This was taken down for a while but is now back up. The funniest YouTube video I’ve ever seen. Maybe it’s only hilarious if you are or were a cop and don’t speak German. But I think it’s probably funny regardless.
Category: Police
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NYPD Stop and Frisks
Lenny Levitt poses an interesting question is his weekly column:
From 2004 through 2009, [New York City] police have had nearly three million stop-and-frisk encounters, which involve patting people down or questioning them. Virtually all of those stopped are black or Hispanic. In 88 per cent of the cases, the people searched or questioned were innocent of wrongdoing. [ed note: I think innocent is too strong a word for not arrested or given a citation. But regardless, many if not most of those frisked turn out to be guilty of nothing more than living in a neighborhood where police stop and frisk a lot people.]
Stop-and-frisk had been the tactic of the department’s former plainclothes Street Crime Unit, which prided itself on getting guns off the streets. After four improperly trained Street Crime cops shot and killed the unarmed Amadou Diallo in 1999, Police Commissioner Howard Safir put the unit into uniform, in effect destroying it. Upon taking office in 2002, Kelly abolished it entirely.For the record, nobody wants a return to the random violence of the early 1990s. But is the current crime decline, which has continued for the past 15 years, in any way related to Kelly’s aggressive stop-and-frisk policies, which began in 2004?
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Fewer State Prisoners
Barely. And the population of federal prisons grew 3 percent.
But still… “Fewer State Prisoners” is a headline that hasn’t been seen since 1972.
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Isn’t killing people a crime?
I have lots of smart readers.
Can someone please explain to me why it’s not a crime to kill somebody if you’re driving. If it were any other situation, it would be crime, right?
Hell driving drunk safelyis a crime. But killing somebody sober isn’t? I don’t get it.
Here’s just the latest example.
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Foot Patrol Working in Philly
It’s always tough when you knowsomething but can’t convince others.
I know foot patrol works. At least I think I know. I’ve done it.
But there’s so little research out there. There’s no reason we should all still be quoting a study from 30 years ago (which did show that foot patrol reduced public fear).
Foot patrol has worked in New York (it would work better without quotas). And now there’s some research by Jerry Ratcliffe coming out of Philadelphia. As reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Temple’s study, which covered three months, showed a 22 percent drop in crime in areas covered by the foot patrols. Arrests were up 13 percent.
As in other major cities, crime has been on a decline in Philadelphia. Violent crime – down in all but three districts – dropped 7 percent citywide in 2009 compared with 2007, with homicide down 23 percent and aggravated assault down 4 percent.
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I got a plan. It can’t go wrong.
This story blows me away both in terms of chutzpa and stupidity.
Say you’re NYPD and need some extra money. Work overtime in the three-four? Naw. You don’t play that game.
Instead… rent five vans, hire 16 day laborers, and then go to a perfume warehouse in Jersey where you have a connection. Then wave your real badge and gun around while yelling, “NYPD! Hands up!” Tie up eleven employees. Three hoursafter the start of the robbery, one of victims, says the Daily News, calls 911. According to the Times:
When the police arrived, two of the rental trucks were at the scene. Officials traced those to a rental agency and found that Officer LeBlanca had paid $205.79 for one of the trucks with a Visa debit card, which was subscribed and billed to his home in Manhattan, the court papers said. He and Officer Checo had also provided information from their driver’s licenses, the court papers said.
Really? That was your brilliant plan?
What would do with a million dollars of perfume anyway? You sell it for what, twenty cents on the dollar? Minus expenses and divided by a crew of six, that comes out to about $33,000 per person. I guess it wouldn’t have been bad money for a few day’s work… if you weren’t so stupid.
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Off Duty and Black in Montgomery County
I recently received this from a (black) Baltimore police officer:
If you want to know what an Eastside drug dealer feels when confronted by Baltimore Police, show BPD ID to Montgomery County police. They tossed me out of a restaurant in Bethesda because my shirt rode up and my holstered weapon with the badge adjacent were visible.
