Mr. Marrion “that-goddamn-bitch-set-me-up” Barry has been arrested… yet again. Except for the crack, the not filing his tax returns thing, and the alleged stalking, he sure is a great elected representative for his people. Here’s the storyabout his latest arrest. It’s complicated, of course. Who knows what really happened? Who cares? But does anybody out there have the AUDIO from…
My friend used to joke that the local criminals would come to court “dressed in their best sweat pants.” I was reading a David Sedaris book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, on my flight back from Chicago and came across this passage: There were plenty of things that should have concerned me–the blood-spatter evidence, the trajectory of the bullets–but…
Generally, the bars in the Eastern aren’t a source of trouble. The yo-boys are too cool to drink in a bar and stay on the corner drinking bottles of malt liquor. Many of them aren’t old enough to be served in a bar, either. The bars are for those willing to pay a dollar or two for a mere twelve…
The glorious genre of Cop Lit has many notable contributors. The writing ranges from the driest academic tome to the cheesiest pulp fiction. There a pretty extensive list of police books at police-writers.com. A lot of them are crap. But many are good. Two of the best older police books are Jonathan Rubinstein’s City Police and Joe Poss and Joe…
Bealefeld, Baltimore’s police commish, says: Those guys got fairly nominal sentences for some heinous stuff that they did to these kids, and if it happened in a white neighborhood in any other community in this state, we’d still be talking about it, and people would be talking about life sentences…. And these people get out essentially with a slap on…
That’s just about as exciting a headline as “dog bites man.” I joked about murder victims. Of course you joke about murder victims. I mean, you do try and wait till you’re away from from the murder scene before joking about murder victims (though I didn’t even always pass that test). So after work — after seeing another person take…
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that, “A Philadelphia police officer has been put on desk duty after he was quoted spouting his disgust for the black residents in the community he patrolled.” And people wonder why cops don’t trust outsiders. The officer is said to have used the “N word” (though not at somebody). I won’t defend that. But I will…
This is a story from way back when. I’ve never found a way to work it into anything I’ve written, but it’s too good to go to waste: Two cuffed men were seated on the curb on Bradford St. in front of their Lexus. We were all waiting for a wagon. I was helping guard them for the primary officer.…
I spend a lot of time defending the media. That’s an unpopular position among 90% of police officers. Well I’m not going to defend the S.F. Chroniclehere. Just yesterday the paper decided they needed to report “both” sides of the cop killings in Oakland. In their story, to my great dismay, they did what what lazy or dumb journalists do…
So I’m trying to write and Schoolly-D’s “A Gangster Story” comes on. I hear him say “B-more” and “yo-boy” and perk up. I’ve always liked slang and wondered about the term “yo-boy” because it’s so common in Baltimore’s ‘hood but I’ve never heard it outside of Baltimore (what’s a “yo-boy?” You gotta read my book. You have, right? If not,…