It’s worth highlighting this excellent comment to a previous post, from a anonymous police officer. You can file this under “if you don’t work, you can’t get in trouble.” What I’ve learned over my career, and what has frustrated me as a life-long progressively inclined citizen, is that despite all common sense and evidence to…
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New York City paid $167,731 for each prisoner last year. That’s insane. Crazy high. And much higher than even the highest estimates I had heard. The New York Times reports “83 percent of the cost per prisoner came from wages, benefits for staff and pension costs.” That means it’s not going down anytime soon. Rikers…
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So reports the Times. I would not have voted for this because it’s perceived as anti-police, but once again, I say that Ray Kelly get what they had coming. You do work for the city, and you’ve shown nothing but scorn for those who try and make the NYPD better. The chickens coming home to…
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A few posts ago I linked to nice article by Brian Beutler. He explains very well how he didn’t succumb to the “ecological fallacy” (of assuming what is true for the individual is true for the group, or vice versa) even after being held up and shot. I particularly like the line, “Everyone who’s ever…
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That’s two in one month and it makes an even dozen. “Eduardo Arellano Felix is to serve 15 years in jail, after pleading guilty to charges of money laundering,” says the BBC. Though I don’t know if this should really count since he’s been in jail since 2008, and his nickname, “The Doctor,” is kinda…
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The feds are really going after people who tell how and why lie detector tests are flawed?! Does anybody know what the actual crime these people are being charged with? I always tell my students that anybody who ever has to take a polygraph test buy and read Doug Williams’s manual on why the test…
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A (cop) friend in Baltimore asked me with regard to stop and frisk: “What the hell is going on?” I emailed back: You know, leaving aside the decision was entirely predicable based on the judge not exactly being a friend of police, her decision is actually kind of mild. All she f*cking asks is for…
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Well played, Peter. Well played.
People are always tickled to see the police boat representing at the annual Amsterdam gay pride boat parade. What’s unusual about this photo isn’t that hundreds of thousands (including every straight family I know) turn out for the gay pride parade in Amsterdam, it’s that there’s a blue sky. No city is as beautiful as…
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Short video on the problem of opiate painkillers. I get my two-cents in at about three minutes in. Ironically, I may have been or Percocet while being interviewed!