Go to qualitypolicing.com

Copinthehood.com has moved to qualitypolicing.com

  • The Choirboys

    This may not be news to anybody who was old enough to read in 1975, but Joseph Wambaugh writes a good police story. I just finished reading The Choirboys, 38 years after it was written. It’s about a bunch of police in Los Angeles: “They were just policemen. Rather ordinary young guys, I thought”

    It the book “true”? I don’t know. I imagine most of it is, at the very least, as they say, “Inspired by a true story.” As they also say: “You can’t make this sh*t up.” It’s also about a bygone era in policing, when cops drunk on duty, screwed any whore who came along, and earned their keep by staking out public bathrooms to bust “fags.” While the book is certainly dated, a lot of it still rings true. Some things never change.

    In the officers’ stories and camaraderie, there’s something very heartwarming about the fraternity: the sheer pointless of “torpedoing” another officer (the German officer, naturally), the bad sex jokes, the idiotic criminals. Somehow–despite the alcoholism, adultery, suicide, and generally self-destructive behavior–it kind of makes me miss the job.

  • WWJD? The death penalty and Jesus

    Texas just executed its 466th murderer in the last three decades (not surprisingly, the guy being executed was black. Black murderers are much more likely to be executed than are white murderers.)

    But I’m not here to defend murderers. I’m not even really even against the death penalty. (As long as we can be certain the person is guilty… which too often we’re not certain of… which does make me kind of against the death penalty. Can’t there be a legal standard even beyond “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”? Like “caught-red-handed-we-know-he-did-it guilty”?)

    But I want to mention two seemingly obvious facts:

    1) Jesus Christ would not support the death penalty. I’m not religious, so you might ask why I bring this up. Because I think it’s very strange that many people who claim to believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God also support the death penalty. Hey, support the death penalty for whatever reason you want. But please don’t do it in Jesus’s name. He was more of a forgiveness kind of guy: “Let he who is without sin…” and “Go, and sin no more.” New Testament trumps Old! Isn’t that the basis of Christianity?

    2) The death penalty does not deter crime. The average murder rate of death penalty states is higher than in states without the death penalty. The murder rate in execution-central Texas is 5.4, also higher than the national average. Now maybe if Texas wasn’t so execution happy, the murder rate would be even higher… but do you really believe that?

    Now you may think it’s right to kill killers for reasons that have nothing to do with God or crime. Maybe they simply deserve it as punishment. Frankly, personally, I don’t give a damn if murderers live or die. But I would like to think that I and we are better than them. But please stop the nonsense that execution is somehow linked to crime prevention or is compatible with the teachings of Jesus.

  • Tow Me

    So here’s the longer storyin the Sun.

    What I don’t get (there’s a lot I don’t get), is how could officers get a kick-back of $300 per car? The tow company would need to charge more than that. And the article says that approved towers are only charging $130-$140 dollars.

    When I needed to tow a car, it was pretty simple. You tell dispatch you need a tow. A moment or two later KGA (dispatch) would tell you to wait for one of three(?) companies that towed from the Eastern. And then you waited. And waited. And eventually a nice older man would show up and tow the car. End of story.

    Seventeen Baltimore Police Officers have been charged (just 5 live in Baltimore City). Eleven or 12 have hispanic names. Normally I wouldn’t point out the ethnicity… except that the B.P.D. made a big recruiting effort in Puerto Rico a few years back. I’m not certain how many officers were hired. I assume most are good officers. I’m also assuming (but do not know for sure) that many if not most of these arrested officers were part of that recruiting push.

    I mention all this because I’ve heard bad things about these officers since the day they were hired. But since I know none of them personally, I’ve been a bit dismissive of these complaints, considering them more likely to be rooted in anti-Puerto Rican attitudes than in any actually fact.

    I might have been wrong.

    If there’s a moral in this (other than to trust what my friends tell me), perhaps it’s this: do not hire too many officers at the same time. If you do, you will have to lower standards. If you lower standards, you will hire bad cops. It’s not like this is the first time this has ever happened (Miami and New York City have had similar experiences). It’s not unique to Baltimore. Or, for that matter, Puerto Rico. Though as US citizens go, the police in Puerto Rican do seem to have more than their fair share of problems.

