Author: Moskos

Real community policing

The National Police Week 5K Run is coming up and hell no I won’t be running. But a friend of mine is and looking for a running partner. She posted this on facebook. I think it’s sweet and serves as a good reminder as to how good police can be when they’re not sitting alone…
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DNA is not infallible…

…Science never is. On the plus side, science can improve on its errors. From the New York Times: “If we say there is a 1-in-10-quadrillion chance that someone else might have the same DNA profile, but there is also a 1-in-10,000 chance that there was a mistake in generating the profile, the only number the…
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You can’t make this stuff up

Life imitates art, after art imitated life. In the Baltimore Sun: “arksdale, ‘Wire’ inspiration, pleads guilty in drug case”

In Defense of Rent Regulation

It’s not about police, but my piece in City Limits just came out: “Arguments Against Rent Regs are Vacant of Facts — Some say New York could relieve high rents by removing rent regulations. And other people say the world is flat.”

The strange and wonderful world out there…

I’m back. It’s cold. Rwanda was great, Addis Ababa interesting, and Bangkok was as nice as always. Stop 1: Rwanda If you don’t know Rwanda (and we didn’t), you wouldn’t know what to expect. I knew nothing about Rwanda except for a history of genocide, the Iwawa Island reform school (not, I should point out,…
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Happy New Year

I won’t be posting for a few weeks because the missus and I are off on adventures to Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Bangkok. Why those countries? Well, not that it’s your business, but two years ago I befriended a Rwandan police officer when I was a visiting scholar at the National Police College in England. So…
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A tale of two cities

Murder in Baltimore is at a four-year high. Murder in New York City is at a record low. Meanwhile, from Justin Fenton’s Baltimore Sun article, in other cities: Homicides across the country Oakland, Calif. — down 25 percent (as of Dec. 12) Philadelphia — down 24 percent (as of Dec. 16) Flint, Mich. — down…
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Victory for Free Speech

From CNN: “‘Duck Dynasty’ resuming ‘with the entire Robertson family,’ including Phil.” It’s only a victory for free speech if you don’t like the speech. Seriously. And now I really want to start watching the show.

A story about Obamaphones

Not they Obamaphones have anything to do with Obama. From the Times.

“Decreased Stop and Frisk Causes Crime to Skyrocket in NYC”

Well that’s the headline I would have expected to see after listening to Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg (and almost all my police friends) over the past few years. They had me believe that each and every one of those more than 600,000 annual stops in 2011 was absolutely essential to prevent the city from…
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