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Category: Police

  • What’s Eating the NYPD?

    New York Magazine has a very good article by Chris Smith on Ray Kelley and the current state of the NYPD:

    Whenever Kelly leaves One Police Plaza — most likely in January 2014, when a newly elected mayor replaces Michael Bloomberg — he will be rightly celebrated as the greatest police commissioner in the city’s history. Crime, overall, is down 34 percent since Kelly took office. There have been zero successful terrorist attacks on the city since September 11, 2001.
    …
    His impact on the department will live long beyond his physical presence in One Police Plaza. The NYPD is now thoroughly marinated in Kelly’s personality and priorities. He’s greatly broadened the department’s racial diversity, and exponentially enlarged its technological capabilities.
    …
    An entire generation of cops has grown up schooled in his crime-fighting methods. Nearly half of the department’s 34,800 cops were hired on Kelly’s watch. He handles many promotions personally, so the NYPD’s management thoroughly reflects Kelly’s views.

    And right now, the department the commissioner rebuilt has two striking characteristics: its effectiveness and its unhappiness.

    Later in the article (it’s worth reading the whole thing):

    The newspapers were full of NYPD news on February 1. Most of it was topped by large headlines: In East Williamsburg, Officer Kevin Brennan had been shot in the head by a man wanted for questioning in connection to a homicide and miraculously survived. In the University Heights section of the Bronx, four cops were captured on cell-phone video pummeling a 19-year-old suspect. And seven alleged members of a violent gang that had terrorized the Ebbets Field housing project for years were indicted, thanks to the work of the NYPD.

    Yet as Eugene O’Donnell flipped through the tabloids that morning, he stopped at a smaller item: “No Shirt, Sherlock—Cops barred from wearing NYPD gear.” Apparently Commissioner Kelly had spotted officers wearing gallows-humor T-shirts that bore an unapproved Police Department logo. Kelly issued an order declaring that all NYPD personnel, on and off duty, were forbidden from wearing unlicensed T-shirts.

    O’Donnell — a cop, prosecutor, and now my friend and colleague at John Jay College of Criminal Justice — very astutely notices the significance of what outsiders may fail to grasp:

    Compared to the other stuff in the papers today, this seems silly, but it’s not silly to cops. None of them would ever trivialize the shooting of a fellow officer. But to the rank and file, the T-shirt thing is much more relevant and annoying, because it’s emblematic of what day-to-day life in the department has become.

    The NYPD is an agency of extremes. It can disappoint you beyond belief, and then it can do something incredible, like the hostage team or the anti-terrorism stuff. The T-shirt thing, there’s other approaches besides taking the hammer to everybody and saying they can’t wear anything with the NYPD on it. How about a letter from Kelly that says, ‘Dear colleague, is this the image we want to portray?’ Instead there’s a top-down, blanket order that allows them to catch anyone who slips up. You create a culture that says, ‘If we’re all co-defendants, I’m going to join hands with the knucklehead.’ That’s what you saw at the ticket-fixing case: ‘I don’t fix tickets, but if everybody’s going to be blanketly indicted, then we have to protect ourselves.’ 

  • Ozzie and Me and Fidel Makes Three

    When the P.C. Police come knocking (and I’m not talking about “probable cause”), they usually come from the left. But not always. In Ozzie Guillen’s case, the Politically Correct Police are coming from the right. Such is life in Florida, particularly Cuban southern Florida.

    Baseball manager Guillen was quoted as saying (in Spanish, I believe):

    I love Fidel Castro… I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that mother f*cker is still here.

    I respect Fidel for the same reason. That S.O.B. has outlasted tenU.S. presents. Obama is his eleventh. Say what you want, Fidel has cojones. (And you think we’d be smart enough to figure out by now that perhaps if we really wanted to get rid of Fidel, perhaps sanctions are not the most effective way. Craaaazy thought, I know. Why would we ever admit we do anything wrong after just decades of failure? And US sanctions do hurt innocent Cubans.)

    Fidel is the underdog, and it’s hard not to root for the underdog. I root for the Cubs, about which Guillen once said, “Our [White Sox] Fans are not stupid like the Cub fans.” But I got over it.

    I didn’t think it was a crime to love Fidel Castro. If so, a lot of liberals and academics would be in prison. (Not me, mind you. I had too many relatives suffer under communist Albania to fall for that crap.)

    I’ve actually been to Cuba (December 1996, I think), and well, it was what it was. Cuba certainly could be a lot better, but it’s not like it’s all bad. Objectively, it was probably the worst “vacation” I’ve ever been on: it was surprisingly expensive (three types of currency were in use); off the main tourist path, food wasn’t the easiest to come by; the scale and constant presence of prostitution was annoying and depressing. But it wasn’t all bad. People were dancing in the streets. We met a nice Rasta on the way to Santiago de Cuba who took us under his wing (thus keeping all the other touts away). And the Cubans do appreciate a good game of chess. In fact, in public, playing chess the one surefire way to keep the whores and hustlers at bay.

    Besides, it’s not like ourdictators have done so much better. And to compare Castro to Hitler (as some who are attacking Guillen are doing) is absurd. Mostly, Cuba was just a bit anti-climactic. It wasn’t like going to Albania or even East Germany. Once you’re there, you realize it’s only the US that makes it such a big deal. Everybody else is free to visit.

