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Category: Police

  • Good Press in the Atlantic Monthly

    I was on the subway today, reading the Atlantic Monthly(or is it just The Atlantic?… no matter, it’s my favorite magazine…. with the New Yorkerplacing a close second and the Economistto show). I see a book review for Judith Herrin’s Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. I like Professor Herrin. I took a class from her in Byzantine History. She was great.

    As the subway picks up speed going under the East River from Queens into Manhattan, I turn to my wife and say, “Hey look, I took her class at Princeton. She was great. Why isn’t mybook in here?! And as my finger goes down the page, I see MY book:

    Here’s the review. It’s short, but it’s good. I wonder how many times a professor and her student have had books reviewed on the same page? From the Atlantic’s May, 2008 issue.

    Cop in the Hood(Princeton)
    Those prone to facile comparisons will liken this riveting book to The Wire, the acclaimed and popular cable-television series that inhabits the same mean streets. Those who take a longer view, however, will see this for what it is: an unsparing boys-in-blue procedural that succeeds on its own plentiful—and wonderfully sympathetic—merits. Moskos, now an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, deftly intermingles cops-and-robbers verisimilitude and progressive social science, yet keeps his reportage clear-eyed, his conclusions pathos-free. What results is a thoughtful, measured critique—of the failed drug war, its discontents, and the self-defeating criminal-justice system looming just behind.

  • Cameras in cop cars

    Steve Lopez of the L.A. Times has a good take on cameras in police cars.

  • Ambitious Assult, Limited Victory

    The New York Times has an excellent article by Michael Brick on a large police operation meant to get drugs out of the Cypress Hills project. Guess what, there are still drugs in Cypress Hills.

    In many ways, it’s great police work (and conceivable right of The Wire). A five-month investigation, undercover officers moving into the projects and pretending they’re junkies. A tough prosecutor expanding the definition of conspiracy. Hundreds of arrests. Bad guys put in jail. It’s all good. Sort of.

    If I lived in Cypress Hill, I would want such police work. As longs are drug selling is unregulated and run by obnoxious, rude, and violent criminals I would want police trying their hardest. And yet I would also know the futility of the war on drugs in the long run.

    The raids happened in 2002. It takes years for this this stuff to work its way through the court. The projects are still rough. One man is quoted as saying that today things are “not perfect, but better.” That’s good, but not good enough. We need to set our sights higher.

    The whole article is worth reading.

  • I [heart] foot patrol

    The smart folks at Marginal Revolution mentioned my book again. There’s nothing I like talking about more than foot patrol.

    The following are taken mostly from a comment I wrote to this post.

    The Kansas City Preventative Patrol experiment is the most amazingly ignored police study ever. For police and crime prevention, it’s one of the few scientific studies ever (meaning there was actually a control group). It showed that a post with no “randomly patrolling” cars has no more crime than a post with twice as many cars. Cars don’t matter. Cops only need to be in cars to backup other police officers. Almost everything else could be done by foot and bike.

    And yet the Kansas City study changed nothing. It’s ignored because police officers like cars and the police department is tied to radio dispatch. Culturally, it’s almost impossible to get police out of cars. Policing on foot is hard work. It’s usually punishment. So even cops who liked foot patrol, like me, didn’t want to do it.

    In cars you can stay dry and warm (or cool) and listen to the radio. You can also more easily avoid crazy and stinky people that want to talk to you. Why do you think police hang out in cars in the back of remote parking lots?

    People don’t feel safer with more police cars driving around (or sitting in parking lots) Putting more cops on foot *does* make people safer. See the Newark Foot Patrol Experiment (Police Foundation 1981) and common sense. It’s very debatable if foot patrol reduces crime. I think it does. But I may be wrong. But if people want more foot patrol (and they do), why not give it to them?

    When patrol cars first hit the street, cars were supposed to save money (and oh yeah, eliminate crime). That didn’t happen. More foot patrol is not a matter of needing resources; it’s a matter of priorities and will. It’s not the citizens or the politicians who want car patrol, it’s the police.

    My idea to get police officers out of cars is to give patrol officers, if they patrol on foot, the gas money they saved. Police model Crown Vics go through about 3/4 of a gas tank per shift. Cops don’t want to walk the beat, but $30 per shift could change that.

