Usually when I get called from the media about a police-involved shooting I expect I’m going to have to explain how a reasonable police officer might perceive a potentially lethal threat. Not here. This is a bad shooting: The killing happened two years ago. The video was just released. The officers faced no legal consequences.…
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Cops would complain about this all the time when Kelly was chief. After a decade in power, the stories of his micromanaging were legendary. This is the kind of stuff the public never really understands or appreciates, even when it dominates internal police culture. A long overdue article, from the veteran Murray Weiss at DNA.info:…
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Police officer line-of-duty deaths are down 15 percent this year. Gunfire deaths are down 38 percent. Odd, because a lot of reporters were calling me last year when the number were up. “Is it Ferguson?!” “Is it Obama?!” “Are criminals less brazen?!” “Has training gotten better?!” “Are criminals worse shots?!” [Silence of me staring at…
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In late May Rolling Stone had a poorly conceived article about Baltimore police and riots. On May 30th I wrote this letter to the editor: I applaud Matt Taibbi (“Why Baltimore Blew Up”) for keeping the focus on Baltimore after the nation’s attention seems to have shifted elsewhere. But Taibbi seems more intent on attacking…
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Reports the LA Times. This came about after a very bad shooting. Twenty-eight people have been shot to death by Albuquerque police over the last five years, a per capita rate eight times that of New York.
300 Men marched against violence In Baltimore. I guess since was no looting or violence associated with the march, it did not make national news. But apparently the criminals weren’t listening. “At least 21 people were shot since Friday,” reports the Sun. To put it in perspective, as Justin Fenton did, that rate of violence…
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Great piece by Simone Weichselbaum in the Marshall Project about Batts and his problems in Baltimore. Good piece in Vice about the problem of “superstar” police chiefs.
Total arrests per day are in orange. Firearms crimes per day are the lower lines, in blue. (Click to embiggen) The bottom axis represents the numbered day of year. 1 is Jan 1. 178 is June 27th. The riot was on April 27, day 117. This was partly inspired by a frustrating discussion on the…
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This piece by Tim Kreider is pretty fabulous. It includes John Waters’ great line: “NYC is full of normal people who think they’re crazy; Baltimore is full of crazy people who think they’re normal.” And “Bananas & hardware for sale at the bar” actually only narrows things down to a half-dozen locations. I still use…
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That’s from the Sun. The FOP riot report is good. Well done. And based on everything I’ve heard from police officers, true. It’s proofread and a surprisingly well put together package (the whole “issue” and “recommendation” and “references” thing). Keep in mind this is coming from a local FOP chapter that misspelled my name on…
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