Then:
Now:
[I’m on vacation; life is good. While I’m gone, I’ve scheduled some non-timely non-police filler posts. Regular posts should resume soon.]
Category: Police
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Then and Now: Pittsburg
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Bangkok Police Rackets
If you open a bar or restaurant in Bangkok, you can expect for the local police commander asking for $500/month.
“Why?” a business owner asked.
“In case you do something illegal.”
“What if I’m not doing anything illegal?”
“Better to pay.”
“I’m not paying.”
We’ll see how this plays itself out.
Should you want to stay open late, the first hour would cost $500/month. Each additional hour costs $300. One time party? Just hire two cops for $50 to sit outside your place. They’ll proceed to get drunk in uniform. But you won’t get shut down.
Sounds corrupt. And it is. But then in New York City restaurants and bars pay a lot more to the city in the form of licenses and inspections, which is just a form of legal shakedown.
Keep in mind this is a city with some very rich people, but a cleaning woman earns about $200 a month. A police office, officially (before the bribes begin), makes maybe twice that.
Should you be a foreigner caught with drugs, the police will happily take you to an ATM to make a cash withdrawal.
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Lakewood Coffee-Shop Ambush
The good people at policeone.com have posted a, in-depth video about last year’s Lakewood Four coffee-shop ambush. The video tells the story from the perspective of the responding officers.
[I’m on vacation; life is good. While I’m gone, I’ve pre-scheduled a few posts.]
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RIP William H. Torbit Jr.
Officer Torbit’s funeral was yesterday. It must have been painful.
Meanwhile on Tuesday night, another officer, a homicide detective, was shot. What a friggin’ job.
I’ll be back in the U.S. in a week. Everything seems very distant from here in Bangkok.
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Happy MLK Jr. Day!
I guess I’m a day late and a dollar short. I didn’t actually know it was MLK Day (but hell, I’m in Thailand). But happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day to everybody. Seriously.
Some mock this holiday, but not me. Not only is it good to have more holidays in general and particularly in the dark days of January and February, but Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man. Perhaps the best American of the past half century. I truly believe that.
But maybe I’m biased. I spent the first nine years of my school life, K through 8, at King Lab school in Evanston, Illinois. The school is formally known as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Experimental Laboratory School. It even has its own Facebook fan page.
Anyway, it was a great school. And I’m sure it influenced me in ways I probably will never truly understand. And I also suppose I got more MLK indoctrination than your average white kid (I thought everybody knew the Stevie Wonder Happy Birthday song).
And let’s not forget how radical King was. There was nothing passive about non-violence. And King, as some hipsters like to forget, unlike Malcolm X, got sh*t done.
Too many Americans think it’s natural that we don’t have legal racial segregation. But it’s not. Who knows what side I would have been on back then. I’d like to think I would be on the winning team, but who knows? It’s easy to pick the winning team in hindsight. But it’s not so easy at the time. It’s too easy to forget how many good Americans were against King.
People fought and even died for Civil Rights. King was subversive. King was watched by the FBI. At the time, King was considered by many to be a criminal. He wasa criminal. Police arrested King for violating the law.
King was also assaulted. And of course he was killed.
But Martin Luther King Jr. was right. Because of all that, King’s national holiday may be the best (though I’m also partial to Thanksgiving). I mean, George Washington is a no-brainer for a holiday. Lincoln, well, he should have his own, too. But King… well, I don’t know what else to say except: “Happy birthday to ya, happy birthday!”
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Then and Now: Detroit
Amazingly for Detroit, this building is stills standing:Mind you, nothing around it is.
[I’m on vacation; life is good. While I’m gone, I’ve scheduled some non-timely non-police filler posts.] -
Tragedy in Baltimore
Plain clothed friendly fire police shooting.
[please don’t post stupid or disrespectful comments, or respond to those who do.]
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Then and Now: Fall River (II)
Another one from Fall River. This one isn’t so bad. At least the bank building is still standing.
Of course pretty much everything that has changed is not a change for the better. 
Notice, if you zoom on the old picture (best to go to the Shorpy site for this), you can see in front of the Fall River Electric Light Company a cop walking the beat, holding his night stick in his right hand (at least I think it’s a cop swinging his stick). They didn’t have no wimpy-ass baton rings in those days! Though honestly, as fond as I was of the straight baton, which really is better than an expandable asp (I was trained in using both), I never understood the old-school idea that a cop is always supposed to have his nightstick in his hand. What if you need to use your hand?) -
Breakfast in Bangkok
So off the main road you make a right at the train track next to the highway and walk down the tracks a short distance to the first food stand and get a papaya salad.
There’s a bunch of cops sitting at one table eating and drinking. I befriend them and ask for a picture with them. They happily agree but also hide their beer and refuse to pose. But they do poor me a beer on ice.
They also offer us their food, which best I can tell is heavily marinated raw beef (or pork?) and some delicious greens. 
You can see some of their empties off to the side. It’s 9AM. A breakfast of champions.