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  • College-Educated Cops

    I had a BA and all the requirements of a Masters’ Degree when I was a Baltimore cop. And now I teach some NYPD and many students who want to be police officers. So I am a bit partial to the idea that college is good for everybody, cops included (or else what am I doing in my school office at 10:30pm?).

    But I worked with many great people and police officers who had nothing but a Baltimore public education high-school degree. I know you don’t need college to police. But I like to think that college makes you a better person and being a better person makes you a better police officer.

    Anyway, a recent study shows that college makes cops less quick to use force.

    Rings true to me but I’m not sure why. Perhaps, if nothing else, college means you’re older when you join the P.D. And that makes you wiser. But I also like to think that college and college class helps teach people how to talk respectfully to people you don’t agree with. That’sa good tool for a cop.

  • War on Prostitution

    Really?

    Does anybody really think the problem is Craigslist?

    Don’t we have better things to do?

  • Good news in (ending) the war on drugs

    From the UK’s Observer (sister paper of The Guardian).

    One.

    Two.

    And three articles about the war on drugs, or lack thereof, in Portugal.

    Excerpts:

    Drugs have not only been decriminalised for almost a decade, but users are treated as though they have a health and social problem.
    …
    Nor has it seen its addict population markedly increase. Rather it has stabilised in a nation that, along with the UK and Luxembourg, once had the worst heroin problem in Europe.
    …
    The approach to Portugal, which has seen a fall in levels of petty crime associated with addicts stealing to buy drugs, as well as a drop by a third in the number of HIV diagnoses among intravenous drug users, is significant. Despite decriminalisation, it levies more fines than the UK and drug use has not increased.
    …
    These days, addicts account for only 20% of those who are HIV infected, while the number of new HIV diagnoses of addicts has fallen to fewer than 2,000 a year.
    …
    The Portuguese experience again shows that there is no necessary link between the severity of sanctions and rates of drug use.
    …
    “You have to remember,” he says, “that the substances are still illegal; it is the consequences that are different.” And for those arrested in possession of drugs for personal use, that means not a court appearance but an invitation to attend a “dissuasion board” that can request – but not insist upon – attendance
    …
    A sociologist by training, Capaz is a vice-president on the board. He believes that far from Portugal becoming more lenient, the reality is that the state intervenes far more than it did before Law 30 and the other associated legislation was introduced. Before, he explains, police would often not pursue drug users they had arrested, interested only in the dealers. “People outside Portugal believe we had a tougher approach under the old law, but in reality it is far tougher now.”
    …
    As fewer people were arrested for drug offences, the prison population fell. So did drug use and HIV among prisoners.
    …
    Politicians usually only suggest decriminalisation when they are either on the verge of retirement or at the fringes of power.

  • Not a good way to go

    Not a good way to go

    Just doing your job. Delivering bread in the hood. Driving in your bakery truck. Minding your own business.

    Next thing you know. You’re dead. Shot. Just like the bad old days.

    Seems like some idiots were playing with guns on the roof of the Marlboro Projects. Probably just shooting for kicks. Who would think that one of these idiots would have good aim? That a bullet fired from a gun might hit and kill someone?

    Ecuadorian immigrant Jorge Martinez lived not far from me, in Elmhurst. By all newspaper accounts he seems like a good man. Here’s a picture of him and his son from the Post.

    In the same article a woman is quoted as saying:

    A couple of months ago, a bullet hit my window…. When I hear shots I tell my kids to get away from the window. I feel bad for the guy, but this is what goes on here.

  • 911 is still a joke

    So late last night a saw a man (who was not a worker) walking on the elevated subway tracks around a parked subway train. I saw him duck under the train and go to the other side. Perhaps a graffiti guy. But I don’t know. I figured he was up to no good. As the poster tells me, I saw something, so I said something.

    I called 911 and said there was a guy walking on the tracks by a parked train and gave the location and name and phone number.

    They called back once to confirm my location.

    They called back a second time to confirm which tracks I was talking about.

    They called back a third time to confirm that this individual was actually on the tracks and thus the MTA’s responsibility.

    Then they called back a fourth time to ask if I could still see the individual on the tracks.

