Go to qualitypolicing.com

Category: Police

  • A drug tax

    New York Timesace reporter Sewell Chan reports a proposed New York State tax on marijuana ($3.50/gram) and cocaine ($200/gram). If this tax survives court challenges, it is expected to raise over $10 million per year.

    These taxes are always a little strange and constitutionally questionable on grounds of double jeopardy. The real goal is to give law enforcement more tools: if you can’t prove intent to sell, at least you can bang ’em on tax evasion. This is, like Ethan Nadelmann puts it, “a gratuitous piling-on in the drug war.”

    But I’m still for it. Anything that sets the framework for drug regulation (intended or not) is a good thing. If drugs are already “taxed,” it’s a much smaller step to what’s really needed: regulated and controlled selling. And it opens peoples’ mind to the idea that there is legal revenue that can be gained in selling drugs.

    The article says that Tennessee imposed a tax on illegal drugs in 2005 and collected $3.5 million in two years before the law was found to be unconstitutional. I’d be very curious to know if anyof that money was from drug dealers. Probably not. It’s probably just curious spectators of the war on drugs, people like me, eager to collect a drug dealing stamp.

  • Shooting in White and Black

    The Sun has an excellent interactive graphic that can display all the year’s homicide victims. You can select for different variables, so it’s fun to play with (if you’re a nerdy academic).

    One of the depressing things about homicide is the racial breakdown. Breaking violent crime down by race doesn’t get much press, probably because it treads on incredibly un-politically correct territory. But I’m not afraid of fact. According to today’s paper, the city’s homicide count rose to 277 (surpassing the 2006 total).

    If you go to the interactive graphic, select for all of 2007 and white. You get 13 victims. Three of those by shooting. Keep shooting selected and then select for black victims. It’s very, very depressing. It’s mostly clustered in the Eastern, Western, and part of the Northwest.

    Keep black and shooting and add “article, yes.” Look at those red dots disappear. Young black men shot and killed that you never even heard about. And that’s ifyou read the daily paper. Granted, most of the white victims didn’t make the paper either. But for whites in Baltimore, we’re talking maybe a dozen or so, not hundreds of lives a year!

    Most of the deaths are caused by the issues related to the illegal drug market. If we regulated drug selling (and who is for unregulated drug selling?), lives would be saved.

    When people ask me why things aren’t getting better, one of my stock answers is this: liberals refuse to talk about culture and conservatives are too greedy and don’t give a damn. Of course, that’s just my simplistic way to piss everybody off. So let me explain:

    Liberals refuse to think of anything other than “root causes.” This usually comes down to money and racism. If anything is going to get better, it will cost money. But money isn’t everything. Rich drug dealers (though most are poor) have money. And they’re part of the problem. And most poor people struggle buy without ever killing anybody.

    And racism matters. But if we wait till racism is over before moving forward, we’re going to be stuck a very long time.

    And let’s talk culture. Part of ghetto culture is screwed-up. There are a lot of bad parents out there. I’m not going to divide parents into either “good” or “bad,” but some parents simply do a crappy job of raising (or not raising) their kids. I’m not blaming the victim. I think there are good reasons people are screwed up. But screwed up they are.

    Just once I’d like to hear a liberal call anybody a “bad” parent. I’m not saying insulting parents is the answer, but sometimes a little truth is refreshing and helps clear the air (and may get conservatives to open their pocketbooks).

    Conservatives, at least the good ones, do give a damn. But too often they are greedy or ideologically blinded. They don’t want to spend money. We need to change attitudes and shift priorities. But this can’t be done without money. We could make things better. If we had the will, we would find the money.

    Say want you want about the risks of legalized and regulateddrug selling, but if we could save lives (and raise money), wouldn’t it be worth it? If you’re still for drug prohibition after all these failed years, ask yourself what is more important than saving the lives of poor young black men. If you have an answer, you need to look deep inside yourself. You may not like what you see.

  • Hope for the Eastern’s most beautiful building

    Hope for the Eastern’s most beautiful building

    The Sun reportsthat the American Brewery is getting money for development. This building is gorgeous, in the Eastern District, and in complete disrepair. $35 million to convert the five-story former brewery into office space for a nonprofit social service. It’s good their going for office space rather than residential. The Eastern District is littered with failed residential conversions (the old school just off North Ave being the worst failure).

