Copinthehood.com has moved to qualitypolicing.com

  • Gathering a City Jury

    Baltimore City tries to increase jury attendance. Currently only 27 percent of those summonsed actually show up. In one more rural counties in Maryland, the show-up rate 99%. Because, you know, it’s a duty and you’re not supposed to have a choice.

    From the Sun:

    Technically, the law allows for a fine of up to $1,000 and 60 days in jail, but both punishments are unheard of.

    About 20,000 Baltimore summonses have gone out for dates through May 14, and the cumulative response rate to the questionnaire is about 60 percent, up from about 20 percent under the old system.

    I’ve never served on a jury. I suspect my police background doesn’t go over well with defense attorneys.

  • The Gray Lady Shines

    Nobody said it was perfect, but New York Times is a damn good newspaper. (I hear the conservatives’ wincing response already. But, dear reader, how can you complain about the Times if you don’t read the Times? Stop believing whatever AM blowhards say.)

    First the Times has a nice intereactive map about the scene of the Trayvon killing.

    Second, there’s a great fair and balanced account of Martin and Zimmerman and what happened. No hype. Just the facts and clearly labeled speculation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the best and least biased and most informative account of the characters and scene to date.

    [The only troubling error I see is in Zimmerman’s favor. Zimmerman did notsay he would meet the cops by the mail boxes. He tells the cops to call him when they arrive, since Zimmerman was not expected to be by his car. And he wasn’t]

    And tangentially related, Bill Keller writes a nice proper op-ed attacking the concept of the “hate crime.” I agree; I don’t like the criminalization of thought one bit:

    The fact that [the hate crimes law] is constitutional and commonplace does not quiet the nagging sense that hate crime legislation resembles something from an Orwell dystopia…. The government is authorized to punish you for thinking those vile things, if you think them in the course of committing a crime.

    It’s not a great reach to say that Ravi faces up to 10 years in prison for being a jerk.

    This is the kind of demagoguery that could prejudice a prosecution, or mobilize a mob. Is it not creepy, by the way, that Spike Lee was tweeting the suspected home address of George Zimmerman? As if to say, “Go get him!” (Lee sent apologies and a check to the elderly couple who were scared from their home because, oops, the tweet gave the wrong address. But apparently it’s O.K. to terrorize Zimmerman.)

    In most cases, hate crime laws take offenses that would carry more modest sentences — assault, vandalism — and ratchet up the penalty two or three times because we know, or think we know, what evil disposition lurked in the offender’s mind. Then we pat ourselves on the back. As if none of us, pure and righteous citizens, ever entertained a racist thought or laughed at a homophobic slur.

    Bias laws are widely accepted. They are understandable. They are probably here to stay. But they seem to me a costly form of sanctimony.

  • Seven die in California shooting

    Seven die in California shooting

    The BBC reports. And my response is once again to re-post a cartoon:

    But relax! Your paranoid political fantasies notwithstanding, no one’s going to take your guns away!

    Barring some seismic realignment in this country, the gun control debate is all but settled–and your side won. The occasional horrific civilian massacre is just the price the rest of us have to pay. Over and over again, apparently.

  • Spread those cheeks

    The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of strip searches for minor offenses. This isn’t a big surprise. The Court has always granted a lot of discretion to jails and prisons to run their own affairs, with regard to safety, broadly defined:

    Maintaining safety and order at detention centers requires the expertise of correctional officials, who must have substantial discretion to devise reasonable solutions to problems. A regulation impinging on an inmate’s constitutional rights must be upheld “if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.”

    [C]orrectional officials must be permitted to devise reasonable search policies to detect and deter the possession of contraband in their facilities, and that “in the absence of substantial evidence in the record to indicate that the officials have exaggerated their response to these considerations courts should ordinarily defer to their expert judgment in such matters.”

    The four more liberal justices dissented.

    Leaving aside constitutional issues, I’ve always pointed out that you should welcome a strip search in jail not because of youmight be hiding or carrying, but because of everybody else you’ll be with. There are a lot of criminals in jail. If I’m in jail, I will sleep better knowing that everybody elsehas been thoroughly searched for weapons.

    Of course such logic does ignore the fact that most contraband gets into jail through visitors and correctional officers.

  • Couldn’t have said it better myself…

    …on the attempts to justify the actions of Zimmerman because on Martin’s appearanceand social media posts. So I’ll just quote Ta-Nehisi Coates. First there is the interesting case of The Daily Caller, one of the organizations leading the charge to defame Martin. Coates says:

    The Daily Caller is published by Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is a man who once informed us, on national television, that he’d assaulted a gay man for subjecting him to the sort of treatment which nearly all of women-kind experiences hourly. This is not the assumption of a violent handle, or the quotation of rap lyrics it is the admitted commission of actual violence. Moreover, it’s the kind of violence that’s routinely dismissed as pathological in black boys, as well as the kind that had it ever been committed by Trayvon Martin would immediately serve as irrefutable evidence that he deserved to slaughtered in the street.

    Coates continues:

    I would not withhold the life of Trayvon Martin from scrutiny and investigation. When someone claims a vicious assault upon their person–as George Zimmerman has–it is only intelligent to investigate the relevant background of the alleged assailant. It certainly is relevant to ask what, precisely, Martin was suspended for. It surely is important to ask if Martin had a history of violence. Whether or not Martin had a criminal record, most certainly is pertinent.

