What? It’s true! (Even if it is from 1909.) Why do I mention this? Maybe because it all started when a Greek-American shot and killed South Omaha Police Officer Ed Lowery. Or maybe not. Look, this has nothing to do with police (except for the aforementioned killing), but my third book is finally out. It’s done. It’s a Moskos and…
Month: November 2013
NYPD Aims Better in 2012
It’s being reportedthat fatal NYPD police-involved shootings were way up in 2012. They are, but it’s a non-story. Indeed, fatal police-involved shootings increased from 9 to 16, but better aim and luck were probably the reasons why. Police-involved shootings were only up by 2, to 30. (And this even though the average distance from which officers shot was further away…
“You can’t stop me! You can’t do that no more! There are new rules!” says gun-toting idiot
The Post reports (and some cops confirm) that word on the street is that cops can’t stop anybody anymore. Of course that’s not true. But it still make for some chilling anecdotes. “You can’t be stopping me, yo! The cops can’t be harassing us!” He was still frisked. And yet there is still no apparent increase in violence. [thanks to…
Crime is up no wait down: NCVS
There are two main clearinghouses for crime stats in this country, the UCR (The Uniform Crime Report) and the NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey). The former is collected from police departments and thus only includes reported crime as recorded by the police. The latter is conducted by surveys and sampling and asks people (160,000 per year) if they were a…
Five charts Ray Kelly Doesn’t want you to see!
(Can you guess I was just on buzzfeed? A better headline would be “Murders way down in NYC. And so are stop and frisks. And nobody seems to care.” But what kind of clickbaite would that be?) 1) Breakdown of NYC stops by race. Indeed, as often reported, 83% of stops have happened to black and hispanic people. 2) Breakdown…
Defending Flogging Down Under
Waste an hour watching my dangerous idea at the Sydney Opera House’s 2013 Festival of Dangerous Ideas: There’s also me on a panel “Getting Soft on Crime”: You can watch all the Dangerous Ideas here. What an amazing weekend and amazingly well run festival! Thanks to everybody at FODI.
Father calls cops who shoot son
The chase was well called out by the pursuing officer, I have to say. The shooting, in my humble opinion, justified. It’s too bad police had to down two police cars because of this idiot. Should the police have chased? No. They rarely should. And particularly not when you know the identity of the suspect and where he lives! (And…
Right Wing Lies (IX)
Turns out Obama was a cross-dressing teenager who turned gay tricks for coke! This one must be true. Why? Because I read it on the interwebs! Man, I wasted far too much time today responding to comments from people who still comment about what a shame it is that the government provided “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to a murdered…
Shira Scheindlin Stop & Frisk Smackdown
I’m in beautiful Sydney. Spring is in the air and the birds make funny sounds just to remind me that I’m on the other side of the planet. Despite my focus on the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, I couldn’t help but notice that everything Judge Scheindlin decided regarding stop and frisk has been put on hold! The New York Times…