Author: Moskos

Trial of Officer Porter, Day 4

Here’s the recapof Day 4 of the trial of Officer William Porter. I’m not there and I’m no lawyer, so far be it from me to figure out what’s going on. But I’m having a tough time figuring out Porter’s role in a crime. Today seemed to be focused on seat belts. Gray wasn’t Porter’s…
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But they made him write it down!

From the Twittersphere: "We do not transport injured people, we render aid" and call medic, Ofc. Porter wrote at police academy, instructor testifies. #PorterTrial — Scott Calvert (@scottmcalvert) December 3, 2015 "We made him write it"? Further proof police academy not to train and educate but cover department's legal ass. https://t.co/1eJx7ruVEx — Peter Moskos (@PeterMoskos)…
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“The Deadliest County for Police Killings in America”

Oh, Bakersfield. Now it’s in the Atlantic. Of course you heard about Bakersfield and Kern County here first, back in April. And even gave Bakersfield an honorary mention, back in 2014, too.) The actual reporting is going on in the Guardian, the only paper, and an English paper, that seems to honestly care about investigating…
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Does rhetoric incite violence?

Why don’t anti-abortion politicians who say ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬-rhetoric endangers cops take responsibility for Officer Swasey’s murder at Planned Parenthood? If anti-abortion rhetoric doesn’t have any relation to the murder of Officer Swasey and innocent women at Planned Parenthood, how could anti-cop rhetoric have any relation to people attacking cops? On the flip side, if anti-abortion rhetoric…
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Happy Thanksgiving!

Especially to everybody working today!

Chicago police shooting of Laquan McDonald

The video is out. Finally. After long attempts to sweep it under the rug failed. This Sun-Times editorial provides good background. It’s a bad shooting. (Though honestly I was expecting even worse, like an unarmed rationally behaving victim.) The mayor (now, at least) and the police chief have said the officer is at fault. The…
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Five black protesters shot by white supremacists in Minneapolis

Shouldn’t this be biggernews? This is shocking (at least to me). Sure, “all of the gunshot wounds are non-life-threatening.” OK… but… that doesn’t make it OK. I don’t get it. Do we not care just because, I don’t know, white people be crazy? Imagine the outcry had the shooters been Muslim. Or black.

What the War on Drugs was really about: “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black”

Dan Baumwrites about what the Drug War was really about: In 1993, I was researching my first book, Smoke and Mirrors, which is the tale, starting in the 1968 Nixon presidential campaign, of how drugs were turned into a political weapon. I tracked down as many people as I could who had been involved in…
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Right-Wing Lies (XI): Donald Trump says…

There’s something that’s starting to scare me about Trump and his supporters. I mean, is it really inconceivable that he will win the Republican nomination for president? Here’s a doozy of a Tweet posted by Donald Trump: Leaving aside the racist imagery, Trump’s numbers aren’t even close to being true. Here are the (approximate, but…
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Sing with SATAAAAAN!

Apparently an officer in Sanford FL (pop 57,000, 30% African American) was fired for this (and quit before termination). I don’t know if he was on duty of off duty (or why it would matter). A cop with a clean record gets on stage at a concert and shouts, best I can tell, “Let the…
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