Conor Friedersdorf has a excellent piece in The Atlantic, “The NYPD’s Insubordination—and Why the Right Should Oppose It.” [And just for the record I did scoop the New York Post, albeit only be a few hours.] There’s lot here that doesn’t fit in our normal political divide. And I love that cognitive dissonance! You’ve got union blue-collar workers, and the…
Month: December 2014
It’s New Years Eve
Stay under cover and safe till all the bullets land.
Blue Flu
Word on the street is that NYPD summonses are down almost 95% and arrests by two-thirds since officers Ramos and Liu were killed (and the PBA was vocal with their opinion). Let’s see what impact this has on crime. It would be interesting if the answer were zero. But since I believe police matter, I don’t think this is good.…
RIP Officer Rafael Ramos
NYPD Officer Ramos was just buried. Here is Commissioner Bratton’s eulogy. In honor of Officer Ramos, I’m reprinting some of what I’ve written about police funerals in Baltimore. I went to too many of them: Twenty months in Baltimore wasn’t very long, but it was long enough to see five police officers killed in the line of duty. And there…
Merry Christmas
Especially to everybody who has to work today. One of my friends wanted to work overtime. He said, “All I want for Christmas is a robbery collar!” Here’s hoping Santa brings one right to him. Stay safe.
Police Shooting Kids
Here I am on NPR’s “Morning Edition” flapping my mouth about the shooting of Tamir Rice (Cleveland kid killed by police while holding a realistic-looking BB gun): [Moskos] says mayors everywhere walk a tightrope between police and citizen outrage. He says the public needs to get more realistic about how the police work. And police need to be less tone…
De Blasio and Police (I)
I previously wrote about how liberals generally don’t quite understand why some, police included, had problems with his over-paid Jersey-living shacked-up-with-a-cop-hating-felon wife’s former chief of staff. De Blasio, like many non-working-class liberals, is pretty clueless about policing and police officers. Leonard Levitt said it on politico: His words and his deeds don’t match… You had Noerdlinger’s son calling cops ‘pigs’…
Thinking beyond “the Thin Blue Line”
Read my whole piece at CNN: Most citizens can be forgiven for going through their day without thinking of anarchy or barbarians storming the gates. But many police, especially in New York City, see themselves as a thin blue line besieged by both a liberal and criminal world, neither of which they particularly like or understand. Large protests, especially when…
“Right now there’s nothing I’d rather be than a Brooklyn cop”
A friend (and former student) of mine, Officer Musorov, just posted this on facebook. You might see him on the streets of Crown Heights. He makes me proud! “When the Rhetoric of scandal — rogue cops, racist cops, and so on — becomes the received idea, when we are so engrossed by exceptions that they seem like rules, we still…
NYPD vs. DeBlasio
Cops turning their back on Mayor DeBlasio.