Given the recent discussion started by Michael Wood, Jr. this last excerpt from Cop in the Hood couldn’t come at a better time: It may seem incongruous for police officers to see the futility of drug enforcement and simultaneously promote increased drug enforcement. But for many, the drug war is a moral issue and retreat…
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Michael Wood Jr. has made some waves by tweeting about things he saw as a Baltimore cop. [To get up to speed, single best thing to read now is the Balko interview.] Honestly, I don’t doubt what Wood says. I am curious if all the bad he saw came from his time in narcotics. And…
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Nobody seemed to believe Baltimore’s FOP last week when Robert Cherry said: “We have a state’s attorney who used an opportunity of crisis to quell the riots.” … “The unrest had nothing to do with my decision to charge,” says Mosby. “I just followed where the facts led.” Score this one for the FOP. The…
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So what do you want cops to do about this? From the Chicago Sun-Times. The 3700 block of W. Grenshaw. 3711 W. Grenshaw, to be exact, according to my google streetview snooping skills. It’s not even a horrible looking block, to be honest. I mean, it’s not the best looking block. But there are a…
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From Cop in the Hood: Because of these problems and the “victimless” nature of drug crimes, most drug arrests are at the initiative of police officers. On one occasion, while driving slowly through a busy drug market early one morning, I saw dozens of African American addicts milling about while a smaller group of young…
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They weren’t good then. They’re not good now. From Cop in the Hood: While the police see good communication between the public and the police as essential to fighting crime, relations are quite poor. This shouldn’t be surprising. Drug users are criminal. If they want to stay out of jail, they and those who care…
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From Cop in the Hood: In cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, gangs control the drug dealing. Because of that, some assume that drug violence is intrinsically linked to gangs. But East Coast cities have a different history. Large-scale gangs, such as the Bloods and Crips, are growing but still comparatively small. Gangs in Baltimore…
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Too many people are getting killed! From Cop in the Hood: Still the risk of death is astoundingly high. For some of those “in the game,” the risk of death may be as high as 7 percent annually. Each year in Baltimore’s Eastern District approximately one in every 160 men aged fifteen to thirty- four…
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When I hear people, Commissioner Batts including, talk about the horrible institutional problem of Baltimore police corruption, I know they have never spent any time working on the streets of Baltimore. Batts certainly hasn’t. He’s the chief. He’s separated by five thick layers of chain of command from the rank-and-file. And he didn’t work his…
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I hear a lot of people with very strong opinions try and tell me and others about a place they’ve never been and a job they’ve never worked. I wrote about police the drug corner, places like where Freddie Gray was arrested and died in police custody. The next few posts will be exerts from…
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