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  • Crime and arrests down in Baltimore

    A good article by Ben Nuckols about crime in Baltimore and the good things happening under Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld.

    In a blighted west Baltimore neighborhood, Lt. Ian Dombroski turns his unmarked police car around a corner and sees several men standing outside a liquor store. They scatter immediately.

    Dombroski knows they’re probably selling drugs, but he keeps driving. Five years ago, he said, officers who happened upon a similar scene wouldn’t take such a selective approach.

    “We’d all jump out, grab all the junkies, find out who had the drugs on ’em, lock ’em up, and that might be three or four drug arrests right there,” Dombroski said. “And we’d go, ‘Good, those are numbers.’”

    But under Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, officers in one of the nation’s most violent cities are no longer being told to beef up arrest statistics. The number of arrests has declined the past two years. Yet homicides and shootings are down, too — to totals not seen since the late 1980s.

  • New York Black and Latinos Frisked 9 Times as Often as Whites

    Ninety percent of those stopped by the NYPD are black and latino. So says the New York Times. Is this a cause for concern? I don’t know. Something certainly bothers me when my male black and hispanic students complain of being stopped by the police often (and often rudely stopped).

    But there is one touchy and politically incorrect fact that seems remiss not to mention: nine-in-ten murderers in New York are black or hispanic (just seven percent are white) [here’s a previous post].

    Police go where the violent crime is. And if you work in a neighborhood were the robbers and murderers are black or hispanic, you stop black or hispanic people.

    Given the raw data, the racial disparity doesn’t seem to be the problem. But what do I know? I don’t get frisked. I’m white and live in a safe neighborhood.

    The questions we should be discussing is whether or not aggressive stop-and-frisks are an effective crime prevention strategy. I like the idea that criminals are leaving their guns at home rather than risk being stopped, frisked, and arrested by the NYPD. Is that a result of stop-and-frisks? I don’t know. Do the crime prevention benefits outweigh the negative community interactions with innocent people? 575,000 stops yielded 762 guns. That doesn’t seem like a great hit rate to me.

    If frisks are done because officers really have reasonable suspicion that a suspect is armed, go for it. But if officers are simply trying to meet “productivity goals” (read: quotas), something is very wrong.

  • Mexican drug raid wins drug war!

    Mexican drug raid wins drug war!

    In 2007, Mexican and US drug agents raided a home in Mexico City. Over $200,000,000 in cash was found. Lot’s of other stuff, too. Like tigers and gold guns!
    It’s pretty impressive. I put the pictures in a PDF file.

    It’s not recent, but I just got an email with the pictures from a student. Unlike a lot of forwarded email sent around, this one is true.

    Amazing how, in hindsight, this one raid really changed the tide in the war on drugs. I will be the first to admit that I was wrong. I mean, since this raid in 2007, drug barons have finally gotten the message that drugs simply do not pay.

    Rule of law has returned to Mexico and police there can now wear their uniform with safety and pride. The economy has improved and fewer illegal immigrants are forced by drug-war violence to come to the US.

    Hell, even in the US drug supply has been so squeezed that every measurable indicator shows that drug use has plummeted.

    Best of all, the Cubs won the World Series last year!

    Did I almost mention that the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs?

    There’s a lake of stew and of whiskey too
    You can paddle all around ’em in a big canoe.

    I’ll see you all this coming fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

  • Off Duty Balto Officer Cut in Harford County

    The story in the Sun.

    The guys who attacked him, in what seems to be a case of road rage, were quick to drop the N-Bomb and talk about hanging Detective Cook, who is black.

    For just being cut in the eye, give Cook credit for being calm on professional on the phone.

    Officers move from the city in part so they don’t have to carry their gun. That’s not always a smart choice.

  • The NYPD Tapes

    A reader pointed me to this story in New York’s Village Voice.

    In the 81st Precinct in New York City, a cop, Schoolcraft, secretly recorded roll call and other happenings over the course of the year.

    Bold.

    Though all he seems to show is something we all should already know. In the NYPD, everybody is under intense pressure to produce good “stats” (arrests and citations) and reduce bad stats (crime numbers). I suppose the good of the tapes is the department may finally have to stop trying to say with a straight face that officers are not under pressure to meet arrest and citation quotas. Compstat has done a lot of good. But the impact of a stat-driven culture on the incoming rank-and-file is not very productive.

    The article, which is a bit too long (though I look forward to reading the next installment!), makes some claims I strongly disagree with. For instance, responding officer at a scene certainly has a responsibility to judge the validity of a victim’s claim. Police patrol officers are not just report writers. And detectives who claim otherwise are doing a grave disservice to the majority of police officers.

