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  • Amazon Sales Rank

    If you’re a published author, maybe you check Amazon.com sales rank (gosh, of course *I* never do).

    You can read this, this, or this.

    My book topped out at 500 (that’s pretty good) and is currently hovering around 15,000 [update: 50,000]. That means there are 14,999 books selling better than Cop in the Hoodat Amazon.com.

    What does that mean? Hard to say for sure. But the best guess is that a ranking of 15,000 through the world’s biggest book retailer means I’m probably selling about a book a day. And Amazon is perhaps about 1/3 – 1/2 of all sales. In terms of royalties, that’s about $2 day.

    One way to tell for sure is when Amazon gets low on stock. For instance, Amazon.UK (England) currently has one book for sale. They have had one for a while (or so I’ve noticed). When it sells, they’ll have no books for a day or two. So I can be sure I know the next time I sell a book in Europe. …It may be a few days.

    Doesn’t anybody read anymore?

    Have youboughtmy book? If not, please do. It’s cheap. And good.

  • Cop in the Hood now on Amazon Kindle

    Hey, my book is now available through Amazon’s Kindle. I’m not exactly certain what that means. But I do know it makes me slightly hipper and more likely to be read by tech geeks commuting by train.

  • Cops and dealers (and The Wire)

    Dolan Cummings of Culture Wars has written the best review of my book. I don’t mean the most positive review (though I’m very glad he liked my book); I mean the best written review. They sure writes good with that there English language in England.

    Along with being the first to juxtapose me, Venkatesh, Homicide, and The Wire (which is a natural but he’s the first), I actually found myself learning more about my own book through this review. It’s outstanding writing (and it’s very rare to see a good use of “yadda yadda”).

    Read the whole review here. It’s a bit lengthy, and worth it.

  • Crime Alert

    Crime Alert


    Crime alert tip provided by I Can Has Cheezeburger.

  • The Legal Drinking Age Surprise

    The New York Timescame out today with an editorialagainst lowering the drinking age. That surprised me, especially from a paper that says we’re not winning the war on drugs.

    I started drinking when I was 15. Most people do. Seems to me that the legal drinking age for beer and wine should be 16 or 18. Since kids do it anyway, better to regulate and teach kids to drink responsibly. Instead you get kids chugging cheap vodka and being stupid.

    The drinking age was raised to 21 with the goal of reducing traffic deaths (so if you don’t havea car, why can’t you drink?). I always assumed that raising the drinking age accomplished that. Turns out it really didn’t.

    Here’s the surprise:

    Since the drinking age was set at 21 in 1984, research shows alcohol-related traffic deaths among those 18 to 20 years old have declined by 11 percent, even after accounting for safer vehicles.

    An 11 percent reduction in traffic deaths over 34 years?!Are you f**king kidding me? A higher drinking age criminalized a whole age group, prevented voters and soldiers from having a legal beer, encouraged stupid drinking, and reintroduced the failures of Prohibition back into America. 11%?! You’re telling me you couldn’t think of a better way to get a minor reduction in drunk driving among a small age group? If so, maybe you need put on your thinking cap and think just a little bit harder.

  • Only in Hollywood (Florida)

    A Baltimore reader emailed me this:

    Michael Verdugo is a police officer in Florida who was on the HGTV show Design Star. He’s openly gay and a porn blog revealed that five years prior to becoming a police he was in a gay porn film. The police department he is in suspended him to investigate these allegations. Apparently he could be fired for this depending on how the investigation goes. This is what I don’t understand – how can you be fired for making a legal product?

    Gay porn is legal, right? A lot of people (on the internet) say that he is being fired for being gay, but he has been out at his workplace for four years. I don’t understand how you can be punished for something legal that occurred before you were even at a job. I feel like there is something I don’t understand about police culture that is at the heart of this situation.

    I can see the anti-gay lobby chomping at the bits! “See, first they made it legal… then they think it’s normal to be in a gay bondage films! Next they’ll be tying down our boys! Grab the torches and pitchforks!”

    While homophobia isn’t the heartof police culture, I think it’s safe to say that police culture is not generally very liberal or gay friendly (neither are most Americans, it should be noted). There is an active gay NYPD association. And there are openly gay officers in the Netherlands and nobody seems to care.

    But I knew of no openly gay (male) police officers in Baltimore (or closeted ones, for that matter). And yes, I used to joke all the time with my colleagues about their sexual orientation. (Gosh, you know what, I still do. And I’m about as gay friendly as a guy as you can be without… oh, jeeze, there I go again.)

    Police, at least in theory, agree to uphold certain standards of morality in their personal life. And there’s the rub. Is it immoral to be in a gay porn film? Most people would say yes. And don’t forget, in 2003 sodomy was (and maybe still is) illegal in Florida!

    Legal or not, police can get dismissed for actions that aren’t illegal. For instance, in the P.D., being a “coward” isn’t just an insult, it’s a disciplinary offense. And occasionally officers are (and should be) brought up on charges of being a coward (like if you watch your partner get his or her ass kicked and don’t do anything).

    If you’re a cop and they really want to get you, “conduct unbecoming” is generally the catch-all. Now applying “unbecoming” to pre-job “conduct” is a bit of a stretch.

    If they want to fire Verdugo for being in gay bondage files, they’ll probably get him for lying on his job application. What did he list as his previous employment? It would be interesting if he didlist “film career” or “actor” or something on his application. Because then he was open about it and it would be hard to blame him now (and he could place the blame on the background check).

    I do wonder if any straight male or female police officers were “porn before police”? Would they get fired for it? In most of America–Hollywood, Florida, included–I doubt it.

  • The Solution to the Failed Drug War

    Jack Cole, the founder of LEAP, has an op-ed in today’s Boston Globe.

    WAR AND RACE dominate the presidential campaign, but one nation-shaping war with profound racial consequences eludes the political radar: the drug war.

    I was a frontline soldier in this self-perpetuating, ineffectual effort that has swallowed more than a trillion tax dollars and currently yields nearly 2 million arrests every year for nonviolent offenses. I helped incarcerate some 1,000 young people as part of this irredeemably wrongheaded attempt to arrest our way out of our drug problems. Those arrests will follow them to their graves.

    I know they follow me.

    Read the whole article here.

  • 27 drug raids in one night

    A federal a local task force, HIDTA (“High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area”) busted down 27 doors in what must have been a very long night’s work. I hope people feel safer.

  • Six shot, one dead

    Baltimore Sun reporter Peter Hermann doesn’t exactly crack the case, but he does provide a bit more insight and analysis than you usually find in such a story. Read it here.

  • Gambling machines seized from bar

    At many many bars in Baltimore, there are video gambling games. Video poker games. Not video games. Not Ms. Pac Man or Galaga. These are not something you would play for fun. You play for money. They’re gambling games. If you’re a regular, the bartender will pay you out if you win.

    Police raided some at a bar I was in a few times.

    The story is here.

    I don’t get it. I don’t like gambling in bars, because it tends to make the drunks grouchy. Nobody is more grouchy than a drunk who is losing money gambling. But this is the same state where Keno is legal. And many of these bars couldn’t survive without the added income. Everybody knows these games are for gambling. So what? I’d hate for a corner bar to be closed and shut and boarded because the state wants to keep it’s gambling monopoly.