In this era of tight budgets, smaller cities and towns should consider disbanding the local SWAT team. They’ll save money on training, equipment and overtime. They’ll be returning to a less aggressive, less militaristic, more community-oriented method of policing. And though there always will be crime, it seems unlikely that should they do away with SWAT, towns like Eufaula will…
Chief Hylton… Where were you?
Prince George’s County Police Department Chief Roberto L. Hylton has been very quick to express outrage at the beat down a few of his officers gave to a college student. I’m just curious where chief Hylton was that night. Did he have somewhere more important to be? Really. Where was he if not out there with his officers? I don’t…
You get fired for lying
The beating looks bad (oh, hell, it is bad), but will be defending by some. Hell, it isn’t easy being told to restore order in riot. But lying on your report? Now that gets you fired. But regardless of the specifics, what are you supposed to do with thousands of stupid drunk stupid college students “celebrating” (AKA: good-spirited rioting). This…
Talking Traffic
Streetsblog New York did an interview with me about police and traffic enforcement. It’s a good interview, even if “Talking Traffic with Peter Moskos” sounds like the world’s worst Sunday morning AM radio show.
History Lesson
“Southern Succession and the Civil War were about slavery.” If your response is, “duh!” then just ignore this. But if you believe otherwise, if you think hundreds of thousands of people were fighting and dying for the principle of preserving the union or abstract concepts of state’s rights, if you think Robert Lee was an abolitionist, if you think the…
Useless Air Marshals?
If Tennessee Republican Congressman John Duncan is to be believed, we spend $860 million for the Air Marshal Service. They make an average of 4.2 arrests per year. Not per officer. But the entire agency. That works out to $200 million per arrest. Now I’m the first to say let’s not judge police by arrest stats. But… I would like…
Odd Are, It’s Wrong
There’s a good article by Tom Siegfried in Science News about what’s wrong with statistics. Take the idea of statistical significance. Much of social science is based on the (very arbitrary) idea that for any given correlation, there should be a less than 5% chance of that result being due to random chance. [And as any sociology grad student knows,…
Bring out your dead
An excellent essay by Chicago Police Officer Martin Preib in Chicago’s Newcity. The dead seek the lowest places in Chicago: We find them in basements, laundry rooms, on floors next to couches, sticking out of two parked cars or shrubs next to the sidewalk. It is more than gravity that pulls them down, for in every dead body there is…
Give Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld some credit!
Baltimore homicides at 33-year low! And Frederick Bealefeld deserves credit. He’s the best commish at least since I’ve known Baltimore (which goes back now about 11 years and six commissioners). And unlike certain past commissioners (yes, Eddie, I’m talking about you), Bealefeld isn’t a felon. [note: Convicted felon Ed Norris was a chicken-shit coward bastard to me on his radio…
Arrests in the NYPD
I’ve always said the Blue Wall of Silence is vastly overrated (for reasons I’m not going to get into today). Do cops get away with murder, literally or figuratively? The short answer is no. Unless, of course, one counts traffic violation and illegal parking as murder. What I do find interesting is that the NYPD, as reported by Al Baker…