Author: Moskos

Baltimore City Hall

Circa 1900. Courtesy of Shorpy.

Only if it can kill

“The absurdity of banning squirt guns but not being able to do anything about real guns is patently obvious.” Indeed that is absurd.

Food Deserts: Quantitative Research at its Sketchiest

The New York Times reports today on a RAND study (behind the Great Damned Elsevier Pay Wall) by Ruopeng An and Roland Sturm about the lack of “food deserts” in poor neighborhoods. Or more precisely about the lack of link between food deserts and obesity. More specifically, it questions the very notion of food deserts.…
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UC-Davis Pepper Spray

From Jack Stripling in The Chronicle of Higher Education: The pepper spraying of student protesters at the University of California at Davis in November, an incident that provoked international outrage, constituted an unjustifiable use of force in an operation that was bungled by failures of leadership and communication at nearly every level, an investigative report…
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Zimmerman Charged w/ 2nd-Degree Murder

The storyin the New York Times. Shouldn’t he also be charged with lesser degrees of murder? And assault?

More Evidence of Creeping Sanity

By Cesar Gaviria, Ernesto Zedillo, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Gaviria is former president of Colombia, Zedillo former president of Mexico, and Cardoso former president of Brazil. All are on the Global Commission on Drug Policy. They say: The facts speak for themselves. The foundations of the U.S.-led war on drugs — eradication of production, interdiction…
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What’s Eating the NYPD?

New York Magazine has a very good article by Chris Smith on Ray Kelley and the current state of the NYPD: Whenever Kelly leaves One Police Plaza — most likely in January 2014, when a newly elected mayor replaces Michael Bloomberg — he will be rightly celebrated as the greatest police commissioner in the city’s…
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Ozzie and Me and Fidel Makes Three

When the P.C. Police come knocking (and I’m not talking about “probable cause”), they usually come from the left. But not always. In Ozzie Guillen’s case, the Politically Correct Police are coming from the right. Such is life in Florida, particularly Cuban southern Florida. Baseball manager Guillen was quoted as saying (in Spanish, I believe):…
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Moving beyond prohibition

Three months ago, I became president of Guatemala. And contrary to the good fortunes enjoyed by [Drug Lord “Chapo”] Guzman, I found that the justice and security systems were not what they had been 20 years earlier. Which led me to ask myself these questions: isn’t it true that we have been fighting the war…
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Not only in Baltimore

Despite what some citizens of Baltimore think, kids zooming around on dirt bikes and 4-wheeled ATVs are nota natural rite of spring. But it turns out it’s not just Baltimore. It’s also all the rage in Philadelphia. And police are handcuffed to do anything about it. So it goes on. I’m quoted in this article…
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