The drug war has failed, and its repressive policies are having negative consequences in Latin America, a 17-member commission said today. The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, co- chaired by former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Giviria of Colombia, and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico called for an “open and honest debate” on the problem.
Category: Police
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Latin American Panel: Drug War Failing, Honest Debate Needed
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Cali must free 58,000 inmates
Read the story by Denny Walsh in the Sacramento Bee here.
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“You cannot call 911 because you’re unhappy with your burger”
But the truth you can call 911 because you’re unhappy with your burger, or for any other dumb reason. That’s part of the problem.
The AP reports:
Authorities said a man, 66, was arrested after calling 911 on Saturday to complain that a fast food restaurant ran out of lemonade. After a drive-through employee failed to respond to the man’s threat of contacting the police, the irate diner called 911, a police report alleges.
He spent about 5 minutes talking to the 911 operator about his complaint.
Boynton Beach said the man was charged with abuse of 911 communication.
The Smoking Gun has the best coverage of this important issue.
To me the real surprise isn’t that the man called 911 because of this (I have calls to match this one), it’s that the man was charged with a crime. Good (not that anything will happen to him).You can listen to the actually call here.
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Broken Windows Works
Researchers, working with police, identified 34 crime hot spots. In half of them, authorities set to work – clearing trash from the sidewalks, fixing street lights, and sending loiterers scurrying. Abandoned buildings were secured, businesses forced to meet code, and more arrests made for misdemeanors. Mental health services and homeless aid referrals expanded.
In the remaining hot spots, normal policing and services continued.
Then researchers from Harvard and Suffolk University sat back and watched, meticulously recording criminal incidents in each of the hot spots.
The results, just now circulating in law enforcement circles, are striking: A 20 percent plunge in calls to police from the parts of town that received extra attention. It is seen as strong scientific evidence that the long-debated “bro ken windows” theory really works – that disorderly conditions breed bad behavior, and that fixing them can help prevent crime.
Read the whole story in the Boston Globe. I’ll try and get my hands on the actual report.[Update: The article is Braga, Anthony A and Brenda J. Bond. 2008. “Policing Crime and Disorder Hot Spots: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Criminology. Vol. 46(3).
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Was that all a dream? Or Baltimore?
My wife, a friend, and I were on the 10:05 train to Baltimore this morning. Twelve hours and one Bull & Oyster Roast later, we’re back in New York City. It’s a shame we couldn’t stay longer, but a good time was had by all.
On the menu:
About 2 1/2 dozen delicious Maryland Oysters.
3 deep fried oysters (about 3 oysters each).
1 cup of delicious oyster soup (1 oyster).
3 big hunks of pit beef burnt ends.
A few regular slices of pit beef.
One small Italian sausage.
One piece of cake.
One diet coke (to keep the girlish figure)
And God only knows how many buckets of beer.I don’t like oysters as much as crabs. But these were very good oysters. Unlike the crab feast, this was almost a stag affair. 80% male. And lots of tables brings cards and gamble at their table. Drinking, gambling… all we needed was whoring to make this church party complete.
I also learned from my friend cooking the beef (strange coincidence he’s a guy I actually know from meeting him in a bar in Somerville, Mass, many years ago…) that pit beef is not, as I’ve described it, smoked roast beef. Well it sort of is. But it’s marinated overnight first. Then baked to 100 degrees. Then grilled and smoked to 130. It’s delicious.
If this were in New York City all this would probably cost, including tax and tip, close to $200. Of course it’s notin New York. And that’s why we go to Baltimore, hon.
At St. Francis of Assisi, it’s all included in $38 ticket (plus maybe another $10 in tips).
Incidentals: On the money wheel I broke even (played $4 won $4). I didn’t play the liquor raffle (I won 3 bottles last time and didn’t want to press my luck) but my buddy did win.
Nor did I win any other raffle for a grand loss of about $10. And I bought a souvenir hat, also $10.
Using Amtrak miles, the train trip was free (otherwise that would be the $200 bank-breaker).
Before:
During:
After:
No carry outs seems like a fair rule. Though some people always try.
Back behind my sergeant’s Baltimore police home bar:
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A story of 6 immigrants
I hate anti-immigrant people. Really. And I don’t hate easily. No, we’re not full. Just think of all the depopulated cities in this country. Those are the places that need people: Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Camden, South Dakota. The list goes on and on. The very least we could bring these places back up sustainable and healthy population from the past.
The U.S., despite being incredibly friendly to immigrants, has long has a Nativist strain. Idiots, they are. And over the past decade they’ve become a lot more powerful.
Not to my surprise, part of the war on terrorism has somehow morphed into a war on good immigrants.
I hate U.S. policy that deports and makes criminals of good men and women. I hate splitting up families. I hate kicking productive tax-paying men and women out of our country.
At a talk today I was asked why New York became so safe. There are a lot of reason, but one of these is the 40% of New Yorkers (that’s right: four in ten) are immigrants born in another country. And many of them are illegal. And I’m happy they’re here. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t want to be here. Immigrants are what makes this neighborhood, this city, and this country great.
Here is a story of six immigrants:
1 and 2) My grandparents.
My grandparents were Greeks from what is now Albania. They were born Ottoman Subjects (sounds ancient, doesn’t it?). My grandfather came to America around 1918 on an Italian passport. He shined shoes and started a shoe repair business. They met and married here. They raised two successful sons. He lived with us till he died when I was seven. I am named after my grandfather.