    Once I said, “No,” she thanked me and hung up before I could add, “Because I’m now inside!” Not to mention I couldn’t see the guy when I called the first time because he was on the other side of a train.

    I’m pretty sure there was no response.

  • American Ethos

    “In America, individuals, not groups, act; and individuals, not groups, should be held accountable.” Most of you would probably agree with that statement. I do, too. But I would be quick to add that culture and background matter. A lot.

    Background isn’t destiny, but it’s a damn good predictor of your future. You can tell an amazing amount of information about somebody based just on where they’re born (particularly what country) and how much education their parents have. The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree. Not usually.

    Take crime and punishment. I’m not surprised when a black male high-school drop-out ends up in prison. It’s (unfortunately) predictable. To know the odds in no way negates individual responsibility, but it does mean perhaps it makes more sense (morally and economically) to change the odds rather than build more prisons.

    Conservatives love giving lip service to individuality. They mock liberal sociologists (a term that indeed isgenerally redundant) for never holding individuals accountable for their actions. And sociologists may indeed be a bit slow to hold some individuals accountable for their actions. But that’s better than holding individuals accountable for the actions of others.

    Take Timothy McVeigh. I remember I was driving in California when the Oklahoma City bombing happening in 1995. The report on the radio talked about, “dark-skinned possibly Arab men seen fleeing the scene.”

    “No f*cking way!” I said to my friend. “There are no Arabs in Oklahoma. And if Arabs were bombing something, they would do somewhere else! These were crazy white guys.” Now I may be ignorant about the thriving Arab scene in Oklahoma City, but I happened to be right about the bombing not being done by an Arab, and also the more likely location of terrorist attack when it was done by Arabs.

    As Stanley Fish writes in the Times:

    In the brief period between the bombing and the emergence of McVeigh, speculation had centered on Arab terrorists and the culture of violence that was said to be woven into the fabric of the religion of Islam.

    But when it turned out that a white guy (with the help of a few of his friends) had done it, talk of “culture” suddenly ceased and was replaced by the vocabulary and mantras of individualism: each of us is a single, free agent; blaming something called “culture” was just a way of off-loading responsibility for the deeds we commit.
    …
    If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.

    Need more proof? Compare the flack Obama got from the right for what Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached with the flack George Bush got for the preachings of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Except Bush didn’t get any flack.

    So now there are those who say the proposed mosque in Lower Manhattan is “symbolic of a culture that wants to kill Americans.” (Ironic since more Muslims want to be American than kill Americans.) But when a crazy American slashes an innocent Muslim, the right is quick to say that the stabbing is “the act of a disturbed individual” and “we shouldn’t let anyone suggest that this criminal reflects anybody but himself.”

    So let me get this straight: peaceful tolerant Americans who want to build a large mosque and community center represent foreign terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center and killed Americans; but hate-filled Americans who actually commit real acts of violence against Muslims represent… nothing at all.

    Got it.

    Why does my head feel like its about to explode?

  • News Bueno or News Malo?

    You want the good news or the bad news?

    Good news! “Mexico arrests drug trafficker Edgar ‘Barbie’ Valdez.” Pop the corks! But I wasn’t even going to post on that cause who the f*ck cares? It’s not like it will change anything or win the war on drugs. From the NYT:

    Mr. Valdez, who was born in Laredo, Tex., faces an indictment in United States District Court….

    The arrest came the same day that the head of the federal police said 3,200 officers had been dismissed this year, about a tenth of the force, because they had failed lie detector and other tests designed to root out corruption.

    About an hour after the announcement of Mr. Valdez’s arrest, Mr. Calderón appeared in a campaign-style televised announcement, with scenes of the police on the march, a high-tech war room and families, declaring that the fight against crime “is worth it. You are the reason.”

    You tell ’em, Felipe! Or, as Johnny Cash might say, “He was a young cowboy and he said he’d done wrong.”

    Bad news: “Mayor in Mexican Border State Killed.”

