Go to qualitypolicing.com

Category: Police

  • Politics and the Courts and Health Care

    It always bothers me when people bitch about court decisions because they don’t agree with the politics. It’s one thing to be pro-abortion (as I am) or pro illegal immigration (got me there, too) or anti-2nd Amendment (not too fond of how some people interpret it, personally). It’s another to think that every Supreme-Court decision needs to be decided in favor of your particular belief rather than the greater issue on which the courts are supposed to make such decisions.

    The Supreme Court doesn’t (or shouldn’t) decide if a specific law is good or bad; it decides if a given issue is constitutional. I think Roe v. Wade was a pretty weak Supreme Court decision. And yet I believe that every woman should have the right to have an abortion on demand.

    Much of the Civil Rights Movement was helped by court cases that relied on greater moral issues more than strict constitutional interpretations. That’s fine by me too. I also understand that every decision shouldn’t be decided on technical grounds or original intent (see, for instance, the 7th Amendment).

    Bush v. Gore? Now thatwas a terrible decision. But the court has always been political. And to some extent it should be.

    Why do I mention this? Because I love Obamacare!

    OK, actually, I’m just saying that to be provocative. I think Obamacare is too limited and health care should be single-payer, for everybody, and nationalized! But what do I care? I havehealth care.

    I support health care as both a political and moral issue. The free market does not and cannot provide health care. That said, I could fully support a court decision that says that federal government shouldn’t be able to tell citizens they have to buy anything. I’m a states’ rights liberal! But not too many of us in this club, I can’t help but notice.

    I just wish more conservative so-called states’ righters were equally supportive of states’ rights when it came to issues they don’t like, like drug legalization, or highway funds. The power of the federal government should not be a liberal versus conservative issue. But as long as it is, here’s to health care surviving court challenges!

  • The Wet House

    This is counter-intuitive thinking I love. The “Wet House.” They drink more. You pay less. Just give addicts what they want.

    You want to save their soul or protect the rest of us? Sometimes you have to pick between the two (and I’m picking the latter!).

    If I remember correctly, there was an article (perhaps in the New York Times Magazine?) about some drunk house in some Scandinavian Country. Seemed like a horrible place… and an excellent use of tax-payer dollars.

    Consider Marion Hagerman. In his 39 years of drinking, the 54-year-old has been arrested about 60 times. He has kept drinking despite six drunken-driving convictions and six 28-day treatment sessions.

    His drinking has cost the public more than $450,000. And since he was admitted to St. Anthony’s two years ago?

    Nothing. Not a single arrest, detox stay or emergency-room visit.

    It’s not that he’s turned his life around — he still drinks mouthwash, which he stashes in a nearby Dumpster. But he has drastically cut his cost to the public.

    “I use to stumble around and make a fool of myself outside,” said Hagerman, as he relit a day-old cigarette butt in his bare room. “But now I go home and do it here.”

    [Kudos to Pete Guither.]

  • Keeping Southie Real (…stupid)

    Keeping Southie Real (…stupid)

    The Boston Heraldreports on “several random beatings on perceived outsiders by South Boston punks.”

    Years ago, late at night, I used to ride my bike through South Boston a lot (the Castle Island causeway was a great destination). But it just so happens that Southie was home to some of the stupidest must heroined-out white people you’ll ever meet.

    It’s like a little bit of South Baltimore right in yuppie Boston, but more racist. I felt more ill-at-east in parts of Southie (and also the white parts of Dorchester) than I ever did in the ghetto. And I’m white!

    Going through Southie I had to stay on our toes (inasmuch as you can, riding a bicycle). Local yahoos would occasionally drive by and shout things like, “get a car, you fag!” or maybe throw an empty beer can. It may not sound so bad until you realize how defenseless you are on a bicycle, and how their little “joke” could easily kill you. “Ya honor,” they would later say in court, “We didn’t mean him to die. We was just kiddin’ around, ya know, havin’ a good time. We didn’t know he was going to fawl off his bike when we bumped him with ah caaah”

    Sometimes I’d ride with my roommate after our job at the restaurant ended and the bars had closed. After 2AM the streets were empty. We had a routine–which we still joke about even though we never had to use it–if somebody wanted to run us down for being “bike-riding fags” or some other similar offense. Johnnie, cause he could put on a wicked-thick local accent, would say, “Naw, we ain’t fags, this is for the Jimmy Fund! We’re doin’ it for the retaaaaded kids!”

    Anyway, Southie has gentrified quite a bit since the 1990s. But apparently, not enough.

  • Great Stocking Stuffers

    Why it’s that time of year again… you know, the time of year when I tell you to buy my book. It is a quick and easy present. Cop in the Hood, available from Amazon.com. And for all you cheapskate cops, it’s less than $15. Just lock up one looser and you’ll make more than that in overtime.

