Quality Policing Podcast and Blog

Jeffrey Goldberg on the crime drop in DC

And talking to Washington’s police chief, Cathy Lanier. Bloomberg.com: Lanier outlined some of the changes in the way her department does its job — procedural, technological and investigative changes that I suspect have more to do with the drop in homicides than sociologists might credit. I suspect the same.

My most requested record

This may surprise you, but my all-time most-read post, by far, has (almost) nothing to do with police or the war on drugs. This post has gotten more hits (by more than a 2:1 margin) than my next most-read post. And the latter was featured in the Atlantic Wire. My most-read post is about a…
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Up with Up with Chris Hayes

I’ve always loved doing radio interviews and never been keen on TV. Partly because most TV is so stupid. Why should I put on a suit to get driven to Manhattan (they don’t like it if you make your own way to the studio) to stare into a camera and then say a talking point…
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Me on “Up with Chris Hayes”

Tune in tomorrow (Saturday) around 8:40AM (Eastern Time) to MSNBC.

PTSD in the BPD

An article by Peter Hermann in the Sun on an important but little talked about subject, the effect on police of police-involved shootings: Union leaders say city police do a good job of providing counseling to officers in the immediate aftermath of a shooting, but fall short in recognizing long-term psychological effects. Psychiatrists and police…
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Good guys win one in subway shootout

Denis Hamill writes in the Daily News: For all the criticism the cops are taking these days for the out of control stop-and-frisks, for the questionable shooting of Ramarley Graham in the Bronx, let’s take a deep breath and not lose track of the vital, life-risking work these guys do every day in this big…
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What they think I do

There are a lot of these “what people think I do” versus “what I do” gags going around. Some are pretty funny. Here’s one on policing. The intellectual in me thinks of the Rashomon Effect. The kid in me just giggles at seeing Lou Costello in a police uniform. [thanks to Stef the Greek] [Hey…
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Poor Greece

Well the bastards burnt down my favorite movie theater in Athens. Perhaps in the big picture of cultural destruction, it doesn’t rank up there with the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, but man, those red seats were comfy. Supposedly the theater will be rebuilt. (And supposedly a train will once again connect Athens and…
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Misquoted in Salon

Not me. But my father. And he died in 2008. Linda Hirshman seems to have a bone or two to pick. She writes in Salon.com: If any evidence of this [“warfare is the business of heterosexual men, the penetrators”] agenda were needed, the same person who created and defended the dreaded “don’t ask, don’t tell”…
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Congrats to Officer Brennan

Who left the hospital today after being shot in the head. He too, was just doing his job.