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  • Strip Searches in Central Booking

    These stories happen every now and then. “Respectable” person gets arrested and is shocked (shocked!) that they’re strip searched in jail.

    Did you not know that people get strip searched after being arrested? Well they do. Now you know.

    If the idea that other people get strip searched doesn’t bother you today, right now, while you’re reading this, please don’t be all bothered should it happen to you when you’re arrested.

    But really, it’s not an outrage. Not in Baltimore’s Central Booking. It really is for everybody’s safety. No, it’s no fun to be stripped searched. But if you’re arrested, do you really want to be jail with otherpeople who haven’t been strip searched? Trust me, you don’t. You may not know this, but there are lots of bad criminals in jail.

  • SWAT team reform

    The Sun talks about SWAT-like teams.

  • Reporting the Police and Naming Names

    David Simon, of The Wire, Homicide, and The Corner fame, has written a very powerful article in the Washington Post.

    The Baltimore Police stopped releasing the names of officers involved in police-involved shootings. Personally, I like reading the names in the paper to see if it’s anybody I know. Sure I could call up a friend and find out. But usually I don’t. Odd are I won’t know the officer.

    I also know that if I had been involved in a police-involved shooting, I wouldn’t want my name released. I’d have plenty to worry about without my name in the papers. Reporters love presenting “both” sides of the story. But for most police-involved shootings, there is no “other” side. Often, as hard as it is for some to believe, the police are simply telling the truth.

    I wouldn’t want to read about the bastard’s mother saying what an angel her son was, at least since the last time he got out of jail for shooting somebody. I wouldn’t want to read about “witnesses” (who weren’t there) say how that white officer shot him in the back for no reason at all. No, I shot him because the S.O.B. was trying to kill me.

    Yet names should be released. If nothing else, this policy isn’t fair to officers who names are released. It leads one to think they’re guilty. The department is being sued by one of them.

    But what it comes down to for me is that deep down I strongly believe in the press (mistakes and all). My uncle was a newspaper editor before I was a cop. Before I ever held a gun I was raising hell writing for the Evanstonian, my high-school newspaper. You might believe in the Second Amendment; I believe in the First.

    Freedom of the Press is listed in the First Amendment for a reason. As a free country, we need a free press. In a free society, police should be held accountable to the public. What’s the alternative?

    Read Simon’s piece. He’s a good writer. It’ll make you think. And that good.

    In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.

    Part of the reason this country is in such a mess right now is because not enough people know what’s going on. They don’t read newspapers. They don’t know the facts. They’re ignorant.

    Talk radio and the morning zoo is not a recipe for a well-reasoned worldview. Even the best TV news is horrible (except for the NewsHour). Between the right blaming “The Media” for almost everything (the answer to media bias is more media) and the economic realities killing the newspaper business, I worry. A less powerful press is not good for our country or our freedom.

  • Rockefeller Drug Laws Near End

    With [David] Paterson in the governor’s mansion and Democrats in control of both houses of the State Legislature, an aggressive effort is under way to finally dismantle what remains of the stringent 1970s-era drug laws, which imposed stiff mandatory sentences as a way to combat the heroin epidemic then gripping New York City.

    Here‘s the story in the Times.

  • “So I killed Someone”

    “So I killed someone,” Keith Phoenix, 28, told New York police detectives who found him hiding in the bathroom of a Yonkers apartment, the police said. “That makes me a bad guy?”

    Er, uh… yeah. It does.

    The story is in the Times.

  • Four Shot in Eastern

    None killed.

  • B*tch, stop lying!

    Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora claims that US cocaine prices have increased 100% and purity dropped by 35% since the Mexican crackdown began in 2006.

    Really? Let’s examine that, shall we?

    In April 2007 John Walters (the drug czar) said that cocaine prices had declined 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per pure gram of cocaine. Of course he might have been lying. But let’s accept that figure as the base point for 2006. $135.

    Since then, according to the prohibitionists, the retail price of cocaine has doubled. Plus purity has gone down 35% (adding another 35% to the price or a pure gram). So by logic the retail price of cocaine should be $270 per pure gram of cocaine.

    According to shady data from the DEA, the price of cocaine in September 2008 was $183. Not $270, mind you, but that would still be a substantial increase compared to 2006.

    But I don’t believe the $183 figure. Not just because I’m cynical, but because elsewhere, you see (supposedly using the same STRIDE source for data), the US government lists the price of as $124 per pure gram. Hmmmmmm. Curious.

    So which one is it? The 235% percent price increase? The 50% price increase? Or the 5% price decrease? If I were a betting man, I’d guess the latter.