  • Fixing Broken Windows in Chicago

    Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weiss says he plans more foot and bike patrol and an emphasis on “broken windows” policing. This is great news for Chicago… if it actually happens. It’s tough to get cops out of cars. But Weiss is certainly saying the right things. This is reported in the Sun Times.

    The point of getting tough on the little things isn’t just to get tough on the little things for no reason. It’s either because the little things are bad (like people pissing on your front door) or because the little things are part of a greater problem (like subway turnstile jumping was in New York City).

    Broken Windows is not Zero Tolerance. Broken Windows is a strategy that respects police officers (by encouraging officer discretion) and the community (by listening to the community). Broken Windows is about problem solving and reducing crime. Zero Tolerance is about enforcing rules to increase police “stats.”

    You can read the original 1982 Broken Windows article here. It’s a classic.

  • Pay NYPD more

    Seattle is trying poach New York City’s police. They’re actively recruiting in New York City.

    The Daily News reports:

    Seattle pays its police recruits $47,334 a year and the annual salary rises to a maximum base pay of $67,045 in just six years.

    NYPD recruits get a paltry $25,100 annual salary while they are in the academy. Their pay jumps to $32,800 after graduation and tops out at $59,588 after seven years.

    Seattle will pay $5,000 in moving expenses as well. Not to mention that cost of living in New York City is higher as well.

    New York City police officer need a raise. And I’m willing to pay higher taxes to pay for it.

  • California taxes drugs

    Richard Gonzales of National Public Radio report that California is pulling in $100 million a year in taxes from medical marijuana. This is a federal crime.

    The main opposition to medical marijuana comes from Big Government Conservatives. Big Government Prohibitionists would be a better label. They have a moral agenda and are only conservative (states’ rights be damned) in the sense that they hate liberals.

    I’m torn on medical marijuana. I’m for it. To me it is a no-brainer. But I’m worried that the fight for medical marijuana distracts from the real problem of unregulated drug selling in general. If stoners ever do get legal marijuana, God only knows they’ll be far too stoned to help support the cause of regulating other drugs.

    Still, it’s a step in the right direction. And a steady flow of tax dollar will undoubtedly convince some otherwise neutral people that regulation and taxation makes sense.

  • Well meaning, Balto is

    My thanks to Marni Soupcoff of the (Canadian) National Post for her kind words about my blog. She’s right, the real purpose of this blog is to get people to buy my book, Cop in the Hood. And she did! So thanks, Marni. Hopefully the weak dollar will inspire many others up north to buy a copy as well.

    I particularly like Marni’s quotable take on Baltimore, her old college home. I love Baltimore, poor Baltimore. “Horribly flawed but strangely lovable… inspires an arresting honesty”! These compliment my own line very well. “Baltimore: it means well.”

  • Justice?

    The Sunreports that a man was sentenced to 11 years for dealing crack. That’s a lot of years for crack, I thought. Of course, like everything with crime and criminals in Baltimore, that’s not the whole story.

    This 28-year-old man, William Floyd Crudup, shot two city police officer in 2005. His trial ended in a mistrial because one juror, “refused to participate in the looking at the evidence and told the judge that she had made up her mind about the case at the start of the trail.”

    This is not the place to experiment with Jury Nullification.

    Sometimes people are just ig-nent. This isn’t the first time a Baltimore City jury refused to convict a guilty man for shooting or killing a police officer. It’s why police officers don’t trust city juries. Baltimore is a place where it is all too common for one person in twelve to believe it is every man’s right to kill police officers. I remember the shock and disbelief I felt when the killer of Officer Kavon Gavin walked free (he too has since been imprisoned for something else). Other officers were not surprised.

    Crudup was still behind bars. Three years later the retrial of Crudup was still in the works. But back in 2005, a few days after he was charged with shooting the police officers, police raided Crudup’s homes and found drugs and guns and ammo.

    The Feds took the case and got Crudup to cop a plea (3 years later). So it’s not 11 years for crack dealing. It’s 11 years for shooting two police officers. It just happens that they got him for crack.

    Justice is a game. Everybody involved in the system knows this. The good guys play to win, too.

  • The international drug war coming home to roost

    Ending the war on drugs seems obvious to me. But many need more proof. Now the American-led international war on drugs is approaching our borders in New Mexico and Texas.

    One article yields New Mexicans saying “legalize drugs.” But a fellow New Mexican (my wife) warns, “But of course those Americans saying ‘legalize drugs’ are New Mexicans, so you already know they’re freaks.”