    One of the nice things about being a cop is you can go explore any urban wreck you want. The interior is falling apart, there are feral fighting dogs living in part of it. And the upper reaches are caked in pigeon shit. It needs a lot of work. But these building also need love. They need to be saved because they will never be built again. Here’s a good 3rd-party account of exploring the building. Mind you, it was 10 years more decrepit when I explored.

    The brewery wasn’t in my sector, but I loved it every time I passed it on the way back to the district. The most veteran cop I worked with remembered when it was still making beer and the friendly brewmeister serving on duty cops at his house across the street. Those were the days…

    The Baltimore Sun did a great series on the neighborhood around the brewery.

  • Not the sharpest tack in the box

    Cop brags about seized drug theft
    The New York Daily News reports that two narcotic detectives here caught after bragging on their own wire about stealing bags of seized cocaine.

    Corruption always involves drugs. But rarely in such idiotic fashion.

  • The Eastern District today

    The Eastern District today

    A student of mine went down to Baltimore and took some pictures of the Eastern. I don’t get there much anymore, even when I go to Baltimore. I don’t know anybody who lives there.

    In most ways, the Eastern looks like it hasn’t changed at all. In one big way, it’s changing a lot: the expansion of Johns Hopkins Hospital (or “Hotkins,” as some say in the ‘hood). It’s a bit sad when even the community doesn’t really object to the destruction of their area.

    Of course these pictures don’t show the homes well kept up. There are working people and good homes in the Eastern. These pictures don’t do them justice. Neither does my book. But when an outsider goes into the Eastern, it’s hard not to be shocked by the abandonment of virtually everything.

    Between 1990 and 2000, the District lost 30% of it’s population. And that’s just in these 10 years. I’d guess the District has probably lost three-fourth of its population since its peak, probably in the 1950s. When you take three quarters of the people out of an area, there’s lots of empty space left. Think of that vacant block Hampsterdam from Season 3 of the Wire. That was just west of Broadway, near the Amtrak tracks.

    The blocks just west of Broadway, the ones that haven’t been demolished, are interesting and a little scary. You get streets off of alleys. Even cops have a tough time finding Iron Alley (though many know it as the place a cop was shot and killed in 1985). And even I have to use to Google Earth to remember Hakesley Place and Lansing Ave.

    When most people who can afford to leave, leave, there’s a lot of concentrated poverty and crime left.

    Maybe the expansion of Hopkins will do so good. Maybe not. It’s not like they’ve been great neighbors in the past. And it’s not like I’ve got the answer, short of regulating drug selling and taking the profit out of the hands of criminals (or, even better, turning criminals into legal tax-paying businessmen).


    I like the idea somebody had to paint the boards on boarded-up buildings pretty colors. That way the neighborhood will look nice. This in just south of the market, if I remember correctly.
    These little bricked streets, if you squint enough, can actually look beautiful. I once saw a picture or postcard of this street from 1945. There was a big banner hanging over the street saying, “welcome home soldiers!” All the stoops where scrubbed clean with pumice stone, and every home was occupied. I believe that block had three occupied buildings when I worked there. I remember one burnt down when I was there. Now it’s probably completely unoccupied.

    This used to be the worst drug area in the district, conveniently locked next to Hopkins E.R. bad drug area. This is very strange. It’s all gone now. And they haven’t redrawn the post-boundaries, so 323 post has suddenly become a great post to police. I’m sure the dealers and junkies movie elsewhere. But I wonder what happened to the excellent (black owned and operated) produce stand on Washington St. and Mr. George and his Laundromat and Wolfe and Eager?



    They didn’t have these when I was a cop. I’m not sure if they do any good. I think printing the slogan “believe” on them may be going a little far. A friend of mine is the guy who sits on the police end of these cameras on the midnight shift, watching the cameras. Mind-numbing work, but he’s got no choice. He was forced to retire on disability after being shot and almost killed in the line of duty. He needs the money since he can’t live and support his family on his pension.
    I’m the type of guy who would have bought some ribs from this operation. Other cops thought that was a little funny.
    I think this is Lafayette or Lanvale, judging from the trees. These blocks were some of the prettiest in Sector Two.
    This is taken from Bond St, looking down the 1700 block of Ellsworth. I used to spend many mornings here, just behind where this was taken. It was the best view of the east. I could watch the sun rise and listen to Amtrak trains disappear in the tunnel toward Penn Station.

  • Cops 1 – Robber 0

    For all the press police-involved shootings get in New York City, there are a lot more shootings in Baltimore if you take the difference in population into account (almost an equal number if you don’t). Baltimore shootings don’t get much press because the city isn’t a media center and Al Sharpton doesn’t live there.

