I’m too swamped with final papers right now to give this the justice it deserves (But I will give this link to other posts on gun control). I’m sure some of you might have some thoughts on this email I just received. Please comment and discuss. I live in VT which has very liberal (ha…
Read more
So says the BBC.
I’m quick to give police the benefit of the doubt. I rarely feel good when an officer gets criminally charged. But an unprovokedassault on someone that could have been me? F**k ‘im. I’ve written about this incident before. The big offense, interestingly, isn’t for assaulting the guy. Early reports are that he’s just going to…
Read more
I first published this a year ago when nobody read my blog. It’s worth a rehash. #1) 1900 Block of E Eager. 1906 E Eager is the third house (with awning) from Mr. George’s corner laundromat. Two short blocks North of Johns Hopkins Hospital, this corner (Wolfe and Eager) is one of the “hottest” (but…
Read more
American has too many people behind bars, horrible levels of violence, foreign policy undermined by the War on Drugs, busts down the doors of citizens, makes poor people pee in cups to get a job, and–now this is important–the highest rate of illegal drug use in the world. Can John Walters really even write “our…
Read more
I recently received Some Gave All: A History of Baltimore Police Officers Killed in the Line of Duty, 1808-2007 by Steve Olsen and Robert Brown. It’s a very nice work of history and a wonderful homage to those who died serving Baltimore City. While details on recent police deaths tend to be relatively well known,…
Read more
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports: * At year end 2007, federal and state prisons and local jails held just under 2.3 million inmates (2,293,157). The number of inmates incarcerated in prison or jail increased by 1.5% during the year. * About 1 in 198 U.S. residents was imprisoned with a sentence of more than…
Read more
It seems, as expected, that things are calming down in Athens. Apparently, nobody has been killed in the rioting. Apparently, the bullet that killed the kid was indeed a ricochet (that’s why US city cops are not allowed to fired “warning shots”). [Dec 12: today the Kathimerini reports the opposite conclusion: Meanwhile the results of…
Read more
A reader turned me on to this articleabout life in the LA Hood: “Sympathy for the Devil: Crime Stats Say L.A.’s Streets Are Safer Than Ever, So Why Are Gang Hoods Still So Bloody?” It’s by Sam Slovick in the LA Weekly. It’s long. I’ll confess, I haven’t read it all (sheee-it, man… I got…
Read more
Rachel DiCarlo Currie writes a very nice review of Cop in the Hood in The American. The most encouraging aspect of this book is its portrait of the police officers themselves. Moskos holds his former colleagues in the highest esteem, and he takes offense at claims that urban cops are crooked and racist. There will…
Read more