    And if you don’t want to give a police book for Christmas–or maybe last year you already did–I’ve got another book you should buy: a cookbook. And I just happen to know just the book: Forking Fantastic(it was supposed to be called F*cking Delicious, and probably would have sold better had it been). And nothing says “Christmas love” like a cookbook with lots of swear words. Of course I’m biased (one of the authors is my wife), but they are damn good cooks. Plus you can see a picture of me holding an entire lamb on a spit and also follow my very own ceasar salad recipe (which just happens to be f*cking delicious).

    Plus Forking Fantastic is less than $8on Amazon. Better yet, the cover price is $20, so you’re friends will never know just how cheap you really are.

  • Brand Name: Fail

    Brand Name: Fail


    Last night I poured myself a big frosty mug of LECH.

    I couldn’t resist buying this the other day. (So maybe the name is actually a stroke of marketing genius.) It tasted just fine.

  • Wikileaks

    I can’t help but think the release of all this information is somehow good. I certainly don’t feel less safe. I do worry about informants being outed and killed. But are they? And other than that, wouldn’t it be better if our government was more open? I mean, has anybody learned anything we didn’t already know? If so, maybe this will lead to some diplomatic breakthroughs somewhere.

    Or maybe, like Iran said, the leaks are all an American plot! I like that idea.

    What are your thoughts?

  • Pssst… Wanna Plant a Bomb?

    I’m not opposed to arresting people who are willing to detonate what they think is a bomb in public places. It’s not easy to arrest a suicide bomber after an attack.

    But consider Glenn Greenwald’s article: “The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot” something does smell a little fishy:

    Having stopped a plot which it itself manufactured, the FBI then publicly touts — and an uncritical media amplifies — its “success” to the world, thus proving both that domestic Terrorism from Muslims is a serious threat and the Government’s vast surveillance powers — current and future new ones — are necessary.

    Or take Ted Conover’s (author of New Jackand other great books) excellent article about the Newburgh plot:

    The case seems like a slam-dunk—until you learn more about him. [FBI informant] Hussain, driving a flashy Mercedes and using the alias Maqsood, began to frequent the Masjid al-Ikhlas in down-at-the-heels Newburgh in 2008. Mosque leaders say he would meet congregants in the parking lot afterward, offering gifts and telling them they could make a lot of money—$25,000—if they helped him pursue jihad. The assistant imam said the suspicion Hussain was an informant was so great “it was almost like he had a neon sign on him.” A congregant told a reporter that, in retrospect, everyone wished they’d called him out or turned him in. “Maybe the mistake we made was that we didn’t report him,” the man said. “But how are we going to report the government agent to the government?”

    At no single point during these government investigations is there a moment where I can say: entrapment! And yet there’s little doubt that were it not for the FBI, none of these attacks would have happened (which is, of course, basically the definition of entrapment). Still, it doesn’t seem too much to ask people not to kill others even when offered money and “bombs” by the government.

    If you start dangling tens and hundred of thousands of dollars of poor people, you’re going to find people willing to do anything. And I’d certainly like the FBI to find these suckers before a real terrorist does. Of course it all it takes is money to get people to become terrorists, we’re in trouble. Because there’s lots of money and lots of poor people.

    Maybe, in the end, we’re just safer than we think. Matt Yglasias writes:

    If you assume the existence of a person willing to die for Osama bin Laden’s war on America, located within the United States of America, and in possession of a working explosive or firearm, there’s basically nothing stopping him from blowing up the 4/5/6 platform at Union Square or the 54 bus in DC or the Mall of America or even the security line at DFW airport. And yet it doesn’t happen.

    The Economist concludes:

    It’s far more sensible to take this happy fact as evidence of the further happy fact that the supply of people ready, willing, and able to blow up America’s crowded places is very small.

    [update: Holder defends stings.]

  • College Drug Dealers Arrested

    It’s a headline you don’t see much. These guys were Columbia University students.

    Notice, if you will, the only real crime–the crime with a potential victim–is entirely the result of prohibition. So much of drug violence revolves around getting people to pay debts. That’s what happens when the business is illegal.

    And just one more plug for Dorm Room Dealers by A. Rafik Mohamed and Erik D. Fritsvold. In an academic (but readable) fashion, they explain how this all works.

  • You can’t make this stuff up

    One of the funnier (at least if you’re a cop) police reports you will ever read. [I’m warning you, it’s not suitable for kids] The report is here and a story about it is here. (By the way, despite what the story claims, I’m sure the actual line has been in many police reports.)

  • The Block Is Burning

    Heard it on Facebook. That’s all I know. But it’s a big fire.