    But what, precisely, is the relevance of wearing gold grills? What, specifically, is the pertinence of having once given an obscene gesture? Why, exactly, does it matter that Martin’s imagination sometimes ranged into profane thoughts of sex and violence? How does any of this help us understand his killing at the hands of by George Zimmerman?

    Excuse me, Ta-Nehisi, but I’d like to take that one.

    See, some people think they know what Martin was reallylike, something MSNBC will never tell you: Trayvon was just another n****r. So this country, real America, is better off with him gone. Now normally, thanks to all us horrible politically correct un-American non-gun-loving liberals, “These assholes always get away.” Well here’s one who didn’t.

    Zimmerman’s killing of Martin reflects paranoid racist America’s Id. So there’s a greater storyline here, a patriotic battle, a veritable Zoroastrianconflict between the forces of light and dark, good and evil. Martin represents the dark, thus Zimmerman must be on the side of light. And if you believe that, then your Id does contorted cartwheels of logic to justify Zimmerman’s actions. “You see,” blurts Id, “Martin was a thug. A criminal. An asshole. A bad egg. He might have even been looking for a house to break into. I mean, we’ve never found the skittles, have we?!” Id just knowsthis to be true. Maybe can’t prove it, but believes it to the end.

    But, I’m sorry to cut you off, Ta-Nehisi. You were saying?

    It does not–unless you believe that the fact that Martin once gave a middle finger to a camera somehow proves that he is the sort of person who would saunter up to a man who outweighs by nearly 100 pounds, summon the powers of Thor, deck the man with one-shot, and stove him against concrete. We do not draw such conclusions from most teenagers, or even most people. That those who see nothing wrong with labeling a black man as a “Food Stamp President,” would draw them in the case of young black boy cannot be dismissed as coincidental.

    And Coates again:

    I’m sorry that Trayvon Martin’s actual appearance obstructs your inalienable right to scandalize children. That you are forced into cartwheels, and rendered ridiculous, all in the laudable quest to justify bias is the true tragedy, one which pales when compared to an actual death. If I have in any way, contributed to your travails, I hope that some day you will be wise enough, or simply human enough, to forgive.

    To say Zimmerman’s actions were reprehensible but perhaps legally covered by the horrible and deeply flawed Stand-Your-Ground law is one thing. But I find it deeply troubling when people want to see everything through a prism that somehow morally justifies the death of Trayvon Martin.

  • The more things change… March 31, 1830

    Failure to Obey, old school.

    The Commissioners direct, that in future the Inspectors on Duty shall not take into custody any person brought in by a Police Constable on the vague charge of “obstructingthe Constable in the execution of his duty.” If such a charge is to be made, it must be accompanied by a specification of particulars.

    Source: Metropolitan Police. Instructions Orders &c. &c.1836. London: W. Clowes & Sons.

    [This is the last of these, which were a series of the very first police regulations ever, in real time, 182 years later. Thanks to the NPIA and the library staff at Bramshill, UK.]

  • Out in LA

    Interesting caseout in Pasadena:

    Oscar Carrillo was arrested on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter after he told a 911 dispatcher that 19-year-old Kendrec McDade, whom police fatally shot, was armed.

  • The “Excutive” Inn

    The “Excutive” Inn

    From Facebook, I learn that the Eastern’s favorite (read: only) hotel is official off-limits to Air Force personnel. [Actually, as I write that, I realize there isanother hotel on the western tip of the Eastern… and it’s OK, last I heard.]

    Still from Facebook:

    Sector 3 Eastern District at the top of the list. The Executive Inn on Pulaski Hwy. I’ve seen Pimps, Prostitutes, Drug Dealers, Junkies and degenerates of every stripe there. Two things you’ll never find at The Executive Inn…an Executive, and a good nights sleep!

    [thanks to LvT]

  • Don’t say you were not warned

    In Indiana, you can now “stand your ground” against police. It would be ironic if this marked the end of police busting down people’s doors to find some drugs. Then the NRA might actually be defending liberty. But I suspect it’s just going to escalate matters. Yes, at least in Indiana, you can kill a cop… but only as long as you reasonably believe you’re in the right. Call me old fashioned, but I’m against this.

    By the Force Science Institute and PoliceOne:

    You may have heard of the bill passed recently by the Indiana General Assembly that gives citizens the right to physically resist — even with deadly force — any LEO they “reasonably believe” is unlawfully entering their dwelling or is about to cause them injury.

    Last week, Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the bill, meaning its now law in the state of Indiana.

    “It will mean basically open season on police officers,” predicts Tim Downs, president of the state FOP, which campaigned vigorously although unsuccessfully against the bill. “Law enforcement officers are definitely going to be put in harm’s way.”

    The bill specifies that even deadly force can be justified in resisting the police if a citizen “reasonably believes” an officer is “acting unlawfully” and “the force is reasonably necessary to prevent serious bodily injury to the person or a third person.” In other words, Downs states, “There is no limit on the resistance that can be used.”

    Force Science News: Are there any subtleties in this law that make it less crazy than it seems?

    Downs: No, it’s insane.

    FSN: Who was the driving force behind this legislation?

    Downs: Well, one group that sticks out and that surprised me was the National Rifle Assn.

    Doesn’t surprise me. The NRA always chooses guns over cops. I wish more cops would realize that.