According to the manager, several patrons were “uncomfortable,” and I was told by “security” that I couldn’t be in the establishment while armed. When I didn’t leave, police were called and I was escorted out by MCPD, told “not to make trouble,” and threatened with “difficulty” if I didn’t cooperate.
After securing my weapon and voluntarily offering to let a MCPD Lieutenant pat me down, I was told that I was making it more difficult than it had to be, threatened with arrest, and again refused entry into the establishment by police. No public intoxication, no disorderly, no assault, no nada! Apparently BWB (breathing while Black) is an arrestable offense in Montgomery County.
Amazing how Whites, both Hopkins oncologists and crackheads from Harford Co. pass through the Eastern District. As a police officer, I maintain the ability to discern which is which. How convenient it must be to work in Mont Co. where this skill is obviously not needed.
In the interest of fairness, when I made a formal IAD complaint, I specifically mentioned the Lt. and the Corporal, instead of the officers who were following their lead. They even sent a communication to BPD about it taking four of them to escort me out of the establishment. My chain of command just laughed it off. So far, but with IAD, you never know. You know, the last LOD death in Mont Co was run over by a fellow officer during a foot chase.
Talk about “Black and Blue”…This shit is depressing!
PLEASE make sure your students understand that when you REALLY need back up…you don’t give a damn WHERE it comes from!
Thx for letting me vent,
[name] -
It’s Baltimore, hon!
Lest people think Baltimore is all ghetto, I’ll link to a Sunfeature showing some of the homes in nice neighborhoods. [The low prices listed for these neighborhoods almost make me want to move back!]Funny that Greektown, where I lived, didn’t make the cut.
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Fewer Prisoners, Less Crime
While the prison population keeps going up, not many know that in some states it’s going down. Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York have reduced their prison populations by five to twenty percent since 1999 (without any increases in crime) while the national prison population increased by another twelve percent.
The Sentencing Project explains.
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The Homeless, Broken Windows, and Quality-of-Life Crimes in San Francisco
Since there’s no good newspaper left in San Francisco, I guess it’s up to the Washington Post to report stories like this.
Today, in 2010, the difference between New York City and San Francisco (or Santa Monica) is amazing. I’m always a little shocked out west and think, “Wow, I thought we figured out how to deal with this problem years ago.”
I’ve noticed there is generally more aggressive begging in “nice” neighborhoods than there is in any poor neighborhood. Rich neighborhoods are safer. And in the ghetto, people have less money to give. Plus it’s easier to play off white liberal guilt in “nice” parts of town.
In the past 20 years, homelessness has not gone away in New York City, but it’s gotten a hell of lot better for both the homeless and normal residents.
Police need to pay attention to “Broken Windows” quality-of-life urban issues. Homelessness is one of these issues. But, some say, the link between “Broken Issues” issues and violent crime has never been proven. True. It may or may not exist (though I suspect it does).
But homicides have gone way down in San Fransisco without any obviously corresponding drop in quality-of-life issues. But quality-of-life issues matter for their own sake. Those who think that public urination, for instance, doesn’t matter probably have never had anybody piss on their stoop.
Homeless people have problems. No home, for one. Unemployment, for another. And, more often than not, mental illness and substance abuse. Too many homeless advocates (though not all) seem to advocate for more homelessness rather than less. Aggressive begging helps neither the homeless nor the city.
San Francisco, in terms of homeless and aggressive begging, is like NYC 20 years ago. It doesn’t have to be this way. While walking down the street, people have a right not be harassed while walking down the street. Period.
Idiots, like one guy quoted in the story, say that anti-homeless laws, “unfairly targets the poor, homeless and people of color. ‘If you illegalize sleeping, camping, lying, sitting, congregating, then what’s left: Walking?’” Oh, please. That attitude is so 1980s!
Homeless is a problem for both social services and police (yes, solving the problem does cost money). One without the other won’t work. But without the police “or else” of arrest, some people will always “choose” to live on the streets. In my block, that’s not an acceptable choice.
If you think thank that homeless should be allowed to live on my block or on my subway, I invite you instead to welcome them to camp in your yard or commute in your car.