Police

Choose your own adventure! The sick prisoner. (page 4)

Boy, with those lights and sirens on, nobody still gets out of your way. And though you want to get really fast for this medical emergency, you know General Orders prohibit any speed in excess of 10 miles over the speed limit. A few cars even pass you. But soon enough, you arrive at the hospital, safe and sound. You…

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Police

Choose your own adventure! The sick prisoner. (page 26)

You’re a good officer. You stop the car and go to check on your prisoner. As soon as you open the rear door, the prisoners jumps out and runs away! Somehow he must have managed to get himself free from your handcuffs! Maybe next time you should double lock them. Or make them tighter. But then prisoners always complaint he…

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Choose your own adventure! The sick prisoner. (page 8)

You’re a good officer. But these assholes are always lying. Who knows why they always fake it, but they always do. You get to Central Booking and the woman at the gate asks if your prisoner is OK. You look in the back and see the prisoner slumped over in the seat. You immediate call for an ambulance. But it’s…

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Police

Grammar 101

Grammar 101: For students who should know, but don’t. © 2015 by Professor Peter Moskos Here’s a PDF version. If you want this in a nice little printed booklet you can read on the subway, buy it on Amazon (just $6.95). Order of Contents Introduction: Is Grammar 101 right for you? Rule #1: Write in complete sentences Rule #2: The…

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Police

Blue Flu (II): Arrest “only when you need to”

Conor Friedersdorf has a excellent piece in The Atlantic, “The NYPD’s Insubordination—and Why the Right Should Oppose It.” [And just for the record I did scoop the New York Post, albeit only be a few hours.] There’s lot here that doesn’t fit in our normal political divide. And I love that cognitive dissonance! You’ve got union blue-collar workers, and the…

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Blue Flu

Word on the street is that NYPD summonses are down almost 95% and arrests by two-thirds since officers Ramos and Liu were killed (and the PBA was vocal with their opinion). Let’s see what impact this has on crime. It would be interesting if the answer were zero. But since I believe police matter, I don’t think this is good.…

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RIP Officer Rafael Ramos

NYPD Officer Ramos was just buried. Here is Commissioner Bratton’s eulogy. In honor of Officer Ramos, I’m reprinting some of what I’ve written about police funerals in Baltimore. I went to too many of them: Twenty months in Baltimore wasn’t very long, but it was long enough to see five police officers killed in the line of duty. And there…

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Police

Merry Christmas

Especially to everybody who has to work today. One of my friends wanted to work overtime. He said, “All I want for Christmas is a robbery collar!” Here’s hoping Santa brings one right to him. Stay safe.

Police

Police Shooting Kids

Here I am on NPR’s “Morning Edition” flapping my mouth about the shooting of Tamir Rice (Cleveland kid killed by police while holding a realistic-looking BB gun): [Moskos] says mayors everywhere walk a tightrope between police and citizen outrage. He says the public needs to get more realistic about how the police work. And police need to be less tone…

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