In Newsweek.
Month: October 2009
No doctor without a police officer’s note
I just heard on the radio that Nigeria has changed its law that required a police report from the victims of gunshot injuries before these same victims could be treated for their wounds in a hospital. Apparently one of the factors leading to this change was a high level of gun deaths. Imagine that.
Failing His Way to Higher Office
Radley Balko writes in Reasonabout P.G. County Sheriff Michael Jackson. He’s the guy who, among other things, led and defended the police actions in the set up and raid of Mayor Calvo.
A strike against “zero tolerance”
Discretion is good. In schools. In society. And in policing. Here’s an example of why it doesn’t work so well in school. The law was introduced after a third-grade girl was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake to school, along with a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal — but not…
Small-town values
Just so you don’t get to thinking that cities and ghettos have a lock on stupid senseless crimes. “The seeming senselessness of the killing of Kimberly Cates – hacked to death in her bed last week in Mont Vernon, N.H., allegedly by teenagers who chose her at random and didn’t know who she was.” The storyby Sarah Schweitzer in the…
Sell Crack. Sue the City for Police Harrassment.
That seemed to be the recipe. The story by Patrice O’Shaughnessy in the NY Daily News.
Prison for Old People
Should an 87-year-old go to prison? John Eligon and Benjamin Weiser write about this in the New York Times. I don’t think so. What good does it serve? Punishment, of course. But aren’t there better and cheaper ways to punish? I certainly don’t want to pay to keep people who are no threat to me behind bars. Can’t we fine…
More Prison, Less Crime?
If you look at this chart, it’s not hard to think that the great crime drop was caused by locking up all the criminals. A student brought this up in class. In the 1990s, it looks pretty convincing: But just looking at the 1990s misses the big picture. Here’s the same data going back to 1925. Crime went up and…
Why Police Officers Hate the Department
People often fail to understand just how dysfunctional a big-city police department can be (and some have told me small town PDs are worse). Justin “H.L.” Fenton reports in the Sun: Sgt. Carrie Everett… spoke to a reporter after she was administratively charged in connection with an incident in which a murder suspect committed suicide by jumping from a top-floor…
Shut yer mouth, dude!
Why is it so hard for some people to just shut up? Some people are using this video as anti-cop propaganda. I see an officer acting in an incredibly professional and even patient manner. He’s doing his job. He follows the rules. He tells his name and badge number when asked. A little skateboarder calls him a dick. To his…