I have no special insight into this. I really don’t know what to make of it. My first thoughts are give the guy a break.
The deputy major of the Baltimore Police Department’s Eastern District has been suspended pending an internal investigation into allegations that he failed to disclose a series of text messages he exchanged with a man sought on a domestic violence warrant, days before authorities say he killed his wife.
Here’s the Sun’sreport.
And Peter Hermann’s.
Port Authority of New York and Jersey is not a bad place to work. They run all the airports and most of the bridges. I got to say, I’m a little jealous that if I were a Port Authority Police Officer, I would be making $86,467 in base pay. Still, I wouldn’t switch back. Police officers do risk more than professors. Plus, they don’t get summers off.
You can check out all the Port Authority salaries online (search under public safety). And overtime? How can you make over $120K in overtime!?
There are a lot of good police officers risking their lives and working hard for too little money in Baltimore and other poor cities around America. Baltimore City police start around $41,000. These officers need more money. Mostpolice need to be paid more (sorry my Long Island brethren, I think you’re paid just about right).
Police should be paid more than sanitation workers and firefighters. Unlike the latter two jobs, most big-city police departments are well below their budgeted staffing levels. That’s why Baltimore had to go Puerto Rico looking for cops (they found some, too).
Suffolk County has a starting salary of about $60,000 and top salary after 5 years about $100,000. And that’s not including overtime. Plus, compared to policing in a poor rough city, the job is safer (and let’s be honest, easier–though there are some poor rough parts of Long Island).
The result? No shortage of qualified applicants. You have to pay something like $100 just to takethe civil service exam. You and 29,000 others.
Is $100,000 too much for a police officer? I don’t think so. And you might notice one thing about well-paying police departments like the Port Authority and Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island. You rarely if ever hear about scandals coming of these police departments. If you pay men and women like professionals, they’re more likely to act like professionals. That shouldn’t be a surprise. At some level you get what you pay for.
I’ve always wondered and never knew how much police-related lawsuits cost the city. Last year it was $35 million for settlements related to NYPD action. That up 40% over the previous year.
The headline in the Daily News calls the $35 million figure “staggering.” It doesn’t strike me as that high. $8 a resident or $1,000 per officer? I got $8.
I was actually kind of hoping the number would be much higher. Then I could use the figure to justify higher police pay as saving money if it could reduce lawsuits.
Besides, for all agencies the city paid out $568 million in settlements and judgments last year. Now that’s too high.
This great historical tidbit is from the Edinburgh Review of July 1852. The original article, in pdf form, is here. The whole journal can be found on google books.
I discovered this through Marjie Bloy’s excellent website on English history. She has a lot on Sir Robert Peel and early police (that’s how I found it).
During the night they never cease patrolling the whole time they are on duty, being forbidden even to sit down. The police district is mapped out into divisions, these into sub-divisions, these into sections and these into beats, all being numbered and the limits carefully defined. To every beat certain constables are specifically assigned, and they are provided with little maps called beat-cards. The business of the constable on duty is to walk around his beat in a fixed time according to an appointed route. As soon as he has gone over it, he immediately begins his rounds again, so that the patrolling sergeant knows at any moment where the constable ought to be found unless something unusual has occurred. In this way every street, road, lane, alley and court within the Metropolitan Police District is visited constantly day and night by some of the police. The beats vary considerably in size. In those parts of the town that are open and occupied by the wealthier classes, an occasional visit is sufficient but where the character and density of the population is different, the throng and pressure of the traffic greater and the streets intricately designed the frequency of visits is increased. Within a circle of six miles from the centre of Kensington the beats are usually covered in periods varying from seven to twenty-five minutes and there are points which are never free from inspection.
