Randy Cohen writes in his New York Times blog: The Emmys will be awarded this Sunday, Sept. 20. As ever, among the nominees are various police programs (“C.S.I.,” “Life on Mars,” “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” “The Closer,” “Saving Grace”) built around the Hero Cop. It might be a Hero Cop with a flaw…
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Who reads this thing? And how many? I’d love to know (I’d also like to know how this correlates with the more general stat counter). If you’re reading this, please do me a favor and pick one of the categories below, then click vote. Please vote once (but just once… this isn’t Chicago). Actually, it’s…
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“A Johns Hopkins University student armed with a samurai sword killed an intruder in his garage, Baltimore police said Tuesday.” The AP story by Ben Nuckols. [Thanks to DJK!] Sept 20 Update: There’s a story by Justin Fenton with new info here.
Read a few perspectives in the New York Time
I talk a lot about the war on drugs and why it’s messed up. But can I also mention that the fight again prostitution is pretty absurd, too. Shouldn’t we regulate prostitution and worry about health issues, human trafficking, and quality of life concerns instead of wasting police resources arresting people for committing consensual acts?
One of the first things I ask in my criminal justice students is, “why do people commit crime?” Students are pretty well trained to talk about social and environmental factors. After agreeing with all that, I like to add, “I thought people committed crime because they’re criminals!” Everybody laughs, but there’s a basic truth there,…
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“U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal determined the policy violated no state, federal or constitutional rights and dismissed the lawsuit Sept. 3.” That may or may not be true. But I’ve never understood why beards are banned by most police departments. Why do police departments care? Are we still living in 1960? Are people with beards…
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Alas, because of my disagreement with onereader, I have now activated “comment moderation” (see the preceding post and the comments to the post below that. What this means is that there will be a delay between when you post comments and when they will appear. I’ll try to keep this delay to a minimum. But…
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This is a letter to just one person who posts by the name “Frequent Poster.” Dear Frequent Poster, You are the first and only person whose comments I have deleted. The first from hundreds of comments and thousands of readers. I suppose it is a coming-of-age experience for a blogger to have to delete a…
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But not usually when police are under fire. Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis on Friday denounced as “reprehensible” — and demanded severe punishment against those responsible for — a 911 dispatch delay that left an off-duty police officer to fend for himself while being shot at from a car filled with alleged gang members. ……
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