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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…