When anything occurs in the district worth communicating the intelligence is conveyed from one constable to another until it reaches the station house, thence, by an admirable arrangement of routes and messengers to the headquarters of the central office in Whitehall. Then it can be radiated along lines to each divisional station-house to every constable. This rapid transmission of intelligence is important as regards the detection of crime but especially as a means of preserving the city from riot. The effectiveness of this was proved with the disturbances of 1832 [the Reform Act riots]. In case of emergency the Commissioners could use this system to collect all 5,500 men in one place in two hours. There has therefore been no need to call upon troops. All crimes have been reduced but, because of this system, especially felonies, assaults and larcenies. Few people now dare carry weapons. Indeed many criminals have moved elsewhere for safety and easier work.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that the federal government will no longer raid medical-marijuana dispensaries was cheered by California dealers as well as state legislators who seek to legalize and tax sales of the drug.
…
Marijuana is [estimated as] a $14 billion crop in California. Taxing the drug $50 an ounce… would generate more than $1 billion annually for a cash-strapped state that closed a $42 billion budget deficit just last month.
Read Stu Woo and Justin Scheck’s articlein the Wall Street Journal.
When you work midnights, there’s no tomorrow. While you’re up, everything is “today.” Then, when you head home, you know you’ve got to be at work again on the same day. Tonight. Today. There is no “tomorrow.” It never comes.
To all the cops working the midnight shift, here’s to the start of daylight saving’s time! One shorter night at work and an extra hour before sunrise. Life just got a little better.
The Vice President of the NAACP is out there copping like a junkie? He’s arrested and then not charged. I’m shocked. Shocked.
Police say Staten, who is an executive committee member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Maryland conference, was in the driver’s seat of a car that had stopped near Pennsylvania Avenue and Dolphin Street, which police say is a well-known drug market.
Officers in an unmarked vehicle say a man walked away from a large crowd of people huddled on a street corner and climb into the passenger seat of a silver-colored vehicle.
They wrote in charging documents that they watched a back-seat passenger hand cash to a man standing outside his window in exchange for suspected drugs.
Officers approached the vehicle and found a folded-up dollar bill containing suspected heroin and two pills of suboxone, also known as buprenorphine, a medication used to treat heroin addiction, in the possession of the back-seat passenger, Kevin Logan, 44.
Police found Staten in possession of additional suboxone pills inside a case, and in the driver’s side door. They also recovered a half-smoked marijuana cigarette.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says a passenger told officers that Staten had brought him to the area to buy heroin.
Staten and Logan were taken to Central Booking, where Logan was charged with two counts of drug possession. Staten, of Pikesville, was released without charges.
The Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #3 is pleased to announce and support the1st Annual “Ed Norris Bike Ride” Fundraiser to be held on Saturday, March 28th, that will support the newly established Baltimore Metropolitan FOP Police Widows and Children’s Fund.
How can this be? I’m all for bike rides and raising money for good causes, but I don’t get it. My buddy Ed Norris is a convicted felon. Police are forbidden to associate with felons.
Granted, in Baltimore it’s hard to go out and not to associate with some felons. A nice guy who served me beer was a felon. Now I pretended I didn’t know that, but I always assumed that if the powers that were came down and tole me I couldn’t drink there, I would have found a new bar.
Anyway, if you’re not a police officer, by all means ride and raise money. If you are a police officer or a representative of the FOP, can you explain to me why Ed Norris is an A-OK felon but other felons aren’t?
I guess this is what’s on my mind: if you don’t have sympathy for police officers hanging out with familymembers who are felons, why do you think it’s OK for you to chooseto hang out with felon Ed Norris?
Long before the Simpsons did it, my brother started quoting ideas from the Economistjust to sound smart. I’ll be damned if quoting from them doesn’tmake him sound smarter!
If you don’t read the Economist, you should. It’s notan economics journal. Just get over the name. It’s a world newspaper. But a magazine. And British. Like Timeand Newsweek. But for smart folk.
The Economistis generally a bit too economically conservative for my tastes, but that’s OK. It’s still good. The Economistis good news reporting. It’s what educated people read. And its got great high-brow fluff sections! Plus a killer obit.
I mention this not because I have a stake, but because the Economisthas a bunch of stories this week about the war on drugs. They’re against it.
To be honest, I haven’t actually read yet the articles yet. I just got the issue in the mail today and a helpful heads-up in a comment.
But without having read it, I can pretty much guarantee that it’s informative, interesting, and, more often than not, right. That’s because it’s the Economist.