My friend Annia Ciezadlo wrote this piece for the Washington Post. How come when innocent Parisians were killed by terrorists, everybody shed a tear? (as they should) But when innocent Beirutis get killed by terrorists, they’re described as living in an “Hezbollah stronghold.” If you’re too lazy to click though, here’s a chunk of it:…
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Another good piece by Leon Neyfakh at Slate.com. This one on the “Ferguson Effect.”
How do I talk about jury duty without sounding like I’m whining about jury duty? (As to Cynthia Citizen on 1 Democracy Way in Queensville…. They can’t fool me. I know the system. That’s no Queens address.) I don’t want to whine, but I will mention the security line to get in the building in…
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My man Eugene O’Donnell wrote this in the Daily News. It’s worth reading, given general opposition (including some from me) to the militarization of police: At present only a handful of police departments have the capacity to intimidate would-be terrorists and, if need be, wage sustained combat against them in the streets of America. This…
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Sometimes it’s fun to play a bit fast and loose with the numbers to make a greater point: By 2014, [civil asset forfeiture] had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year…. According to the FBI, the total amount of [reported] goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in…
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Two (black) cops were criminally charged in the fatal shooting of a (white) six-year-old boy in Louisiana, who was in a car, I guess being chased. I haven’t seen the video, so what do I know? But Colonel Michael Edmonson, the Superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, said footage of the incident was, “the most…
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In New York City, police have killed 281 people over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, a friend just gave me this a fun tidbit, in Rio de Janeiro (which is smaller than NYC) over the past ten years police have killed 8,466 people! That’s crazy. That means that every day police kill 2.3 people in…
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When I was on Bill O’Reilly, he used Lt. Joe Gliniewicz’s death as a lead-in to asking: “Do you believe that the black lives matter crew and other radicals are igniting violence against police officers?” I didn’t. The next day I pointed out that Black Lives Matters doesn’t have a strong foothold in Fox Lake,…
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The good ol’ days… I love spending time in John Jay College’s great Lloyd Sealy Library browsing NYPD annual police reports from 100 years ago. Even older ones are available to the public online. In 1912 the total force was 10,371 plus 268 civilian. Three motor patrol wagons were installed during the year 1912 [making…
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For such a Landmark Case, I was curious how Terry v Ohio (1968) was reported at the time. I was thinking it would have been hard to see its potential implications at the time (though William Douglas did so in his dissent). Indeed, on June 11, 1968 the New York Times said: Held, 8 to…
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