Police

Ex-police officer Pogan convicted

This is the guy who pushed over the bicyclist in Times Square. Pogan was convicted of filing false statements (saying that he was assaulted by the victim). Pogan was also convicted of a misdemeanor for attesting to the complaint’s truthfulness. Patrick Pogan, who was only on the job for 11 days, was acquitted on assault charges. Judging from the video,…

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Police

Arrests in the NYPD

I’ve always said the Blue Wall of Silence is vastly overrated (for reasons I’m not going to get into today). Do cops get away with murder, literally or figuratively? The short answer is no. Unless, of course, one counts traffic violation and illegal parking as murder. What I do find interesting is that the NYPD, as reported by Al Baker…

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Police

The Battery

I just finished a excellent book by Henry Schlesinger, The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution. You may remember Schlesinger as the co-author (with Joe Poss) of the wonderful non-fiction police story Brooklyn Bounce. The Batteryis all about, you guessed it, batteries. Turns out they have a fascinating history and Schlesinger tells it well. One interesting police note:…

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Police

Police Priorities

Evidently, the MTA (New York’s subways and buses) could raise enough money to prevent massive service cuts if they could only collect the fare from 27 million dollarsof fare evaders. Meanwhile, the NYPD arrests more people for misdemeanor drugs possession (half of those for the lowest level of marijuana possession) than it does for fare evasion. That’s an interesting take…

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Police

It’s back!

This was taken down for a while but is now back up. The funniest YouTube video I’ve ever seen. Maybe it’s only hilarious if you are or were a cop and don’t speak German. But I think it’s probably funny regardless.

Police

NYPD Stop and Frisks

Lenny Levitt poses an interesting question is his weekly column: From 2004 through 2009, [New York City] police have had nearly three million stop-and-frisk encounters, which involve patting people down or questioning them. Virtually all of those stopped are black or Hispanic. In 88 per cent of the cases, the people searched or questioned were innocent of wrongdoing. [ed note:…

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Police

I got a plan. It can’t go wrong.

This story blows me away both in terms of chutzpa and stupidity. Say you’re NYPD and need some extra money. Work overtime in the three-four? Naw. You don’t play that game. Instead… rent five vans, hire 16 day laborers, and then go to a perfume warehouse in Jersey where you have a connection. Then wave your real badge and gun…

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Why you never chase

Karen Schmeer, a friend of a dear friend, was killed on January 29 while carrying groceries home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She was killed by a speeding car filled with drug-shoplifting hoodlums fleeing the police. The impact knocked her out of her boots and flung her through the air, half a city block. Karen’s death is more than a…

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Police

Juking the Stats

A recent report of retired New York City police officers warns that the NYPD is playing fast and loose with the numbers. Knowing when and where crimes occur is essential to good policing and Compstat, a system of crime-data analysis created in 1994, played a large role in bringing down crime in New York City. But ever since, numbers have…

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