The New York Times has a nice map of homicides in the city. You can select by various variables, but unfortunately not more than one at a time. The Baltimore Sun has a similar but better map. I’m always a bit surprised by just how few white homicide victims there are. Or, conversely, how many…
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The nation’s oldest (1870) mounted unit was disbanded in Boston this month. I know police on horses are of limited use, but what they dodo cannot be done by other police. It’s just eleven horses and about the same number of officers. Seems like a bad way to save money. How about shutting down a…
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Peter Hermann writes about playing with the numbers and the problem of accurate reporting. “I would suspect this goes on in most police departments,” Busnuk told me. “Others don’t have the crime problem that we do and don’t have the political pressure. But this kind of reporting is built into the DNA of the police…
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I was required to carry my gun off duty within the city limits and permitted to carry (and did) within the State of Maryland. So yes, I carried my Glock 17 when I went jogging and when I took out the trash. Generally it’s strongly discouraged for police to take action off-duty (in the next…
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I’m back from two weeks in Spain… but I’ll spare you the details except to say there was hiking in the Alpujarras involved. And very sore feet. And lots of pork. Meanwhile, I was just quoted in a widely read article (the AP is great for that) about dirty narcs in NYC. Though I don’t…
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I’ll be gone till the middle of June. Check back then.
More police lore in the making. Not quite a turkey drumstick, but similar: Police have arrested a 42-year-old woman who said a dispute over a dinner roll led to a fatal fight with her father. … The woman reportedly told investigators she ate a dinner roll her father had been saving for later, even though…
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The glorious genre of Cop Lit has many notable contributors. The writing ranges from the driest academic tome to the cheesiest pulp fiction. There a pretty extensive list of police books at police-writers.com. A lot of them are crap. But many are good. Two of the best older police books are Jonathan Rubinstein’s City Police…
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Justin Fenton writes in the Sun.
I’m supposed to grading papers so I’ll keep this short. But what does the police beating in Birmingham and the foiled terrorist plot in New York have in common? Neither would have happened were it not for the war on drugs. Three of the four bad guys in New York were in prison… for drug…
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