This is Part One of Two. There’s so much Jill Lepore gets wrong in her New Yorker article “The Invention of the Police.” The spoiler is in the subtitle: “Why did American policing get so big, so fast? The answer, mainly, is slavery.” She seems to ignores the actual history of police in America, but I’ll get to that in…
The Feds arrested seven Baltimore City cops today. I don’t know all the details yet, but the robbery charges seem major. “Robberies while wearing a police uniform,” I just heard. But you know what? Even without knowing the details I can go out on a very short limb and predict a few things. Why? Because it’s always the same. And…
Alameda Country deputies beat the crap out of this car thief in San Fransisco. Pesky security camera caught most of it (and with audio). I haven’t seen a police beating like this since God knows when. And now the cops are going to go down. All because they thought somebody deserved a beat down.
From AP: In all, Chicago has paid a staggering sum — about $662 million — on police misconduct since 2004, including judgments, settlements and outside legal fees, according to city records. The payouts, for everything from petty harassment to police torture, have brought more financial misery to a city already drowning in billions of dollars of pension debt. … The…
No point here. I just like old pictures. From Shorpy.com. Caption: Washington, D.C., circa 1925. “Protesters” is all it says on the caption card for this National Photo glass negative showing what seems to be a meeting of the “Communist Party Young Communist League.”
From Citilab. As a taxpaying city resident, I don’t like having to foot the bill for bad behavior. (I also don’t think cities should be so quick to settle.) My solution is give whatever money the city is now paying out to the police department budget. Raise the police budget by that much. And we’re talking millions. And then tell…
OK, my cop friends: please tell me what I’m missing here or how any of this (from February) is defensible. It’s so rare I can watch a video and not understand or at least empathize with the police. These Bloomfield, New Jersey cops are going to end up in jail right? And is the salary range really $57K starting up…
New York City just paid $2.75 million to settle a lawsuit from a prisoner who killed in Rikers. As a taxpayer, I worry about a million here and a million there. Pretty soon, as they say, we’re talking about real money. To the tune of $100 million each yearfor New York City. And indeed it does not grow on trees.…
You can watch the 45 minute version here. This may not be thedefinitive version, but if you care about this issue, you owe it to yourself to at least take 45 minutes from your busy life and watch a version of the whole thing. Some have said the cops are surrounded. That is after-the-fact rationalization (at best). Perhaps it was…
I’m in Dublin. I love Ireland (though England was great, too). I received an email from the Washington Monthly (you may remember them as one of the first magazines to publish a Flogging piece) asking my opinion about the UC Davis pepper-spray incident. I hadn’t heard of it. But ignorance is not bliss. So now I’ve watched the video. I…