In the Kansas City Star by Tony Rizzo.
Category: Police
The Good Old Days
It turns out you can fight City Hall. In 1857 they did. And won. It turns out that if you’re City Hall, you can’t fight the State House. The winner of this brawl at City Hall between two competing police departments got to be New York’s Finest! The mayor was arrested and New York State took over the police (before…
Give that man a medal!
Too bad a story about an honest Liberian customs officer is news. But hell, if I made $15 a month… I would probably take the $20,000 bribe. So I guess he’s a better man than me. And they did give him a medal. And $1,000.
Bang bang, they hit the ground
Baltimore Crime turned me on to this: Spotcrime maps every shooting in Baltimore (City and County) for 2008. Hit ‘start’ at the top left. Whether you want Turning of the sound to hear the bang bangs is up to you. At the time of this writing, I’m still only in October. I can’t tell if this is sick or genius.…
The Epidemic That Wasn’t
The New York Times reports on crack babies… not! You know, for what it’s worth, one of my favorite students confided in me that he was crack baby. He was all right.
Lol Cop
Pepper Spray Me led me this story in the Chicago Tribune about, Vincent Richardson, a 14-year-old who, apparently successfully, impersonated being a police officer for five hours. And not for the first time. And not just the normal pulling-over-cars-with-police-lights kind of thing. I mean this guy patrolled with a real live Chicago police officers and fooled him, too(!?). You would…
The Company of Others
When I was a cop in Baltimore, I kind of assumed I was the only active police officer going for a PhD at one fo them fancy graduate schools. I wasn’t. I’ve also assumed I’m the only former Baltimore police officer to write a book based on time in the Eastern District. I’m not. I’m not certain why I only…
Embrace the Right
At the closing of Obama’s inauguration, Joseph Lowery said these controversial words: “We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.” Often, I…
Undercover danger
The Sunreportsthat the wounded officer arrested the same defendant in 2007. That’s scary. It’s much harder for a police officer to remember everybody he’s arrested than it is for a criminal to remember the person who arrested him. It’s just a question of numbers, like it’s easier for students to remember their teacher’s name than vice versa. It’s also why…
Murder Factory
Now here’s some good investigating journalism from Tony Rizzo and the Kansas City Star. Local zip code 64130 is featured in a series called “Murder Factory.” These eight square miles were home to 101 convicted murderers incarcerated in Missouri prisons.