    Overall, reading the story and listening to some of the recordings, I couldn’t help but think what good leaders these were. The men and women leading roll call look out for their troops, warn them of bureaucratic nightmares, and try an instill a strong work ethic.

    And some of the stories just make me nostalgic for my policing days. The sergeant who deadpans the danger of mine shafts in Bed-Stuy? What a progressive pedagogical approach (I’m trying to use fancy words here) to help officers not get in trouble for failing to carry… whistle holders. Yes, in the police word, where you put your life on the line almost every day, if they want to, they can bang you for sh*t like not carrying a whistle holder. (Just FYI, I had previously never heardof a whistle holder. In Baltimore, I managed to hold my whistle just fine without a dedicated whistle holder. The whistle, it turns out, makes an excellent key chain for the easy to lose but important to have handcuff key.)

    Nobody’s got your whistle holder, and half of you don’t have your whistle. That’s unacceptable. When I fall down the mine shaft, I’m the only one that’s going to be able to call for help. The rest of you are going to have to fire off your gun, and they’ll give you a [reprimand] for that.

    I love this guy!

    And is this really too much to ask?: “You want to draw penises, draw them in your own memo book.” Hard to argue with that request.

    But I think the only reason we didn’t “cock” memo books in the Eastern was because Baltimore cops don’t have memo books. (Is there a point to memo books except creating more paperwork?) Makes me think of my buddy who reads this blog (yeah, I’m talking about you). He would wait for any new LT to finish roll call with the very decent question, “Does anybody have anything?” To which he would answer with unbridled glee, “I have this horrible burning sensation when I pee!”

    Cracked me up every time.

    Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.

  • Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and taser!

    Damn Yankees. The Orioles lost. It was kind of a mismatch. But the O’s did at least make things interesting by getting the tying runs on base in the 9th.

    There was some minor scuffle near me that resulted in many crying children. Oh, nothing like the bleachers in Yankee Stadium to make me want to root against the Yankees even more! During this curfuffle, the bleacher crowd shifted in chant from “Ass-hole” to (with the cadence of, “Let’s-Go-Yan-kees”): “Use-The-Tas-er!” I was amused.

  • Crowd stampede at Netherlands WWII ceremony

    I’m not a big fan of crowds. Mobs do stupid things–both intentionally and through panic. I always like having an out.

    Interestingly, I’ve always felt a little more claustrophobic in Dutch crowds. I think they’re used to less personal space so they get tighter together (which is also a sign of their general civility). The Dutch also sometimes seem a little less willing to move out of the way in crowded bars (and yet I willget to the bathroom.). Though it might be just that the Dutch are so damn tall. I’m 5’9″. I feel short in Amsterdam; I can’t see over anybody! (In Mexico, though, I feel like a giant.)

    My mom was in this crowd. There’s English in that link from the BBC. Here’s the Dutch:

    My mother wrote this:

    Today is Remembrance Day for the victims of WWII. Queen Beatrix and other dignitaries lay wreaths at the National Monument on Dam Square. The city of Amsterdam observes two minutes of silence at 8PM.[Actually I think it’s the whole country and it’s a very respectful and moving tradition.]I biked over there, locked my bike a short distance away and was standing in front of a building from where we could see the huge screen and follow the event. It is a moving experience to be present at this kind of gathering, I don’t think I have ever witnessed this huge amount of people gathered anywhere.

    Just after the moment of silence, a very loud shriek could be heard not that far away from where I was standing. Immediately, a huge amount of people started to move away from where the sound had come from. It was scary when this mass of people attempted to run away from the shout. It had not reached the stage of panic. I was somewhat protected/cushioned by three rows of people in front of me, but I could easily imagine what could have happened once the mass of people had really been in motion. Someone shouted in a very comforting voice “rustig” for people to remain calm which they did in my immediate area. Someone next to me remarked that he did not hear a bomb go. Just the thought of it. Moments later I could see police officers leading a person away and things returned to normal. An hour later, once I was home again, I listened to the news on the radio. It was reported that fifty persons had been injured.

  • Good Use of Taser

    I don’t think I’ve ever used that headline before.

    I don’t like Tasers, generally. But if you run from police and can’t be easily caught? I got no problem.

    It’s tasing in situations of unarmed passive non-compliance that I strongly object to.

    I’m going to the Yankee game tomorrow. Go O’s!

  • Arrest made in Times Square bomb

    A US citizen from Pakistan. The story in the New York Times.

  • This one is just our crumbling infustruction

    From the Times:

    New York authorities are investigating a manhole fire that startled passers-by just a few blocks from where a Times Square car bomb failed to detonate over the weekend.

    A spokesman for the Con Edison utility says smoking underground electrical cables caused the fire Monday afternoon.