In Mexico, on the road between Merida and Campeche, you pass a large prison (filled with people from Mexico City, they say). Lining the highway are a dozen or so stores selling hammocks and other labor-intensive hand-crafted good. They’re made by prisoners.
Why don’t we have this?
New York City store owner and would be robbery victim shoots all 4 bad guys, killing two.
The Daily Newshas the best coverage:
The furious employee who had been pistol-whipped ran out of the store and leaned over the mortally wounded Footmon, cursing at him, witnesses said.
The worker went back into the store and dragged Morgan’s body onto the sidewalk, yelling at him and kicking him, witnesses said.
“He stood over the body cursing him and shaking him, even though he was dead,” said Matthew Viane, 38, who lives in the neighborhood. “He was screaming at him and stomping him. “He [the employee] said, ‘You were going to kill me? Now you’re dead!’”
I’m off to Chicago for my 20th high-school reunion. Should be fun!
Still haven’t bought my book? It ain’t like my blog pays the rent. Actually my book doesn’t either, but I still want it to sell.
The paperback edition of Cop in the Hood is out and in stock!
Better yet, ask your local bookstore (and have them stock it).
At only $11.43 (from Amazon.com), even the cheapest of bastards can afford to buy one without resorting to late-shift shenanigans.
If you’re a professor, think of how much your students will like you for assigning such a cheap book. Plus, they will respect you for assigning something good to read. Indeed, according to the latest polls, 87% of college students (a stat I just made up) love Cop in the Hood.
If you already bought the hardcover of Cop in the Hood, thanks! But you don’t have the extra chapter on foot patrol. Still, even I, in good faith, can’t tell you to buy my book twice. The American Interest article is a pretty good version of the new chapter.
A Kindle version is for sale, too.
And of course there’s always free. Just go to your local library. That doesn’t help me so much, but you can’t beat free.
And you can always show your appreciation by posting positive reviews on Amazon. Those five-star reviews are always welcomed.
In comments, Jack left a great link to this piece by Ruth Wisse, another Harvard professor. It is her “letter” to Skip Gates. Bold and very well written.
Dear Skip,
My first thought on hearing of your arrest was for your welfare, so I was relieved to learn that the case against you had been dropped and you were off to join your family on Martha’s Vineyard.
…
It seems it wasn’t the policeman doing the profiling, it was you. You played him for a racist cop and treated him disrespectfully.
…
Rather than taking offense at being racially profiled, weren’t you instead insulted that someone as prominent as you was being subjected to a regular police routine? A Harvard professor and public figure—should you have to be treated like an ordinary citizen? But that’s the greatness of this country: Enforcers of the law are expected to treat all alike, to protect the house of a black man no less carefully than that of white neighbors.
…
Since, inadvertently I assume, you have made the work of our police force more difficult than it already is, I wish that you would help set the record straight. You are the man to do it.
It’s worth reading the whole piece in the Harvard Crimson.
An article of mine, “Angels in Blue: The Virtues of Foot Patrol,” is being published in The American Interestmagazine. They’ve given me permission to spread the article around. But you have to buy the magazine to read all the other articles (seems only fair).
The article is adopted from a new chapter in the paperback edition of my book, Cop in the Hood, which is due out later this month.
The pattern today is when police start driving, they never “walk foot” again. That represents a loss for community and police alike. Foot patrol officers knew their neighborhood because in a real sense they were part of it. Beat cops watched people grow up, get jobs, or get in trouble.
…
Beyond a few token patrols, police chiefs say foot patrol is impossible nowadays because there simply aren’t enough officers to go around. But there aren’t fewer police officers than there used to be; they’re just assigned differently–riding in cars and chasing the radio. The reason police officers resists foot patrol is simple: They don’t like it. In a car culture, cars are status. Walking is bottom-of-the-barrel duty, and tough work–when it rains you get wet.
…
Just as overtime pay drives discretionary arrests, extra pocket money would change the very culture of patrol. Officers need towant to walk foot, and more money is a way to make them want it. Only with willing officers does foot patrol bring the best possible benefits.
Read the whole article here.
This just in over the transom:
Went to Loveland Festival in Sloterpark yesterday and a great time was had by all except [name removed] who was found by security to have two pills [of ecstasy] on him. Without saying a word, the security guy brought him to cops who took him to the station. After 90 minutes of waiting (no cell phone use), a cop came over, talked to him, and said two pills with no record, you’re free to go. No record was made of the incident. That could have gone worse.
