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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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:…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more