We all, er, know that guns don’t kill people (even though that is what they’re designed to do). But what I didn’t know was that guns really didn’t kill people until just a few decades ago. As recently as 1960, just 20 percent of NYC homicides involved a gun! That went up to 48 percent in 1970 and 69 percent…
There is justifiable liberal outrage over Cliven Bundy’s land-rights claim, his refusal to recognize the federal government, and his kookie armed supporters who forced the government to back down. And by kookie, I mean men who say they’re going to use woman and children as human shields (in other contexts we blame terrorists for that). It is also indeed true…
From the Daily News: “Devastated mom to sue city, driver over Queens creek crash that killed four friends” I’m sorry for your loss, but my first thought upon hearing of this — actually my second thought since my first thought was “Where the hell is there a creek in Astoria you can drive a car into?!” – was not sympathy…
From the Chicago Tribune: The [Chicago] impact zones, established in February 2013 after a violent 2012, comprise just 3 percent of the city’s geographic area but account for one-fifth of its violent crime, according to the department. From the Sun Times: In March 2013, the department began assigning foot patrol offers to the high-crime areas. McCarthy said feedback from the…
In a comment Kyle W was kind enough to get me going about the situation in which a Manhattan resident Kang Chun Wong suffered injuries after an officer attempted to give him a jaywalking ticket and Mr. Wong seems to have tried to walk away. Mr. Wong is 84. I wasn’t there, so it’s hard for me to talk about…
One of the reasons I like NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton is that he is prone to quoting Robert Peel, the man who invented police as we know them back in 1829 London. Bratton has reprinted “Peel’s” principles online. Those nine principles are an excellent philosophical base for policing, they’re just not Robert Peel’s. And now the New York Times —…
I love any memothat instructs police officers to “use discretion and common sense” and the arrest “as a last resort.” This is the type of common sense one would expect from Bratton because jaywalking in NYC is not a “broken window.” It’s actually quite poetic. Whoever wrote this should be promoted to editor of Spring-3100! The second bit of common…
I don’t apply for many grants, in part because they’re so hard for a qualitative researcher to get. Ethnographic work and qualitative research isn’t taken seriously in a generally quantitative field. My research doesn’t follow the standard “theory, hypothesis, experiment, verify” model of hard science. Nor should it. But it’s hard to get grants or get published in Criminology if…
Not yet. But the sky did get a little lower in NYC last month. Over the 28-day period ending 4/6/14, compared to 2013, the number of people shot increased 40 percent (101 vs 72). The increases were found, not surprisingly, in the Bronx (27 vs 18), Brooklyn North (28 vs 17) and Queens South (12 vs 6). Cause for alarm?…
One of my life’s great regrets is that I can’t for the life of me imitate the Baltimore accent. And I love the Baltimore accent. Well, I’m not the only one who has trouble with those sounds that go from DC to Philly. This is actually about the Philly accent, but a lot of it applies to Baltimore, too. Plus,…