3) My mom.
She came to America from Germany when she was 16, in 1959. At the time she just wanted a visa to study English. But when she went to get her visa, the woman on the other side of the glass said, “Why don’t you apply for an immigration visa rather than a tourist visa? Then you can work.
“Because I am not going to stay there,” said my mom.
Well, check it anyway, she said. There’s no downside. You don’t have to stay. But you never know.Well, my mom did stay. Thanks to some bureaucrat and a system that wasn’t out to get her, my mom checked the right box and stayed here. It was that easy. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I like to think we’re all better off.
Those were the old days. Now things are different. Now we’re stupid.
4) A business owner.
I just got back from my favorite bike store. Yes, business is crappy, but the owner was very happy. He’s now a U.S. citizen!
Despite being a model resident, paying taxes, starting a business (you know, the kind the provides jobs), being a good grandfather, he feared deportation for 18 years.
He came with his wife and two young daughters overland (and sea) from South America via Guatemala and Mexico. I asked him if the Mexicans were nice to them. This good-natured man simply said: “No. It was rough.” I can’t even imagine.
They traveled to the U.S. via boat, foot, train (freight), bus, and truck (hitching). Any way they could. Many times in many countries they were caught and deported.
And no, it wasn’t always technically, what’s the word? Legal.
He applied for U.S. citizenship but was afraid that his “crime” of being here was going to get him deported. He was afraid, and for good reason, that he would be kicked out.
He got his passport on December 28. He celebrated by going home, for the first time in years, to visit his parents. He hadn’t seen them in years because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get back into America, his home.
5) A nurse.
A young woman took care of my father briefly before he died last year. She wants to stay in this country. It may not be possible. She is from Nepal and a registered nurse. She is a good nurse. But she only has a student visa. So she’s got to keep taking classes. What then?
6) My cousin.
This Russian came to America on a student visa. She’s smart. She graduated and went on to Harvard Law School. Then she got a job in a Chicago law firm. At work, she met and then married my cousin. They live in Chicago and pay taxes (a lot of them, I might add). They also have a one-year-old son (who is adorable and really took a liking to me, for some inexplicable reason). She is currently expecting a second son in June.
Well in the process of making her a citizen, it was discovered that a requirement of her original visa was that after school she would had to leave the U.S. for two years. Why? Who knows? She didn’t.
Yeah, just like a common criminal, she went to college, Harvard Law School, and then to work in a law firm. For that she is now at risk of being deported. And this despite doing all the right things, being well educated, having an American husband, and being financially well off.
So if she gets deported, they all leave. For at least a two-year forced exile. In whose interest is this? Really. People, what the hell are we doing?
Who the hell wants these good people out of our country? Who thinks we’d be better off? Sure, I suppose it would be good if everybody followed the rules. But that assumes the rules make sense. They don’t!
Why do we educate people and then deport them? Why do we threaten nurses, business owners, and lawyers with with deportation? What the hell are we doing? Where is the rationality? Where is the humanity? Where is the morality? Where is the common sense?
Really, what’s become of us? Have we no shame?
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Drug free ain’t gonna be
The New York Daily News has a story about police raids in the Queensbridge Homes.
59 people arrested in a “lengthy undercover probe” that “brought down an extensive drug-dealing operation.
Interesting, I thought. And not just because I live nearby and often ride my bike past The Bridge. No, it rang a bell. Ah, yes, here it is… a headline from 2005: Long Island City Drug Sting Rounds Up 37 Suspects.
The drug dealing started every day at 7 a.m., the police said, and was centered in a shopping area known as the Hill, at the heart of the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City.
Drug dealers divided up the 26-building public housing development — the city’s largest — and agreed to buy their crack and cocaine solely from a group of seven wholesalers and enforcers affiliated with the Bloods street gang, who called themselves the Dream Team, the police said.
But the enterprise, which the police say has been entrenched in the housing project for years, came to an end yesterday as the police and prosecutors announced the arrests of 37 people on state and federal drug charges.
The arrests, made over the past few days, ended an 11-month sting operation in which undercover officers bought 500 grams of cocaine from dealers and conducted surveillance at the project, the police said. The police are still seeking at least a dozen other suspects in the case, officials said.
Flash forward to 2009. There are still drugs. Still violence. Same homes. Same deal.
Back in 2005, Danny Jackson had it right: “‘It’ll cool down a bit, but the next generation will come,’ said Danny Jackson, 27, a rap artist who works in warehouses for $6.50 an hour to support himself, his mother and his year-old daughter.”
And in four more years we’ll do it all again, spending more money, risking more police lives, and throwing more people in prison for no real long-term gain.
We need to stop this nonsense and legalize it all. Otherwise how can we regulate it?
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Dump Kellogg’s
Ethan “Rabble-Rouser” Nadelman has a clever idea.
A “Call Kellogg’s Campaign” that lets the corporation know that their dumping Phelps is good reason for us to dump Kellogg might just make the point that more and more Americans are sick and tired of this particular spectacle.
Just say No to Kellogg’s. Call them at 800-962-1413 and 269-961-3799 to tell them what you think.
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Same old same old
After a Howard County police raid on his house three weeks ago, Mike Hasenei says he has a sprained wrist, a dead dog, a bullet hole in his bed and a 12-year-old daughter who is scared every time she hears a knock on the door.
No one was arrested in the raid.