    Instead, the local chapter of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (who?) is protesting the latest shooting. I think they should pick their battles a little better.

    A man robbed a Burger King (not too far from where I lived) and, while making his getaway, pulled a loaded handgun out at police officers. He got killed. Damn right police shot. But perhaps only in Baltimore do family members of the dead robber wonder why morepolice didn’t shoot.

    The full story is here.
    Family demands answers in police shooting

    By Stephen Kiehl

    Baltimore Sun reporter
    December 15, 2007

    The family of a man killed by police last week asked yesterday why it still hasn’t received a written report on the shooting and said it is in the “beginning stages” of filing a complaint with the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
    Relatives of Coby Brown, 23, said they have not received any response from police despite multiple requests for a full accounting of the Dec. 4 shooting in Upper Fells Point. They also question the use of such lethal force.
    “We are left wondering what happened, how it happened and if it needed to happen,” said Thomas K. Smith, Brown’s stepfather, during a small rally at the shooting scene. “We want the truth.”
    Brown was shot by police after he robbed a Burger King in the 2000 block of Eastern Ave. in Fells Point, police said. Officers on foot patrol gave chase. Another officer pursued in a vehicle. Brown shot at the officers and then stopped in front of a house on Gough Street, police said.
    When Brown pointed his gun at Officer Modesto A. Olivio Jr., police said, Olivio shot Brown in the stomach. Brown died the next day at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
    “This suspect made a choice when he pointed a loaded handgun at a police officer, and when he makes that choice, the officer is left with no choice,” said police spokesman Sterling Clifford.

  • Advance Praise for Cop in the Hood

    “Peter Moskos, a sociologist by training, somewhat inadvertently became a police officer. Cop in the Hood is the fortuitous and fascinating result. It gives the reader the real dope from someone with the training and ability to put the street into the larger context. Highly recommended.”
    –Alex Tabarrok, George Mason University, cofounder of marginalrevolution.com.

    “Cop in the Hood is an extremely valuable study centered on patrolling a drug-infested Baltimore police district. Readers interested in drug policy, criminology, or policing cannot help but to learn a lot from this book. I know that I did, and I am grateful to the author. Many of his insights are eye-opening. His voice is unique and essential in debates concerning drug-policy reforms.”
    –Jim Leitzel, University of Chicago

  • He’s dead… cuff him

    The New York Times has an article by Al Baker, “Handcuffing the Wounded: Tactic Hits a Nerve.”

    I read that article with interest. Police don’t have the option to nothandcuff a suspect. I always thought that officers should have some (limited) discretion to not handcuff suspects. For instance, you’re patrolling, minding your own business, and a person comes up to you and says “I’m wanted, I’m here to turn myself in.” OK. You run his info and indeed, he’s 10-30 (In Baltimore, that means wanted or in custody).

    Let’s also say this person is wanted for a failure to appear in court for a non-violent crime. Why handcuff this guy in public? He’s turning himself in. It only serves to discourage others from doing the same.

    The part of the article that made the sense to me was the idea that after a shooting, there’s a lot to deal with, and you don’t even want to think about having a debate about whether or not to handcuff a suspect. Just do it and move on.

    I think the rules will change only if some doctors can show that handcuffing a suspect could threaten the life of a wounded suspect.

    There was one suspect I didn’t want to handcuff. I was just out of field training and Green, working the Artscape fair in Baltimore on three hours sleep. A young black man was playing the buckets. Buckets are easy to play poorly. But this guy was good. Loud and good.

    Some of the Artscape people complained. The paying vendors didn’t want the noise and were maybe jealous that he drew more people than they were. He wasn’t allowed to play in this area. People paid good money to set up shop.

    Two mounted cops said they weren’t going to tell him shit. My friend and partner wasn’t going to play bad cop either. The drummer had attracted a big crowd, who were enjoying his performance.

    I made the mistake of asking the sergeant what to do, hoping he would say leave him be. But he said to get him out of Artscape boundaries, so I had to do it. After his set, I approached him and, to the loud boos of the crowd, told him to pack up and leave the Artscape property. He couldn’t play in the area. I told him where to move and told him he didn’t have a choice. He agreed, I left.

    A few hours later I was with the same sergeant and the guy was playing again. Sarge said he was 10-30. “There’s the right way and the wrong way to handle these things,” he said. He didn’t put cuffs on him there, which was a smart move. Rather, buckets in hand, he was lead back to the police truck. I had to do the paperwork and write him a citation. I told him he was a good drummer. He was friendly and a little slow. Perhaps mildly retarded. He told me he was blessed. Maybe he was.

