…to pay for police.
Newark laid off police and murders are up 71percent this year. That’s penny wise and pound foolish. The Newark Star-Ledgerreports.
Copinthehood.com has moved to qualitypolicing.com
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NYPD Stop and Frisks and Marijuana Arrests
WNYC reporter Ailsa Chang reports on the curious link between stop and frisks and marijuana arrests in New York City. It’s curious because small-scale possession of marijuana in New York State isn’t a crime (it is a non-arrestable ticketable “violation”). Nor do drugs that are “immediately apparent” based on “plain-feel” during a “Terry Frisk” (for weapons) give police justification to search (this is unique to New York State based on People v. Diaz).
I also did a little research based on the nifty map provided at the above link. There are 76 precincts in New York City. In 2010, 19 police precincts with the highest arrest rates for the lowest level marijuana-possession had 48 percent of the city’s murders and 39 percent of city’s robberies. But I’m not certain what percent of the NYC’s population lives in those 19 precincts. Anybody have data for population by precinct?
I’m briefly quoted in the story. And you can read what I’ve already written about stop and frisks by clicking on the “stop and frisk” tag below. This story is a bit different because it focuses on illegal searches, which are never OK. Police are given so much leeway within the law that I can’t help but think that cops who conduct illegal searches are, at best, lazy and stupid.
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Faith and the Badge
NYPD Sergeant (and Cop in the Hood fan) Martin Browne is interviewed about being Catholic and being a cop. It’s a good interview.
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An Easter Flogging
The first article to come from my new book is out in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
A crazy idea came from a dinner in New Orleans. I had cold-called (or whatever the e-mail equivalent is) a writer and his wife because I was a fan of his work and thought we had much in common. They were gracious enough to arrange a meal and treat me, without much justification, as a professional equal more than a stalker. The conversation turned to corporal punishment in public schools. They were amazed not that such a peculiarity existed in a city ripe with oddities, but that such illegal punishments were administered at the urging of and with the full consent of the students’ parents.
“Fascinating,” I drolly replied, but I wasn’t shocked. If I’d learned one thing as a police officer patrolling a poor neighborhood, it was the working- and lower-class populations’ great fondness for corporal punishment. No punishment is as easy or seemingly satisfying as a physical beating. I learned this not because I beat people, but because the good citizens I swore to serve and protect often urged me to do so. It wasn’t hard for me to resist (I liked my job, and besides, I wasn’t raised that way), but I agreed that many of the disrespectful hoodlums deserved a beating. Why? Because, as the old-school thinking goes, when people do wrong, they deserve to be punished.
Read the rest here.
Happy Easter and Χριστὸς Ἀνέστη. Crack a red egg and eat some lamb. (Rita Wilson, just FYI, was the producer of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and is Tom Hank’s wife.)
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Mexican Poet Against the Drug War
I’m back from Mexico City, happy to have been there. No, I didn’t get sick (or mugged). Yes, I ate everything (including grasshopper quesadillas, which I can say are tasty, but it’s still best not to lift the tortilla and look at the critters melted in with the cheese). But I’m also happy to be back at low altitude. Seriously, it’s strange and disconcerting to feel out of breath while doing nothing. Also of note: it’s the first trip I’ve ever taken where I didn’t, not even once, hear “Hotel California.”
Back home, I’m greeting with this BBC headline: “Mexico poet Javier Sicilia leads anger at drug violence.” No, I’ve never heard of him, but he’s taken up the cause following his son’s murder:
His harsh criticism of what he calls President Felipe Calderon’s “stupid strategy” to fight drug cartels has resounded with large sections of Mexican society who are increasingly frustrated by the rising violence in many parts of the country.
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More and more innocent civilians like his son are being killed as “collateral damage of the drugs war”, Mr Sicilia believes. So he focuses his criticism on President Calderon’s strategy.“I think Felipe Calderon is responsible for launching a war in a stupid way,” he says, combining rage with frustration.
“What this war has done is allow the corruption of institutions which had been taking place for years to emerge, but leaving those institutions completely defenceless to face organised crime.”
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President Calderon – who received Mr Sicilia at the presidential palace after the murders – made an overt reference to the issue in the wake of the demonstrations.“Let us not be confused,” said Mr Calderon at a lunch with business leaders earlier this month.
“We should say ‘Enough!’ to the criminals who kidnap and murder. They are the enemy, not those who fight against them,” he added.
At what point do people in power ever admit: “Maybe, just maybe, what we’re doing isn’t working.” Remember, when Calderon took office, there were about two deaths each day related to the drug war. Now, after five years of “getting tough” and ramping up the drug war, there are more than 40drug-war deaths each day.
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Riot Police Drinking on the Job…
…isn’t such a big deal in France. Or maybe now it is. Either way, seems like the French attitude (the Italians do pretty much the same) is much healthier than our own American attitude toward alcohol.
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Union Power (II)
Two unions I support, simply because they have kick-ass logos (on par with my local International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers)! I particularly admire the telephone operators union logo and the fact that there was a vendor outside the building selling t-shirts and coffee mugs withtheir logo. I bought one of each.
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Mexico City and Five Other Safe Places in Mexico
Just FYI, since I’m down in Mexico City right now: Despite all the drug chaos in the north of Mexico–the state of Chihuahua has a homicide rate of 300 per 100,000 (compared to 36 in Baltimore City and 6.5 in New York City)–most of Mexico is much safer than most of America. Here’s an article about the five safest places in Mexico to travel.
Even I was a little apprehensive to travel to Mexico City for vacation (mind you, just a little, as we did want to come here). It’s strange, because where else in the world will you be told by various sources to 1) not take cabs, 2) not take the metro, 3) not walk, and 4) not drive? We’ve done the first three and have felt safer than, say, taking the subway at night in Philly or the Light Rail in Baltimore.
I can’t tell just how normal and functioning this city is. You walk around, take the metro, get things to eat, look at pretty buildings, go to markets and museums, walk around random neighborhoods, eat street food… it’s all very normal. Now don’t get me wrong, there are stories of crime. And though we don’t stick to the “safe” parts of town, we haven’t walked around the supposedly bad parts of town at night while flashing dollars and taking pictures. But then why should we?
Maybe crime is more of an issue in Mexico because they have higher standards of a crime-free society. In America, it’s as if we’ve written off huge segments of society and cities and think that it’s normal to do so. What guide book would even mention East Baltimore or West Chicago or East New York, much less warn you not to go there?
The only thing here in Mexico City that isn’t normal is the lack of horrible traffic and air pollution. But this week is a big holiday week (Santa Semana) and things are a bit quieter than normal as a lot of people go back to their home towns and villages to celebrate.
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Meet me at the corner…
My wife and I were strolling through a deserted (and safe) Mexico City late last night when we stumbled across this doozy of an intersection.
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William Schaefer (1921-2011)
He was as through-back to another time, a less politically correct time. I liked his moxie, even if I have mixed feelings about his urban vision. He was a one-man political institution, and certainly Baltimore would have been worse off without him.
His obit in the Baltimore Sun and the New York Times.