You don’t usually hear about thistoo much. He sounds like a very bad man.
Category: Police
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Good job, FBI & NYPD
Plot foiled. The story in the Post.
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Get tough on black-on-black crime
Bealefeld, Baltimore’s police commish, says:
Those guys got fairly nominal sentences for some heinous stuff that they did to these kids, and if it happened in a white neighborhood in any other community in this state, we’d still be talking about it, and people would be talking about life sentences…. And these people get out essentially with a slap on the wrist. People need to be speaking out about this.
True dat.
The background and more in Justin Felton’s story in the Sun.
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Babies in the Big House
The story by Suzanne Smalley in Newsweek:
A prison may not seem like the best place to raise infants. But researchers are finding that it’s better than the alternative. Joseph Carlson, a criminal-justice professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney who recently completed a 10-year study, says he thought such programs were “strange” when he began his research. Now he thinks they’re “a win-win situation” for mothers and babies—and reduce crime by helping inmates to reform.
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You’ve been warned, New Yorkers
New York City Police Department advises all Shield members regarding a military aircraft flyover that will occur on May 20, 2009 at 11:45 a.m. The flyover is part of the Fleet Week festivities and will include four military planes flying over New York City at a low altitude.
At approximately 11:45 a.m., four F-18 Hornets will pass over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge at an altitude of 2000 feet. The aircrafts will then turn and follow the Hudson River north over the assembled fleet while decreasing their altitude to 1000 feet. When the F-18s reach Pier 90, they will climb to 2500 feet and higher, exiting New York City airspace over the George Washington Bridge.
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Fallout from Oakland police killings
The Oakland police captain who runs the department’s SWAT unit has asked to be reassigned because of the team’s resentment over his decision to console the families of two officers slain by a parolee rather than lead what became an ill-fated raid for the killer.
Jaxon Van Derbeken reports in the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Quota Busting: NYPD makes record number of stops
Christine Hauser reportsin the New York Times that the NYPD made 171,094 stops in the first three months of 2009.
Unlike many, I don’t think stop and frisks are inherently bad (not all that were stopped were frisked, though I’m sure many were). I’m willing to concede that aggressive stop and frisks most likely contributed to making New York a much less violent city.
BUT… there’s a big difference between a smart officer with reasonable suspicion making a stop because he or she is suspicious and a lazy officer making a stop because he or she needs to meet an arrest quota and can kind of B.S. the reasonable suspicion needed to justify the stop. You stop enough people and one will eventually be wanted on a warrant.
We can (and should) debate if stop and frisks are necessary and effective. But I don’t think that even the NYPD would argue that badstop and frisks are good. If an officer can’t naturally make an arrest and write a few citations a month in a high-crime district, it’s probably better to have that officer do not much at all.
A quota doesn’t teach officers to police smarter. Quotas don’t make good officers work more. Quotas don’t effect good police. Quotas make not-so-good police officers police more. They make lazy or bad officers do more lazy or bad things. And bad stop and frisks piss people off who should and otherwise would be supporting police.
Instead of worrying about the number of stop and frisks, we should worry about the quality of stop and frisks. That’s harder to quantify. But deemphasizing “productivity stats” is a good place to start.
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Guns don’t always prevent crimes
It sounds like a gun-lover’s crime-free dream world: an army of professional and well-trained armed men and women with extensive knowledge of firearms and firearm safety. Everybody has a gun. This will keep the crazy murders at bay!
Then on a military base in Iraq, a soldier shot and killed five other soldiers. If an army with guns can’t prevent a crazy killer, what chance do the rest of us have? This, my gun-loving friends, illustrates the basic position of my gun-hating friends: guns don’t keep you safe. An unarmed world is safer than an armed world.
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Gun Control Discussion
If anybody wants to hear a civilized and somewhat intellectual discussion about gun control (outside of reading this blog, of course), check out my favorite radio show in the world: Extension 720. It’s broadcast on WGN, AM 720 in Chicago.
I would love to be a guest on the show (if anybody has any connections, work them. My press failed at this simple request). Uncle Milt, as he’s sometimes known, is a professor at the University of Chicago and has been doing this radio show for 36 years. I’ve been listening to him for probably 30 of those years. I started listening to the show as a little kid when it was wayabove my head. But it often came on right after many away Cubs games, so I would just listen. My father always said it’s the highest-brow show on commercial radio. Probably public radio, too. Milt Rosenberg is probably the best radio interviewer I’ve ever heard (sorry Terry… but I’d love to be on your show, too).
The show I’m talking about is March 26, 2009. The link is here. But hell, they’re all good.