As reported by James McKinley Jr. in the New York Times: On the night of May 17, dozens of men with assault rifles rolled into town in several trucks and shot up the place [Villa Ahumada]. They killed the police chief, two officers and three civilians. Then they carried off about 10 people, witnesses said.…
Read more
It doesn’t matter if you’re right. Nobody will believe you if you’re in jail.
Amazon finally has Cop in the Hood looking good and back for sale. Go buy your copy today. Less than $20 is always a bargain. Amazon lists June 17th as the date of publication. But the book will be coming off the presses next week and Amazon gets their copies very quickly. I would guess…
Read more
That’s what Mexico may tell the U.S. So reports Laurence Iliff in the Dallas Morning News. Good for them. Here’s the backstory: The U.S. offers money to other countries so they can join our glorious war on drugs. To get the money–and here’s the catch–other countries had to pass a formal (now less formal) “certification”…
Read more
Why is there so much violence in Baltimore? Maybe it’s the lead. Or you could say, “It’s the lead, stupid!” There’s a lot of lead paint in Baltimore, especially in poor neighborhoods. Greg Toppo reports in USA Today. In the academy, a friend and I used to joke that one of our dim classmates had…
Read more
Two nights ago I read Ta-Nehisi Coates The Beautiful Struggle: A father, two sons, and an unlikely road to manhood (Spiegel and Grau). It’s about a man, a black man, growing up in Baltimore. Despite the horribly sappy title, it’s neither horrible nor sappy. In fact, it’s quite good and is written with a very…
Read more
In a comment, Timothy turned me on to an article by Liz Kay in the Sun, “No parking, Less Drugs.” Leaving aside the grammatical question (it should be “fewer drugs,” right?), what about the concept? They banned parking on part of the business strip of Pennsylvania Avenue to get rid of drug dealers. Apparently, it…
Read more
So says Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) about me and my book in his Freakonomics blog in the New York Times. And for that, I can only thank God. But I’m pleased that Levitt liked my book. Much less scintillating than a book by Whitey Bulger’s right-hand man? I should hope so. I was just…
Read more
Duncan Kennedy writes in the BBC: Seven policemen have been killed and four injured in Mexico’s latest incident of drug-related violence. The officers were killed during a raid on a home in Culiacan, in north-west Mexico, police said. Arriving at the house to search for weapons and drugs, police were fired upon and a grenade…
Read more
If you’re going to get arrested, try and wear warm clothes. It’s cold in jail. And no, you can’t bring your cigarettes.