Steve Lopez of the L.A. Times has a good take on cameras in police cars.
Ambitious Assult, Limited Victory
The New York Times has an excellent article by Michael Brick on a large police operation meant to get drugs out of the Cypress Hills project. Guess what, there are still drugs in Cypress Hills. In many ways, it’s great police work (and conceivable right of The Wire). A five-month investigation, undercover officers moving into the projects and pretending they’re…
I [heart] foot patrol
The smart folks at Marginal Revolution mentioned my book again. There’s nothing I like talking about more than foot patrol. The following are taken mostly from a comment I wrote to this post. The Kansas City Preventative Patrol experiment is the most amazingly ignored police study ever. For police and crime prevention, it’s one of the few scientific studies ever…
Fixing Broken Windows in Chicago
Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weiss says he plans more foot and bike patrol and an emphasis on “broken windows” policing. This is great news for Chicago… if it actually happens. It’s tough to get cops out of cars. But Weiss is certainly saying the right things. This is reported in the Sun Times. The point of getting tough on the…
Pay NYPD more
Seattle is trying poach New York City’s police. They’re actively recruiting in New York City. The Daily News reports: Seattle pays its police recruits $47,334 a year and the annual salary rises to a maximum base pay of $67,045 in just six years. NYPD recruits get a paltry $25,100 annual salary while they are in the academy. Their pay jumps…
California taxes drugs
Richard Gonzales of National Public Radio report that California is pulling in $100 million a year in taxes from medical marijuana. This is a federal crime. The main opposition to medical marijuana comes from Big Government Conservatives. Big Government Prohibitionists would be a better label. They have a moral agenda and are only conservative (states’ rights be damned) in the…
Well meaning, Balto is
My thanks to Marni Soupcoff of the (Canadian) National Post for her kind words about my blog. She’s right, the real purpose of this blog is to get people to buy my book, Cop in the Hood. And she did! So thanks, Marni. Hopefully the weak dollar will inspire many others up north to buy a copy as well. I…
Justice?
The Sunreports that a man was sentenced to 11 years for dealing crack. That’s a lot of years for crack, I thought. Of course, like everything with crime and criminals in Baltimore, that’s not the whole story. This 28-year-old man, William Floyd Crudup, shot two city police officer in 2005. His trial ended in a mistrial because one juror, “refused…
The international drug war coming home to roost
Ending the war on drugs seems obvious to me. But many need more proof. Now the American-led international war on drugs is approaching our borders in New Mexico and Texas. One article yields New Mexicans saying “legalize drugs.” But a fellow New Mexican (my wife) warns, “But of course those Americans saying ‘legalize drugs’ are New Mexicans, so you already…
You can’t make this up. You just can’t
Get this… this is a story about two men. So there’s this man, right? And it’s like 4am and he gets jacked in West Baltimore. A man comes up to him and pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and tries to rob him. In response, the man getting robbed pulls out hisfake handgun. Somehow, fake-handgun man takes the shotgun away from…