Police

Why police need big guns

My man Eugene O’Donnell wrote this in the Daily News. It’s worth reading, given general opposition (including some from me) to the militarization of police: At present only a handful of police departments have the capacity to intimidate would-be terrorists and, if need be, wage sustained combat against them in the streets of America. This is a weakness to correct,…

Continue Reading

Police

Just cause it’s legal don’t make it right

Sometimes it’s fun to play a bit fast and loose with the numbers to make a greater point: By 2014, [civil asset forfeiture] had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year…. According to the FBI, the total amount of [reported] goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that…

Continue Reading

Police

“The most disturbing thing I’ve seen”

Two (black) cops were criminally charged in the fatal shooting of a (white) six-year-old boy in Louisiana, who was in a car, I guess being chased. I haven’t seen the video, so what do I know? But Colonel Michael Edmonson, the Superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, said footage of the incident was, “the most disturbing thing I’ve seen.” Damn.…

Continue Reading

Police

Meanwhile, in Brazil

In New York City, police have killed 281 people over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, a friend just gave me this a fun tidbit, in Rio de Janeiro (which is smaller than NYC) over the past ten years police have killed 8,466 people! That’s crazy. That means that every day police kill 2.3 people in that city. Just think of…

Continue Reading

Police

Fox Lake cop killled himself in “carefully staged suicide”

When I was on Bill O’Reilly, he used Lt. Joe Gliniewicz’s death as a lead-in to asking: “Do you believe that the black lives matter crew and other radicals are igniting violence against police officers?” I didn’t. The next day I pointed out that Black Lives Matters doesn’t have a strong foothold in Fox Lake, Illinois, which is less than…

Continue Reading