The Sun has an excellent interactive graphic that can display all the year’s homicide victims. You can select for different variables, so it’s fun to play with (if you’re a nerdy academic). One of the depressing things about homicide is the racial breakdown. Breaking violent crime down by race doesn’t get much press, probably because it treads on incredibly un-politically…
Hope for the Eastern’s most beautiful building
The Sun reportsthat the American Brewery is getting money for development. This building is gorgeous, in the Eastern District, and in complete disrepair. $35 million to convert the five-story former brewery into office space for a nonprofit social service. It’s good their going for office space rather than residential. The Eastern District is littered with failed residential conversions (the old…
Not the sharpest tack in the box
Cop brags about seized drug theft The New York Daily News reports that two narcotic detectives here caught after bragging on their own wire about stealing bags of seized cocaine. Corruption always involves drugs. But rarely in such idiotic fashion.
The Eastern District today
A student of mine went down to Baltimore and took some pictures of the Eastern. I don’t get there much anymore, even when I go to Baltimore. I don’t know anybody who lives there. In most ways, the Eastern looks like it hasn’t changed at all. In one big way, it’s changing a lot: the expansion of Johns Hopkins Hospital…
Cops 1 – Robber 0
For all the press police-involved shootings get in New York City, there are a lot more shootings in Baltimore if you take the difference in population into account (almost an equal number if you don’t). Baltimore shootings don’t get much press because the city isn’t a media center and Al Sharpton doesn’t live there. Instead, the local chapter of the…
Advance Praise for Cop in the Hood
“Peter Moskos, a sociologist by training, somewhat inadvertently became a police officer. Cop in the Hood is the fortuitous and fascinating result. It gives the reader the real dope from someone with the training and ability to put the street into the larger context. Highly recommended.” –Alex Tabarrok, George Mason University, cofounder of marginalrevolution.com. “Cop in the Hood is an…
He’s dead… cuff him
The New York Times has an article by Al Baker, “Handcuffing the Wounded: Tactic Hits a Nerve.” I read that article with interest. Police don’t have the option to nothandcuff a suspect. I always thought that officers should have some (limited) discretion to not handcuff suspects. For instance, you’re patrolling, minding your own business, and a person comes up to…
Don’t Taze me, bro!
I know my classes are topical, but I wish people didn’t have to die to make it so. Yesterday I class I talked a police-involved shooting in Brooklyn and the overuse of Tasers. Today a bunch of students sent me these links about a man’s death in Vancouver after being Tasered. Proving exactly what I said in class: Since Tasers…
The untimely death of Khiel Coppin
An unarmed man was killed by police Monday in Brooklyn. Here’s the New York Times account. This isn’t going to start any riots. Trust me. By all reasonable accounts, this was a “good” shooting. It always sounds bad to describe the shooting of an unarmed man as “good,” but in police parlance, “good” and “bad” shootings aren’t a moral judgment…
Gang Member Is Convicted Under Terror Law
Today’s New York Times has an article about a gang member being convicted under anti-terrorism laws. The only thing that surprises me is the surprise. The article states: “Other states have used their terrorism statutes, which were seen as largely ceremonial when they were introduced because major terrorism cases were likely to be prosecuted by the federal government.” There’s a…