    Hidalgo Mayor Marco Antonio Leal Garcia was the second mayor to be assassinated in the past two weeks in the area.
    …
    “This cowardly crime, and the reprehensible violent acts that occurred recently in this state, strengthen the commitment of the Mexican government to continue fighting the criminal gangs that seek to intimidate the families of Tamaulipas,” Calderon’s office said in a statement.

    Oh… poor Filipe.

    So was this a good or bad day. I’d say bad. The killing of a mayor is worse than any stupid arrest.

  • My Hood

    My Hood

    Of all the places for heaven on earth, people rarely think of Queens.

    I was just about to get to work when a friend called and said to meet him in the park for a picnic. So off we went to meet him and his son. My friend, a restaurant owner from Egypt (he’s been featured on all the big TV-Chef shows with Bourdain, Zimmern, Jamie Oliver, Bobby Flay) is a well traveled man. And his favorite place in the world? “Astoria is heaven,” he said. “Where else do you find the whole world in a few blocks? And everybody getting along.”

    He may have a point.

    We got left-wing art:

     

     

    Right-wing art:

     

    And then in the park, a man approached looking suspiciously like Buzz Lightyear on a bike.

     

    Turns out the man wascarrying a plane. A small plane, but one that indeed flies. A model plane? Well, yes, but cooler. FPV-flying, I learned, means first-person-view flying. There’s a camera on front and he puts on goggles and flies from the plane’s perspective.

    There’s also a second camera to record. He was trying out a new hi-def camera. Hopefully there will be a video of it soon.

     

    “Like a predator drone?” I asked.

    “No,” he said, “Because they can fly on their own. Without me, this crashes.”

    Contact! (For take off, there are no wheels)


    I’ll be damned if it didn’t fly around Roosevelt Island, buzz a tug boat, and make a soft and successful landing (especially when you consider there are no wheels).

    Then on the way home we passed a Jersey farm stand on the most un-rural of streets (21st Street) and bought some peaches, corn, and tomatoes.

     

    And this was just today. Last week we even our very own alligator on the loose just two short blocks from my home.


    I really should leave the house more.

    I probably would if it weren’t for the gators on the loose!

    [Update:Turns out it’s horrible here.]

  • Las Vegas Shooting “Justified”

    As predicted, the killing of unarmed Trevon Cole in Las Vegas, based on bad tactics, a bad warrant, bad flashlight batteries (?!), a bad track record, misinformation, mis-identification was found to be justified.

    Despite contradictory statements by nearly everyone else who testified, Yant stood by his story that he fired the fatal shot only after Cole stood up, turned and thrust his hands toward Yant as if he had a gun.

    Yant testified: “Unfortunately he made an aggressive act toward me. He made me do my job.”

    Silly me. All this time I thought the job of police officers was to uphold the laws and state and federal constitutions.

  • Mayor Mike’s Mosque Matters

    New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg usually makes sense. I particularly like it when he berates citizenry over common sense issues. “People,” he whines, “You gotta stop [fill in the blank].” Makes me all sheepish and look at my toes and mumble, “Sorry, Mister Mayor.” And I didn’t even do what he’s complaining about!

    Of course it’s not cool to like politicians. Especially rich white whiny ones. And he’s certainly not perfect (see: over-development and Atlantic Yards Project). But he’s a good mayor and we’ll miss him when he’s gone. Mark my words.

    I watched the whole thing so you don’t have to. The highlights:

    1:10 — Tells the “real America” camp to back off.

    2:54 — Uses the word “repudiate” correctly.

    4:10 — “Islam did not attack the World Trade Center. Al Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few… is unfair and un-American.”

    7:15 — “And there are people… who are hoping that a compromise will end the debate. But it won’t. The question will then become, ‘How big should the no mosque zone be around the world trade center site?’ There’s already a mosque four blocks away. Should it be moved? This is a test of our commitment to American values. And we have to have the courage of our convictions. … We must put our faith in the freedoms than have sustained our great country for 200 years.

    9:15 — He reads a quote from the Imam in question. It’s too long to transcribe, but worth a listen.

    10:25 — Mike closes with, “We will keep New York the most open, diverse, tolerant and free city in the World.”

    Take that, all you haters. Bloomberg makes me proud to be a New Yorker.