Police

Breaking News!!!

From Kingston… Dudas in custody! The New York Times story. (The New York Timesapparently has no reporter in Jamaica, since the dateline is Mexico City. Though non-byline credit is given to stringer Ross Sheil). Here’s the story in the Jamaica Observer. But The Gleanerreports: No End to Emergency. [Now ask yourself if this was worth the lives of like a…

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Numbers, please

I don’t normally go around asking for stats. I’ll take a good anecdote over a slippery statistics any day. And yet… I feel like an old operator at times saying, “Number, please.” Last night I was writing and had a very simple question: how many US prisoners are in solitary confinement? Seems like a simple and important question since this…

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The Parable of Prohibition

Daniel Okrent has a new book out, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. I haven’t read it yet. But I’ll be damned if Johann Hari in Slate hasn’t written one of the better book review I’ve ever read. It’s not easy to keep writing about the absurdity of prohibition in a new way. But until we end drug…

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Goddamn pharmacist set me up!

Cops should not ask other people to commit crimes. Nor, legally, can they give you permission to do so. Certainly not for a felony. Seems pretty obvious to me. Specifically this is about pharmacists filling out prescriptions they know to be bogus so drug addicts can then be arrested for the more serious crime of drug possession. To do so…

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“Police dem a wicked n’ a tief…soldier not so bad”

According to the papers, life in Kingston begins to return to normal. Dudus has not been captured. Until he his, seems like you’d have to call the whole operation a failure. My quote of the day comes from The Observer’s Twitter feed: “Dem say Dudus hold us hostage but it Bruce [The P.M.]. Mi wana go look for mi son.…

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Di President dat and anything possible wid him

I know it’s wrong, but I’m kind of starting to root for Dudus. Of course I can’t really root for cop killers, but this is one guy taking on two entire nations. And, at least for now, he’s winning! Plus, the more I learn about Jamaica the less I want to root for the government. They’re crooks. And not in…

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US Ends ‘War on Drug’

Sounds like an Onion headline but it’s real. The Drug Czar himself said, “I ended the war.” You’d think this would be big news in America. Did we win? [thanks to Drug WarRant]

Police

Stupid Drug Story of the Week

I read this stupid AP story and it set off warning bells in my head. “ULTRA-POTENT HEROIN… MEXICAN DEALERS… $10 BAGS KILL UNSUSPECTING USERS INSTANTLY… NEEDLES STILL IN ARM AT THE DEATH SCENE!!!” OK, the caps and exclamation points are mine, but you get the idea. It’s a little strange because people who die from heroin overdoses rarely suspect it…

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