I’m back from my whirlwind tour of southern Mexico. Yucatan, Chiapas, Campache, Tabasco, for two weeks, I ate and drank everything in sight with no ill effects.
Then on my first night in Baltimore I get sick. It put me off my game slightly today at the crab feast. But I still had a good time. Plus I won $50 in a raffle!
Thanks for all the good discussion while I’ve been gone. Mexico was great, but it’s good to be home.
Unless, of course, you happen to call this prison in California your home. Bad riots there. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced a prison race riot. But I can’t imagine anything much worse.
Bob Herbert, a very good columnist has a powerful op-ed attacking the police sergeant and defending Gates’ behavior. It is worth a read even if–especially if–you don’t agree with it.
By saying that Herbert is a good columnist doesn’t mean I agree with everything or even most of what he says. But whatever Herbert has to say, he says it well. I like reading him and thinking about his perspective.
The message that has gone out to the public is that powerful African-American leaders like Mr. Gates and President Obama will be very publicly slapped down for speaking up and speaking out about police misbehavior, and that the proper response if you think you are being unfairly targeted by the police because of your race is to chill.
I have nothing but contempt for that message.
Those who defend police behavior (as I often do) focus on the legality of specific situations. If the sergeant’s report is correct as written, I have no doubt the arrest was legally correct.
Those who attack police behavior (as I sometimes do) see this one arrest as symbolic of a greater pattern of racist police behavior. An arrest can be legally correct but morally wrong.
Your opinion on the Gates’ arrest probable depends on which perspective you like starting with. If you say, “What in the hell does slavery, Jim Crow laws, and a history of racism have to do with Gates’ arrest?!”, then you’re on the side of Sergeant Crowley.
If you heard about this arrest and said, “Here we go again,” then you agree with Gates.
Think of it this way: police are trained to think about “the totality” of the individual circumstance.
But society is more likely to judge collective circumstances in their totality.
Later in his column Herbert says, “While whites use illegal drugs at substantially higher percentages than blacks, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men.”
One can look at all the individual cases of men in prison and say that each one is OK. But collectively, something is wrong.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that all men in prison are guilty as charged. Is that enough? Is it enough to say there’s no problem with the racial disparity in prison simply because all the black drug offenders behind bars are guilty? Or does it matter that blacks are 13 times more likely than whites to be in prison for the same crime?
Now personally I think it’s a stretch to link, as Herbert does, Gates’ arrest to institutional racism in the entire criminal justice system. But I do agree that something about our criminal justice system is racist (mostly the war on drugs) and that is terribly terribly wrong.
I’m in the same place for two nights for the first time in a week. So I have a little more time to write and check email and the like.
I’m always amazed how different things are in Mexico from what most Americans think things are like. Maybe things are worse up in border towns in the north. Or some of the nasty resorts. Or in the slums of Mexico City. But down south, in the Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Chiapas, Campeche, and Tabasco, everything is fine. Clean. Civilized.
The drivers here (I’ve done a lot of driving) are generally more polite and courteous than drivers in America. Actually the people here might be more polite and courteous than Americans, too.
When it comes to driving, there are some different rules, like using your turn signal to indicate what others should do (a car with the left blinker going means you should pass it. Unless of course it’s turning left, but then it will pull over to right. Usually). But if you learn the rules, the driving here is easy and the roads fine (as long as you keep your eye out for topes, killer speed bumps).
Now yes, in the back roads of Chiapas, we did see a freshly butchered cow being sold on the side of the road. But who doesn’t like fresh meat? And that’s the country. There are still cowboys riding around.
You can even drink the water… at least in three cities. Maybe it’s clean everywhere. I don’t know. My rule is to ask a middle-class person. If people who can afford to buy bottled water say the tap water is fine, I’ll drink it. There’s no magical Mexican immunity from drinking dirty water. It’s either clean or it’s not.
With the recent flu problems, there is a great emphasis on hygiene. I wish I could say the same about New York City. Even many street food carts, and they’re a lot of them, have hand-washing stations.
And Villahermosa, where I am now, had a horrible flood two years ago. Today everything seems find. I dare you to go to New Orleans and say the same about the flood five years ago.
I know people talk with their feet and you don’t see too many Americans sneaking across the border to live here. It is poorer here. And people want a better life. I’m just saying it’s not all bad here. And it’s far less third-world than most Americans think.