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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Batts doubles down against the rank and file. I’m not quite certain whom Batts is trying to win over with his op-ed in the Sun. It seems like maybe he should have thought twice before pressing the send button. The first half of Batts’ article is spent recounting how bad the police department used to…
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This is one of the few things that really stuck with me from my grad-school days. A simple mathematical analysis of racism in America. It was in a class with Professor Orlando Patterson. I think of this math when people say we should be post-racial. Or say that we need to condemn anti-white racists as…
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A few times, if I was working late enough or some church started extra early enough, I would go to church to say hello. Personally I’m a non-believing Greek Orthodox. But there’s something about a good black church that can’t be matched. Some Sunday mornings I would just sit outside, just to provide a little…
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No real point here. Except it happens. And you won’t hear this (except in Des Moines) because there’s no racial element to the story. Does that make the shooting any better or worse? I don’t think so. Apparently there was a protest of one.
I recently got some interesting data over the email transom. Here’s the thing: It’s largely assumed that white and black illegal drug use is about the same. And that’s based on legit sources. The kind of drug people take varies by race. For instance crack is still disproportionately black. Meth and LSD still mostly white.…
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What can we learn from them? I know. Nothing. Because this is America. Exceptionalism and all that. I’m not saying we could go to this model overnight, damnit! But we could still learn from it. We could learn a lot from other countries, if we got around to looking. If we start looking at police…
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