    He said made over $500 the day before. He could bang those buckets good.

    He was so compliant, even sweet, that I didn’t think to cuff him until one of the people in the truck said, “Is he 10-30? Then why isn’t he in h-a-n-d-c-u-f-f-s.” Oh yeah. It was a fair question. I was violating departmental regulation. I know there’s no guarantee that a sweet and compliant young man can’t turn violent. But I just didn’t think this guy needed to be cuffed. And though I still thought it unnecessary, I cuffed him.

    Things got worse. I couldn’t write him a citation because he had no ID. You can’t write a ticket if you don’t know how they are. So now he’s under arrest (technically detained to verify identity, but it’s the same thing). I thought he was 20, but it turned out he was only 17. So now there’s there extra hassle of juvenile paperwork.

    I had to count his money for inventory. He had about $170 on him. It was quite a sight later. Laid on the table, you’d think he was a big time drug dealer, except they were all one-dollar bills.

    I should have just let him go. It’s the only arrest I’ve ever regretted.

  • Don’t Taze me, bro!

    I know my classes are topical, but I wish people didn’t have to die to make it so. Yesterday I class I talked a police-involved shooting in Brooklyn and the overuse of Tasers. Today a bunch of students sent me these links about a man’s death in Vancouver after being Tasered. Proving exactly what I said in class:

    Since Tasers can kill people (though very very rarely), Tasers (and other less-lethal weaponry) should only be used in situations where you’re willing to use lethal force (or where there’s no clearly less lethal force practical).

    The CNN report.

    And one from Breitbart TV(Canadian).

    This man should not have died. Nor should he have been Tasered. There were four cops. Why the hell can’t they take the guy down with muscle? Is the Taser emasculating police officers? Tackle the S.O.B.! You know the guy isn’t armed (it was a secure area of the airport).

    Andrew Meyers shouldn’t have been Tasered either.

    Also worrisome is that the Mounties lied and said the guy was fighting. That didn’t pan out when the video went public.

    I don’t like the idea of people, police included, being able to cause pain at the press of a button. It makes it too easy to torture. I’ve said it many times: policing is a hands-on job. If you need to hurt somebody, it is best to do it with hands (or stick). Hurting somebody with your hands is a natural check and balance to excessive force. Physical force takes effort, reminding you of the consequences. And being close to somebody means you might get hurt, which also is good to keep in mind. It’s just too easy to press a button.

    I also don’t like that Taser is a private for-profit company. That’s not inherently a bad thing. But for makers of less-lethal munitions and prisons, it may be. They shouldn’t have P.R. and lobbyers. Or studies saying how great and safe their product is. At least for other forms of munitions, there’s healthy competition and generic products. It’s just a red flag. Plus, their slick website looks like something out of the movie Starship Troopers.

    What does a Taser do? Here’s an amusing video of cops getting Tasered. Always good for a laugh.

  • The untimely death of Khiel Coppin

    An unarmed man was killed by police Monday in Brooklyn. Here’s the New York Times account. This isn’t going to start any riots. Trust me. By all reasonable accounts, this was a “good” shooting.

    It always sounds bad to describe the shooting of an unarmed man as “good,” but in police parlance, “good” and “bad” shootings aren’t a moral judgment as much as a way of saying that the shooting was justified by regulation and law.

    A man comes at police saying he’s armed and going to shoot while holding something under his shirt? He gets shot.

    When a man says he has a gun, police have every right to believe him.

    Maybe this was suicide by cops. Maybe the man just needed to take his meds. I don’t blame the cops. But there is another problem. An one of my students said, “they got another one.”

    The greater problem is that another unarmed black man was killed by police. It’s not just this one case. It does keep happening. That’s why people get upset. Maybe this one was justified, maybe the last one, too. And the one before that. But can they really *all* be justified? That’s the greater question.

    Police occasionally kill innocent unarmed white people as well. But you probably never hear about it. It never becomes national news. There’s no Al Sharpton for white folk. Maybe there should be.

    It usually goes without saying, but cops don’t put on their uniform hoping they’ll shoot somebody that day. No cop wants to be involved in a shooting. Sometimes it just happens (luckily it never happened to me).

    The problem with individual police-involved shootings is that any criminal trial becomes symbolic of greater issues of history, race, and justice in America. That’s not fair to those on trial. But we, as a society, don’t have any better of discussing and dealing with these issues. That’s the greater problem.