  • Collective Bargaining 101

    I know it’s important, but I’m a bit clueless here. Can somebody explain to me just what collective bargaining means? Why is it important to unions? And what would happen if it were taken away?

  • 600,000 (official) stops in NYC

    Here’s the story in the Timesand in the Daily News.

    The difficulty is that any benefits and harms of aggressive stop and frisks are not only found in aggregate numbers but also in the individual incidents. Some of these stops are good. Some aren’t. So how do we tell the difference? How do we keep the good and get rid of the bad?

    In theory, I’m not against police stopping people based on reasonable suspicion. What’s the alternative? Waiting for someone to call 911?

    In practice, I worry about young and inexperienced officers stopping people to meet quotas.

    In theory, I think stop and frisks can play an essential role in crime prevention and getting guns off the streets.

    In practice, I worry about the extension of the Terry Frisk to an exploratory search.

    And in theory the police can defend the racial disparity of those being stopped…

    But in practice the NYPD needs to do a better job doing so. There are legitimate, serious, and moral issues involved. Simply pointing to crime stats isn’t enough.

    On one hand, it might be hard to defend this tactic if crime goes up. On the other hand, it’s worth contrasting the situation in New York with the situation in Seattle. We need better policing–not less policing.

  • The old gun-check ruse…

    A “dozen or more” B.P.D. arrested?! Peter Hermann of the Sunreports:

    a federal corruption probe that involves an improper relationship with a Baltimore towing company, sources said.
    …
    The officers were arrested today at the police academy after being called in under the guise that their firearms needed to be checked.
    …
    Multiple sources say the officers are mostly from the Northeast District and many of them are officers who were recruited years ago in a push to bring in Latino officers from Puerto Rico. That information could not immediately be confirmed.

  • The “Madison Method”

    There might be some good lessons here.

    Too often we only look for lessons when things go wrong. It’s probably better to look for lessons when things go right. Here were tens of thousands of people protesting and counter-protesting… and it all happened without an arrest.

  • Police shooting deaths

    This year, nationwide, 15 officers have been killed by gunfire (out of 30 total line-of-duty deaths). This puts us on pace to expect 105 officers to be shot and killed in 2011. Compare this with 59 firearms deaths in 2010, 47 in 2009, 40 in 2008, and 66 in 2007. Is this a trend? It’s not clear. Maybe 2009 and 2008 were unusually low. Maybe, hopefully, the rest of 2011 will be much safer.

  • RIP Officer John Falcone

    There’s a wake for Poughkeepsie Officer John Falcone today. The 18-year-veteran was killed last Friday.

    Lee Welch, 27, and his wife, Jessica Welch, 28, both of Catskill, have three children together and a history of domestic violence, Knapp said. They were in Poughkeepsie to exchange a vehicle when the shooting occurred.

    Falcone was a block-and-a-half away from the scene of the shooting when a report came in at 1:07 p.m. Friday of shots fired on lower Main Street.

    The husband shot his wife while she sat in their vehicle, possibly more than once. He was holding their 3-year-old child and waving a gun when Falcone came upon him on lower Main Street, near Railroad Avenue. Jessica Welch was taken to Vassar Brothers Medical Center, where she died.

    Additional officers arrived and a struggle ensued, Welch fired his weapon twice, Falcone was shot once in the head and Welch shot himself. Welch was ordered multiple times to drop his weapon.

    An officer who tackled the suspect, Thomas Matthews, suffered a dislocated shoulder. Everything happened in about five minutes, Knapp said.
    …
    Knapp said no officer discharged his weapon.

  • Seattle Police Union to Cops: Lay Low

    Seattle Timescolumnist Danny Westneat has a worrisome article in the paper:

    “You are paid to use your discretion and there are many ways to do police work. Recent events should show us that many in the city really don’t want aggressive officers who generate on-view incidents. They want officers who avoid controversy and simply respond when summoned by 911.”

    …

    What the union head is suggesting here is that the scrutiny of police is so severe right now, and so lopsided, that cops should mostly just respond, not initiate.

    “If there’s borderline criminal or suspicious activity, I say let it go,” O’Neill said when I asked him to elaborate. “Don’t go out on a limb. It’s not worth it.”

    …

    Won’t crime go up?

    “That might be a consequence,” O’Neill said. “But the leaders of this city need to decide how they want it around here.”

    Like I said: Uh-oh.

    [thanks to Sgt T]