    I suspect that Guillen’s “love” of Fidel is lot less than what comes from most liberals and academics in the US and around the world. But I don’t even think Guillen even loves Fidel. It’s not like he wants to make out with him. Reminds me of Sarah Silverman, who has a character, kind of like Guillen (described as a “harmless lump prone to adorably offending everyone around her”) who apologies for using the word “gay”: “I’m sorry, you guys, I don’t mean gay like homosexual. I mean gay like retarded.”

    Oh, what’s that knock on my door?

  • Moving beyond prohibition

    Three months ago, I became president of Guatemala. And contrary to the good fortunes enjoyed by [Drug Lord “Chapo”] Guzman, I found that the justice and security systems were not what they had been 20 years earlier. Which led me to ask myself these questions: isn’t it true that we have been fighting the war on drugs these past two decades? Then, how on earth is drug consumption higher and production greater and why is trafficking so widespread?
    …
    Moving beyond prohibition can lead us into tricky territory. To suggest liberalisation – allowing consumption, production and trafficking of drugs without any restriction whatsoever – would be, in my opinion, profoundly irresponsible. Even more, it is an absurd proposition. If we accept regulations for alcohol and tobacco, why should we allow drugs to be consumed and produced without any restrictions?

    Our proposal, as the Guatemalan government, is to abandon any ideological position (whether prohibition or liberalisation) and to foster a global intergovernmental dialogue based on a realistic approach – drug regulation.

    Otto Perez Molina is president of Guatemala. Read his whole article at the Guardian.

    Wouldn’t it be nice if ourpresident could show such leadership?

    [thanks to S.M. down under]

  • Not only in Baltimore

    Despite what some citizens of Baltimore think, kids zooming around on dirt bikes and 4-wheeled ATVs are nota natural rite of spring. But it turns out it’s not just Baltimore. It’s also all the rage in Philadelphia. And police are handcuffed to do anything about it. So it goes on. I’m quoted in this article by Dana DiFilippo.

  • “Only in Baltimore”?

    That’s not true. But this kind of thing does seem to happen all too often in Mob City.

    Justin Fenton writes in the Sun:

    At first, the video of a man being beaten and stripped in downtown Baltimore appeared to be just another tantalizing shock clip for the Internet. But in recent days, thanks to social media users as far away as California, it could prove instrumental in solving the case.

    Police have made no arrests in last month’s attack, but they said tips were flooding in about the identity of the man shown punching a disoriented victim before others ripped off his clothes, took his belongings and humiliated him on the sidewalk outside a city courthouse.

    In this case the victim is white and drunk. The attackers are all (best I can tell) African American.

  • Protesting Black-on-Black Violence

    I’ve written (sarcastically) how nice it is that in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin, some conservatives are suddenly very concerned about black-on-black violence. The actual voiced argument goes that blacks (and liberals) only care about black-on-black violence when it comes at the hands of a white person. Of course that’s not true. Just because you refuse to hear something doesn’t mean other people aren’t shouting.

    I wanted to do a post listing some of the protests over the years. Because there really are a countless number of them. But I was too lazy to actually do the grunt work. Luckily, over on his blog, Ta-Nehisi Coates did it for me. It’s worth a look.

    And if you’ve never heard of anyof these protests, might I suggest you ask yourself, “why not?” Perhaps you want to blame the media. Or perhaps you don’t care. That’s your right, I suppose. But it’s not your right to say other peopledon’t care just because you’re ignorant.

  • Bad Cuts

    Shame on NBC for selectively editing the 911 call Zimmerman made.

  • No Excuse for Shooting

    Can we please stop using being teased and bullied, no matter how bad, as an excuse to kill yourself or others? I can’t help but wonder if there’s a link between the criminalization of bullying, a culture (on the left andthe right) that embraces victimhood (not to mention guns), and mass shootings.

    If you are going to kill, can’t you at least kill just the bullier?

  • California Prison Release

    Off to bumpy start, says the LA Times:

    Many of the ex-criminals are not showing up for counseling appointments, some care centers are not being paid and county bureaucrats are scrambling to correct foul-ups that have caused delays.
    …
    In the six months since, about a quarter of the probationers have been arrested for allegedly committing new crimes, which is below the previous state average for probationers.

    It’s kind of sad that one-quarter rearrested within six months is better than average. If any of you could figure out how to lower the recidivism rate, you’d be a hero. I have one answer: WPA-style make-work programs.

  • Australian foreign minister call for drug decriminalization

    From the Telegraph:

    Bob Carr, Australia’s foreign minister, whose brother died after a heroin overdose, has urged the decriminalisation of low-level drug use, after a report concluded the war on the scourge was lost.

    His comments were at odds with Julia Gillard, the Australian prime minister, who said tough policing was the answer while the government’s chief law officer expressed a measure of scepticism about the new report.

    So now we’ve got prominent leaders from Australia, the Netherlands, Mexico, Portugal, Greece, Colombia, and Brazil, not to mention the great states of New Mexico and New Jersey and UN secretary general.

    Wouldn’t it be great if our federal leaders could do the same. Republicans could call off the federal war on drugs (I’m all for letting states and localities make their own laws) on the grounds of Federalism. What could be more Tea Party conservative than that?

    [thanks to J.B.]