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  • Henry Louis Gates Jr. Arrested

    Apparently for pissing off a Cambridge cop who responded to a burglary call. Gates had sort of broken into his own house because the key didn’t work. A witness called police. Words are exchanged and Gates gets cuffed for dis con.

    It’s hard to overstate just how esteemed of an intellectual Harvard Professor Gates is.

    If you’re a police officer and run into the director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research–even if he is rude to you–best to let it slide. Really.

    But this arrest has as much to do with class conflict as it does with race. There’s a big blue-collar/egghead divide back in what used to be my home town. I can imagine the unfortunate glee the cop felt as he locked up this big-shot intellectual. That glee is probably tempered significantly by national news coverage.

    The AP story by Melissa Trujillo.

    [Update: The police report is here. All charges have been dropped. And Al Sharpton chimes in. Read Gates’ reply in gawker.]

  • The future with legal marijuana

    There can be a future with legal and regulated drugs.

    A drug deal plays out, California-style:

    A conservatively dressed courier drives a company-leased Smart Car to an apartment on a weekday afternoon. Erick Alvaro hands over a white paper bag to his 58-year-old customer, who inspects the bag to ensure that everything he ordered over the phone is there.

    An eighth-ounce of organic marijuana buds for treating his seasonal allergies? Check. An eighth of a different strain for insomnia? Check. THC-infused lozenges and tea bags? Check and check, with a free herb-laced cookie thrown in as a thank-you gift.

    It’s a $102 credit-card transaction carried out with the practiced efficiency of a home-delivered pizza

    The story by Marcus Wohlsen and Lisa Leff in the Seattle Times.

    [Thanks to Sgt. “they served him to me with his pants around his ankles” T.]

  • Two officers shot

    Two officers down in Baltimore. Supposedly in stable condition. Supposedly returned fire, which is a good sign.

  • That’s the way it was

    That’s the way it was


    Walter Cronkite died Friday. He was 92. On his 90th birthday he told the Daily News, “I would like to think I’m still quite capable of covering a story.”

    He was known for knowing a failed war when he saw one. Not just Vietnam. He was against the War on Drugs and a friend of LEAP.

  • Four-week police-officer training

    I may be mistaken, but what is going on in Portland sounds like a very good idea to me.

    Give cops four weeks of training: defensive tactics, firearms and the law. Then let them ride with FTOs. And then when the academy class begins, they join the class.

    Remember, it’s not like a class is starting every week or even every month. The idea is that it’s better to have trainees learn on the street (and take that knowledge into the academy) than have pre-hires getting paid to hang around burnt-out desk jockies doing makework.

    Here’s the story by Maxine Bernstein in the Oregonian.

    Look… everybody will be green as hell when they hit the streets. And that doesn’t matter if it’s 6 months or 1 month of training. Besides, classroom training is not well used anyway. Of my six months in the academy. I’d say that one month was wasted by sitting in an empty room or getting yelled at. Another 2 months were all but wasted with B.S. “classes” where nothing was really learned. That leaves three months of training that was actually productive. And I think I’m being generous.

    In fact, after an effective one-month training and some time on the street, I’d be very curious to know what if anything the officers actually learn in four more months of academy training.

  • “Excited Delirium”

    Can you die from it? Does it exist? The Taser company, not surprisingly, says yes. Because if and when people die from “excited delirium,” there seems to be a good chance it will happen after being Tasered.

    Laura Sullivan of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” has a good report on this.

    Here’s part one and part two.

    (Thanks to Marc)

  • The Wire Comes to Brooklyn… sort of

    Fatal gun battle outside party for wife of Jamie Hector, who played Marlo Stanfield on ‘The Wire’

    The story by Kenny Porpora, Alison Gendar, and Samuel Goldsmithin in the New York Daily News.

  • Double lock your handcuffs

    In the academy we were taught to always double lock our cuffs. Usually I didn’t. But I should have. And so should you.

  • John Jay College student’s killer get life without parole

    “Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Abraham Gerges called Littlejohn, 44, an unrepentant ‘predator’ who should never taste freedom again.”

    The story in the Daily News

  • The Idea of “Juvenile”

    The state has an archaic system in which we operate under the misimpression that everyone under 18 can be rehabilitated for repeatedly committing violent crimes. We must find a way to provide rehabilitation, but also accountability and punishment.

    That’s kind of hardcore coming from, of all places, the office of Baltimore State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy. Her office, as I write about in my book, is often at odds with police officers.

    I’m not against the conceptof “juvenile justice.” I do think that kids who commit crimes should be treated differently than adults. But 17-year-olds? Especially when they’re fathers, murderers, and drug dealers? They’re no longer kids. I can’t tell you how many times I had to treat an arrested 16 or 17-year-old as a “juvenile” only to find no adults who could or were willing to deal with this violent man anymore.

    These so-called kids certainly don’t see themselves as kids. They don’t look like kids. They certainly don’t play like kids. Why treat them like kids? How many times does somebody have to locked up for violent crimes before they’re kept off the street and away from other?

    Maybe lowering the adult age to 16 would be good start. Given the environments some kids grow up in, childhood is an unfortunately idealistic concept as best. But at some point, for some kids, we simply gotta put them away. If you disagree, and it’s touching if you do, I recommend you go to the juvie home and work on adopting an unloved teenager. But whatever problems have developed need to be headed off long before the teen years.

    The issue here is Lamont Davis. He’s been arrested 15 times since he was ten. Lamont is a very bad boy. In the past year and a half since Davis has been in custody of juvenile services, he’s been arrested and charged in fiveincidents. God only knows how many times he hurt people and didn’t get caught.

    Recently Davis yoked (robbed and beat) a woman. He was arrested and plead guilty on July 1st.

    On July 2nd, soon after Davis cut off his home monitoring bracelet, a five-year-old girl apparently got in the path of one of his bullets. She may not make it. Two other guys were hit as well.

    Justin Fenton has the story in the Sun.
    Willie Bosket comes to mind. I’m not a fan of prison. But some people need to be put away for a long time. I nominate Davis. And then let’s come up with some ideas and be willing to spend some money to prevent such cases from happening again.