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  • Rapist Acquitted

    Timothy “So I can’t call you no more?” West was acquitted despite, best I can tell, admitting to it. According the Daily News:

    Privately, several jurors interviewed after the verdict said they didn’t buy the victim’s story because there were no signs of forced entry into her home.

    One juror said the panel believed the victim must have known West, and that she let him into her home.

    West has a history of break-ins and was on parole for robbery when arrested, but the jury did not hear that evidence: Buchter ruled it could prejudice the jury against him.

  • The Dream

    The Dream

    From Doonsbury.

  • Prisons seek prisoners

    National Public Radio says an investigation revealed a “quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.” . . . The anti-immigration law amounted to “a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants.”

  • Gruesome Pics…

    Gruesome Pics…

    …of the war in the drugs, mostly in Mexico.

    While you lose you appetite looking at these, remember the US party line that violence in Mexico is a sign the drug gangs are on the run.

    War is peace!

    (I’ve never seen those evidence cones get to number 71… and we had some pretty big shootings in Baltimore.)

    [thanks to Irish Pirate for the tip]

  • RIP Tommy Portz, Jr.

    Portz is the first Baltimore City officer to be killed in the line of duty since 2007, and the third city officer killed in less than a month. His funeral is today.

    You can read my account of a police funeral on the last two pages of this.

  • Feris Jones was Lucky

    Officer (now Detective) Jones was lucky she wasn’t killed. 19-year-old Winston Cox was robbing a store and Jones pulled her gun and announced her presence as a police officer. Cox fired and she returned fire, striking Cox.

    Why did she say anything before firing? She should have just come out and “incapacitated” Cox (ie: shot center mass, likely killing Cox). Did she think he was going to drop his gun? His gun was bigger. Cox tried to kill her. Luckily, Cox missed. But what if he hadn’t? What if he killed Jones? Then we’d all be going to her funeral. I wouldn’t want to risk my life on Cox having bad aim. Jones shouldn’t have either.

    [But it all turned out well and I wish Jones the best of luck and repeat that she did great and she’s a good shot and a bad-ass. (I’m really happy she’s not dead.)]

    Now here’s my plan, at least in theory. In the next couple of days, I’m going to present a couple of hypothetical situations related to this scenario. I’m curious as to how you’d respond.

  • Still a joke, that 911 is

    From The Detroit News:
    The average response time for dangerous runs in Detroit is 24 minutes from the time a 911 call is received, according to statistics released in April.

    Nationwide statistics are not available, but Atlanta, Ga., police have an 11-minute average response time and in Washington, D.C., police respond in an average of eight minutes.

  • Two Down in Sector Two

    Four killed in 15 hours in Baltimore. Two, I believe, in the Sector Two of the Eastern District.

  • Good Shooting in Brookyn

    From the Daily News:

    The fearless off-duty cop who faced down an armed robber in a Brooklyn beauty parlor on Saturday managed to shoot the pistol right out of the crook’s hands, cops said Monday.

    And in a scene that would be over the top even for the most ridiculous Hollywood cop movie, one of Officer Feris Jones’ bullets hit the front door – and locked it.
    …
    He escaped by kicking out the glass on the lower portion of the door and crawled out to the street on his hands and knees, leaving a trail of blood.

    When Cox was arrested in a single-room-occupancy hotel on Pacific St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant early Monday, he answered the door meekly, his bloody hands wrapped in Bounty paper towels borrowed from his mother.
    …
    The suspected gunman’s mom told the Daily News she was shocked her parolee son was mixed up in it.

    “I can’t come to grips with it,” said Cheryl Cox, whose 19-year-old son, Winston Cox, the youngest of her eight kids.

    I was hoping for a better quote from him mom, though. But maybe she made those little air quotes with her fingers when she said the word, shocked. That would make it good.

    [Update: Actually, in the mom’s defense,she has filed eight charges of assault against her son and had good things to say about the police officer, “I’m just thankful to God the police officer is OK — she did a good job.” It’s in the Post.]

  • Oh, please!

    Here’s a non-story: NYPD Commissioner Kelly didn’t disclose that the Police Foundation paid his dues at the Harvard Club. My God, who cares? Good God, Lenny, I know you hate Kelly with a passion bordering on obsessive (and that’s putting it mildly), but is this the best you got on the guy? If so, you should have skipped it and talked more about Jennifer Hunt’s great book.

    I wish the Police Foundation would pay mydues at the Harvard Club. I wouldn’t mind being a member. And I did go to Harvard. I’m just too cheap to join.

    Well, should Kelly have disclosed it? I guess if them’s the rules, he should have. But they shouldn’t be the rules. The rules are too strict. Nothing wrong with a free cup of coffee. And nothing wrong with the commissioner taking people out on the Police Foundation’s dime. Assuming the police commission isn’t a crook (what do Bernard Kerik and Ed Norris have in common?) can’t we let him do his job? And no, I don’t want to know who he was with.