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Category: Police

  • Holiday (Criminal) Spirit

    The Christmas crime season is the US begins. This storyfrom the NY Daily News. [November 30 Update] And the Chicago Sun Times. Street crime really does up before Christmas. Keep that in mind.

    I’m in a pub in York, UK, right now. Leeds, where I’m staying, and where David Simon said he might have set The Wire if he set it in the UK, has maybe 3 or 4 homicides a year (or so I was told). Population 440,000. Baltimore, population 630,000 has more than 200.

    In answer to one burning question here in the UK: Are parts of the cities becoming “like The Wire”?

    No.

    Baltimore (and most American cities) have more killings than the entire United Kingdom. Amazing how they manage to fend off all the anti-social drunks here without firearms. Somehow they manage.

  • ‘Ello Leeds!

    Happy Thanksgiving.

    No holiday here in England. I’m here in Leeds for a conference on The Wire. Good stuff. I gave a speech this morning. Now it’s the evening and I’m hankering for a pint.

  • Just because you’re paranoid…

    …doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

    The FBI spent 45 years keeping files on Chicago writer and journalist Studs Terkel. And to think this agent provocateur went unwatched for the last 18 years of his life!

  • More applicants, fewer jobs in the NYPD

    The story by Michael Schmidt in the New York Times.

  • Police Officer Uses Taser On 10-Year-Old Girl

    As a reader pointed out: “She was just too big and tough, I guess.”

    My point (again) isn’t that cops violated their rules. It’s that the rules are wrong!

    Update November 19: The officerinvolved has been suspended for seven days (with pay, mind you). This is an example of the worst functionings in a police department.

    If policy is policy, why punish the officer who executes the policy? Because the brass is trying to cover theirs by putting his out to dry. In this case they banged the officer not for using the taser but for not having a video camera attached when he did. Now I’m no taser expert, but that seems like a B.S. reason if I’ve ever heard one. But if they want to get you, they can.

  • Police speak out against racial profiling in California

    Take that, “blue wall of silence.” From Anthropoliteia.

  • Political Correctness Kills?

    No.

    My buddy Ron Smith has a column with the headline: “Fort Hood massacre shows how political correctness can kill.” (just for record, columnists don’t write headlines.)

    I’m not a fan of political correctness (though I like being polite) and don’t consider myself very politically correct (though I try and be considerate). But I’m pretty certain that political correctness does not kill.

    Just because shooter Major Nidal Hasan expressed some things that are now seen as warnings and just because he’s Muslim… does that mean these signs were ignored because of “political correctness”? I don’t think so. More likely nobody did anything because, I don’t know, how can you know and what are you going to do?

    If you’re a cop reading this, ask yourself this: how many of the cops that you work with are, to some kind of scary degree, crazy? I don’t know how you define crazy, it’s entirely up to you. But perhaps you can use this definition: If you heard that he flipped (and I’m assuming it’s a guy) and shot somebody–maybe an ex girlfriend or complete stranger or themselves–if you heard this would you think, “I guess that wasn’t a complete surprise.” How many of these people do you know? I’ll bet it’s more than one.

    So what have you done with that information? Called 911? Told internal affairs? Of course not. You talk to your friends to make sure you’re not the only one who thinks this. I mean, you want to make sure he’s crazy and you’re not, right?

    You talk about it. You laugh about it. And then you do nothing. You do nothing not because you’re afraid of liberals and the ACLU or the politically correct police. Since when did you care about these groups? You don’t do anything because, well, who the f*ck knows?! There are lots of crazy people. Some of cops and some are soldiers. But most take the their meds and even more manage just fine.

    And every now and then one does flip. And in hindsight the “signs” often seem clear. But now, for the first time in America, one of these crazy mass-murdering shooters is Muslim. And now people think that if only we’re weren’t so worried about offending Muslim, this would have been stopped? Since when we were so worried about offending Muslim?

  • Did officers mishandle this call?

    No.

    And Peter Hermaan, a very good reporter, should really learn his 10-codes.

    Here’s the story.

    The dispatch said she was notifying the Eastern, where the car was headed. The Southeast cannot drive around and look for a car at a location long since gone.

  • Marine reservist attacks Greek priest

    Marine reservist attacks Greek priest

    Why? Because marine reservist Jasen Bruce said he “looked like a terrorist.” He doesn’t. He looks like a Greek priest.

    Why? Because Bruce said he tried to rob him. He didn’t. He’s a priest.

    Why? Because the man yelled “Allahu Akbar.” He didn’t. He’s a priest.

    Why? Because the man grabbed Bruce’s crotch and made sexual advances in perfect English. He didn’t. [But feel free to insert priest joke here… they make the same jokes in Greece.]

    The priest was lost.

    The marine is an idiot and should be jailed. But the priest is forgiving.

    Here’s the story in the St. Petersburg Times by Alexandra Zayas and Demorris Lee:

    A Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

    What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

    Dude, do you really think a terrorist just walked down the street and happened to pick on you, the one patriotic American ready to defend himself and his country by beating a man of God with a tire iron?

    Bruce is a sales manager for APS Pharmacy in Palm Harbor. His blog entries tout the benefits of increasing testosterone and human growth hormones. He was charged with misdemeanor battery in 2007…

    Online photo galleries depict him flexing big muscles wearing little clothing.

    An exterior surveillance video of Tuesday’s chase captured the two men in motion, said Tampa Police Department spokeswoman Laura McElroy:

    “You see a very short, small man running, and an enormous, large muscular man chasing after him.”

    What a f*cking idiot. It’s sh*t like this that makes me a little more sympathetic to the Flying Imams.

    Here’s Bruce’s mugshot:

    And also reminds me of one of my favorite jokes. It ends like this: “For you it’s a tragedy. For me it’s a mistake!”

    Update: In the case of the marine reservist who attached a priest for looking like a Muslim terrorist, all charges were dropped. The priest didn’t stick around America to press charges. To rehash, this idiot chased a Greek priest for three blocks and beat him with a tire iron while telling a 911 operator (listen to the call here):

    I got a guy who’s trying to mug me. … He just grabbed my f—— b—- when I got out of my car. … I just hit him with a tire iron and he’s trying to take off. He said he was going to f—— kill me. … This guy’s not gonna come back. I wanna knock him out.
    …
    He looks like a Middle Eastern guy, a Taliban guy. … He straight up looks like he came from Afghanistan … knows where I live and knows what I drive and I’m not letting him come back. I’ll kill him. I got a wife.

    So let me get this straight. This priest, who says he was lost, looked like he was from Afghanistan, tried to rob the idiot, then grabbed his balls, and then yelled “Allahu Akbar.”

    Ohkaaay.

    The prosecuting lawyer called this ‘roid rage noting the attacker is “a 220-pound pharmacy manager who blogs photos of himself flexing his muscles and had worked as a drug informant for police.”

    The attacker, after charges were dropped, says he forgives the priest. Gee, that’s mighty Christian of him.

    Here’s a picture of the attacker.


    He’s not gay at all.

  • Eminent Domain

    After winning one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in my lifetime, Pfizer is pulling out of New London, Conn. They’re leaving a vacant lot where they worked hard to destroy a neighborhood. Of course it’s not just Pfizer’s fault. Who knows what shady deals got the local city officials behind it?

    The court decision, Kelo v. New London, said basically that the the government can take your property and give it to a privatedeveloper. It greatly expanded the right of eminent domain.

    The good news is that in response to the court case many states have passed laws against such egregious abuse of government power. Too bad my state (NY) isn’t one of them.

    Here’s the story in the New York Times.