NYPD Housing Cop Randolph Holder was shot and killed a few hours ago around 120th and FDR Drive. This is about a mile from my house (but a world away in East Harlem). Rest in Peace.
Update: Apparently the killer was also a “non-violent drug offender.” From the Times:
Last fall, the man suspected in the shooting, Tyrone Howard, was arrested along with 18 other members of a drug crew that had spread violence through a stretch of public housing along the East River and was ordered into a drug diversion program, which is meant to keep some drug offenders from further crowding already overcrowded jails.
In May, he stopped taking part in the program, the officials said.
“If ever there’s a candidate not to be diverted it would be this guy,” Mr. Bratton said. “He’s a poster boy for not being diverted.”
The police said Mr. Howard was believed to have been involved in the shooting of a 28-year-old man on Sept. 1 in East Harlem.
Instead of "non-violent drug offender", it should be re-named "person previously charged with a non-violent drug offense"
That would make it easier to get through the upcoming years of de-incarceration.
If there's a Venn Diagram with "people who believe in decarceration" and "people who object to the term 'non-violent drug offender,'" I might be the only person standing in the center.
"Person previously charged with a non-violent drug offense" is actually a decent phrase, even if you were using it tongue in cheek. I might start using it. Though for prisoners it would be "Person previously convicted of a non-violent drug offense."
This makes for four NYPD cops killed by gunfire in less than a year — a pretty rare occurrence, at least looking at the last two decades. Going back from about the mid-1990s, the picture is more grim:
odmp.org/agency/2758-new-york-city-police-department-new-york
(And for what it's worth, I'm in the middle of that Venn Diagram, too.)
Non-violent drug offense sounds redundant. If violence is involved, who cares whether drugs are also involved? Legalize use of all substances by adults, tax them heavily to keep the price reasonably high and to fund addiction treatment programs, and the violence drops away.
How long before the perp sues?
JSM