    See the DEA keeps two sets of books. One is used to claim the price goes up ($183); the other to use as the low price ($124) so that next yearthey can say the price went up. Just watch. I’ve been keeping track.

    As far as I can tell, this system of lies became policy in September, 2007. That’s when they claimed the price of cocaine in April 2005 was $94. Really? Because if you remember from six paragraphs up (and they’re really dependent on you not remembering), the DEA said in April 2007 that cocaine prices had declined 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per pure gram of cocaine. Zoinks! We’ve come full circle.

    You’ve got to admire their chutzpah. They just make things up with a straight face. Do they really think nobody will notice? To believe that we’re winning the war on drugs requires a willing suspension of disbelief and a very short memory.

    No doubt in 2010 the DEA will claim they’ve always said the 2008 price of cocaine was $124. You got a problem with that?

    In further amazing displays of chuzpah, the DEA says that seizure data “indicate decreased cocaine availability beginning in early 2007. According to Federal-wide Drug Seizure System (FDSS) data, quarterly cocaine seizures by federal agencies have decreased significantly since the first quarter of 2007.” So lessseizure means we’re winning the war drugs? Last time I checked they said that moreseizures mean we’re winning.

    My head hurts.

    I suppose when usage rates dip they’ll stop talking about price. And when use goes up, they’ll talk about seizures. And when that gets old, we’ll go back to rising prices.

    What’s amazing about this game is that the DEA can’t come up with anysingle standard that shows success.

    The war on drugs is such a beautiful war because we never stop winning! No wonder they want to keep it going. Who can argue with success?

  • Wait till Next Year!

    “Mexican president rejects ‘failed state’ label.”

    Well, I suppose he would.

    He also says he’ll have the war on the drugs pretty much wrapped up when he leaves office in 2012.

    Mean more than 1,000 people have been killed in Mexican war-on-drugs violence in the first eight weeks of 2009. According to the Mexican Attorney General, Eduardo Medina Mora, the total killed in 2008 (6,290) was double that of 2007. About 90% are suspected drug traffickers; 6% police and soldiers; 4% innocents caught in the crossfire.

    Medina Mora also took a page from our DEA and starting marking shit up. He said the cartels are “melting down” under pressure from turf wars and the national crackdown. He also lied when he says that US cocaine prices have increased 100% and purity dropped by 35% since the Mexican crackdown began in 2006.

    Really?

    Why do foreign leaders lie? Because American leaders pay them. That’s what foreign aid is all about. We give them money. But I guess the gravy train runs out for former presidents. They start telling the truth.

  • Fender bender probe could cost NYPD captain his career

    If they want to get you, they can always find a way.

    “A patrol car’s $221 side-view mirror could wind up costing an NYPD captain his career. A story about a double-parked cruiser and a minor fender bender has snowballed into allegations of conspiracy and coverup.” The whole storyis in the Daily News.

    This is compstat pressure. Or traffic-stat or whatever it’s called in this case. See, the captain was worried about getting himself chewed out a new assh*le because traffic accidents in his precinct were up 3.5%. So, the story says, he wanted an accident reclassified as vandalism. Did he do wrong? Yes. Should his career be ruined? No.

    I feel sorry for the captain. Of course if he had told meto file a false report, I wouldn’t feel sorry for him at all. I don’t know. At some point it’s a matter of “he-said she-said.” It’s a messed up situation that now becomes a matter of internal department politics in a micro-managed department. And that’s f*cked up.

    Compstat has done a lot of good for the NYPD and for New York. And I can’t imagine a police world today that didn’t use the timely compilation of statistics to allocate resources and identify problems. Really… what’s the alternative?

    But…

    For stats to matter, they need to accurately represent what they claim to. If you judge performance and crime on stats, it is inevitable that the numbers–and not the incidents they’re supposed to represent–become more and more important.

    When the pressure to produce stats becomes too great, and when the people held responsible for the stats control the stats, then playing with the numbers becomes too tempting and too easy.

    I’m not defending fuzzy math, not by any means (plus there’s always the problem that once the books are cooked, you need to keepcooking them). I’m just saying it should come as no prize when people living in a stat-based world play with the numbers.

  • For a Police Surge

    More cops. Less crime. Plus it’s good for the economy.
    Ready the interesting article by William J. Stuntz in the Weekly Standard.

    House and Senate alike are making a serious error. For $5 billion per year–five years’ funding would be about 3 percent of the stimulus package–lawmakers could put another 50,000 cops on city streets. Doing so would likely both reduce crime and reduce the nation’s swollen prison population–a rare combination–and would also help the economy in poor city neighborhoods by making investments in those neighborhoods safer. This is one policy that conservatives and liberals alike could support. If the Obama administration is looking for opportunities for bipartisanship, it should look hard at urban policing.