When I saw the headline, “City to Pay $9.9 Million Over Man’s Imprisonment,” my first thought was, “I hope that’s not mycity.” But it is. That means a few bucks straight out of my pocket. I hate that! Especially for bad policing. But then I saw that the man getting the money is Barry Gibbs.…
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Bodega workers take a gun out of robber’s hands. Beyond that nothing too eventful… except it’s less than a mile from my home (though it is, you know, over there, on the other side of 21st St, near the projects… what I half-jokingly call Astoria’s ghetto).
I have an op-ed in today’s Washington Post about my father and “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” It’s got absolutely nothing to do with policing. I was the first critic of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” It was 1993, and I was home on break from college. My father, Charles Moskos, and I were watching TV and…
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The Supreme Court ruled that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent or want a lawyer to invoke their Miranda protection during interrogations. I’m pretty liberal guy, but I’m all for this conservative decision by the court. Look, if you don’t want to be convicted, the smartest thing you can do is…
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I’ve said it before, but now there’s yet more academic support, this study by Tim Wadsworth. You can’t easily access the study and it’s not light reading if you can. But Christopher Dickey wrote a very readable article about the study. Dickey is the author of a very good book: Securing the City. Wadsworth’s research…
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According to the papers, life in Kingston begins to return to normal. Dudus has not been captured. Until he his, seems like you’d have to call the whole operation a failure. My quote of the day comes from The Observer’s Twitter feed: “Dem say Dudus hold us hostage but it Bruce [The P.M.]. Mi wana…
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I know it’s wrong, but I’m kind of starting to root for Dudus. Of course I can’t really root for cop killers, but this is one guy taking on two entire nations. And, at least for now, he’s winning! Plus, the more I learn about Jamaica the less I want to root for the government.…
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Sounds like an Onion headline but it’s real. The Drug Czar himself said, “I ended the war.” You’d think this would be big news in America. Did we win? [thanks to Drug WarRant]
I read this stupid AP story and it set off warning bells in my head. “ULTRA-POTENT HEROIN… MEXICAN DEALERS… $10 BAGS KILL UNSUSPECTING USERS INSTANTLY… NEEDLES STILL IN ARM AT THE DEATH SCENE!!!” OK, the caps and exclamation points are mine, but you get the idea. It’s a little strange because people who die from…
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Gun battles seem to be the order of the day. Police officers have been killed. There’s also looting. But a police spokesman says about the business district, “There was some shootings last night but some amount of calm has returned.” Phew. A state of emergency has been declared that basically give police carte blanche to…
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