culture and slutty American Apparel ads. I don’t know how to describe Vice so I won’t. Let’s just say it’s eclectic and, among other things, sometimes provides a wonderfully unsanitized view of the world. Yes, there is…
Cooking the books?
Anonymous posted a comment on the previous post: I can’t wait for the fudged numbers of the NYPD Comp-stat to be exposed…” Boy, there sure is a lot of chatter about the fudged numbers in the NYPD (and I’m talking about chatter from NYPD officers). I didn’t hear this nearly so much even just a few years ago. It seems…
New York City crime rate still falling
The story in the Daily News: The city’s crime rate for the first three months of 2009 was the lowest in more than 40 years, defying fears that the sinking economy might send the city back into the bad old days of rampant murders and rough streets. Through the end of last month, overall crime dropped 13.5% from a year…
Fewer Police Deaths
It surprises a lot of people to find out that fewer and fewer police officers are killed on duty than in the past. I guess it counters the natural inclination to assume that the world is going to hell and violence is out of control and kids these days… have you seen what they’re wearing? The top red line is…