As promised, here is how to determine basic percentages. Too many of my college students don’t understand basic percentages. Clearly GTF has the same problem. So here is how it works — in words — with no math symbols. I’m totally serious. It’s never too late to learn. And not knowing how to relate “doubled” and “100% increase” is the…
This is the DEA’s Brain on Okra
marijuana I wonder if an end-the-drug war voter is just an law-and-order conservative whose backyard okra garden was raided by local cops after being spotted from a helicopter funded by the Drug Enforcement Agency Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program? Barstow County, Georgia, resident Dwayne Perry may be a recent convert: “I do the right thing and they come to my house,…
Paperwork
The ninth in a series from Sgt. Adam Plantinga’s excellent 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman: Most critical incidents you’re involved in take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to resolve themselves. The paperwork that follows takes hours. You’ve got the incident report, the clearance report, the inventory forms, the DA sheets, the…
Why Hassaum McFarlan Matters (or what liberals don’t understand)
Imagine you’re a New York City Police Officer. You take pride in your job and serving the city. You work hard. You play by the rules. You also feel you don’t get enough respect for what you do. And that disrespect comes right from the top. De Blasio gets elected mayor. You believe, perhaps correctly, that the mayor neither understands…
“Those drug-dealing kids need to get off my lawn!”
So many controversial police incidents, where police are accused of being prejudiced or racist — and here I’m thinking of the grandfather “kidnapping” his black granddaughter in the previous post, or police shooting the guy in Walmart, or the black guy in Minneapolis being hassled while waiting for his daughter, or just “swatting” in general. These incidents often happen because…
Stop making sh*t up!
Here are a few cases were cameras have backed up the police version. One case I’d like to highlight is the Reverend Bill Godair who claimed a North Carolina officer was aggressive in a traffic stop. The good reverend said, “I refuse to sit back and not do anything, not say anything until Ferguson, Missouri becomes a reality here in…
Everywhere signs
The eighth in a series from Sgt. Adam Plantinga’s excellent 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman: Police stations are papered in signs. Some offer guidance, like the one that says: In the absence of detailed instruction, please do the right thing. Others suggest a certain approach to life like the large No Sniveling placard. There are…
Utah shooting of unarmed man justified
Dillon Taylor was another unarmed white boy shot and killed by police. In (mostly) conservative circles, Dillon Taylor was compared to Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri. In some liberal circles, people believe police only shoot and kill black people. But Taylor, who is white, got almost no press (and I think the officer who shot him was hispanic). Michael Brown…
Sometimes it’s just a job
The seventh in a series from Sgt. Adam Plantinga’s excellent 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman: This job can turn sour for a variety of reasons. Maybe you got hurt in your last fight with a suspect. Maybe you have enough pending citizen complaints that it seems your solid, aggressive police work is actually being punished;…
When police-involved shootings aren’t about race
There’s still the strange belief among some people that police only do bad things to black folk. When I was on Chris Hayes the other night, some commentators thought the initial stop was racially biased. Chris himself questioned whether a white person would have been stopped for a seat-belt violation. I find that crazy talk. There was so much bad…