For those interested in an honest police perspective on shooting (and not shooting) people, I recommend Into the Kill Zone: A Cop’s Eye View of Deadly Force by professor and former police officer David Klinger. It’s a lot of 1st-hand accounts of deadly force incidents. And it’s good stuff. You can read an excerpt here.
Sean Bell Verdict May Deepen Mistrust of Police
You can listen to my appearance on the Talk of the Nation radio broadcast.
Marijuana Arrest Crusade
I haven’t digested all this yet, but there’s an interesting little brouhaha about a recent study released by the NYCLU by Queens College Professor Harry Levine and Deborah Small. The paper is called, “Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City, 1997-2007.” The report claims that 35,000 people a year are arrested in New York City…
Officer Pete says (rule 29):
Police officers don’t go to work wanting to shoot somebody.
Buying drugs in Amsterdam
Buying drugs doesn’t need to involve criminals, violence, and neighborhood blight. These are pictures I took a few years back of a friend buying drugs in an Amsterdam “coffee shop.” I show it to my classes at John Jay College of Criminal justice. Amsterdam is a beautiful city of canals and old buildings. I love being on a boat. In…
Officer Pete says (rule 30):
Don’t ask police for a ride. Despite what we say, we couldgive you a ride. We just don’t want to.
Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio
I’ll be on Talk of the Nation today, after 2pm, Eastern Time.
Officer Pete says (rule 31):
No, I don’t “know how it is.” You’ll have to explain.
Adapt or die
I just got an email from an academy classmate of mine. One of the nicest things about writing Cop in the Hoodis that I hear from people I miss, but with whom I had lost touch. So you know, I never left the Eastern District. I love patrol. I don’t know why, but I do. My beat is [***] post…
Regarding Sean Bell
Clearly something wrong happened because an innocent man was killed,” Peter Moskos, author of Cop in the Hood, and a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told TIME. “But that’s not what the system was testing. They were testing if there was reasonable doubt. I think the verdict is fair, but it doesn’t address that this…