Quality Policing Podcast and Blog

Cairo Art Heist

Yes, I too was more surprised that a bunch of priceless paintings are housed in a Cairo museum that the fact that a Van Gogh was stolen. But get this: they didn’t steal the real one! According to an Egyptian source of mine, the real one was stolen a decade ago when corrupt American-supported dictator/pharaoh…
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“Legal to smoke it…”

Boom Chicago over in Amsterdam (my brother’s theater) made a funny video about changes in Amsterdam and the drug scene. The guy in the video, Greg Shapiro, and I arrived in Amsterdam same year same time. He’s very funny. I poured his beers. The other videos are pretty good, too. Check out Tiger Woods’ Apology…
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L.V. F-Up

Now I wasn’t there, but as I understand it… A pothead and occasional seller in Las Vegas, let’s call him “Vegas Cole,” is sitting with his pregnant fiance on a Friday night watching TV. Police bust down the door and shoot and kill him. Just another day in the drug war, right? Police did find…
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Our Evening Constitional Past the Mosque

We went on a “hidden harbor” tour Tuesday evening that went through NY Harbor and down to Port Elizabeth (by Newark Airport). Industrial decay… working harbor… good stuff! It was a beautiful evening. But as a harbor, compared to Rotterdam, it looks like Single-A. The guide said the biggest six harbors in the world are…
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Tasers equal fewer injuries

That’s the result of a study by Bruce Taylor and Daniel J. Woods of PERF in Police Quarterly. You can’t read the whole article without a subscription, but here’s the abstract (CED = taser, to you and me): The Conducted Energy Device (CED) weapon holds the potential to reduce injuries for officers/suspects. However, the dearth…
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$4.9 million for the estate of Kathryn Johnston

Four years after it happened. One of the worst happenings in the War on Drugs.

Not Ground Zero Mosque

I wasn’t going to post on this… perhaps other than to say it’s absurd that we’re debating the right of a people in our country to build a house of worship. It’s kind of like debating legal segregation. Haven’t we moved past this a long time ago? (Or not so long ago in the case…
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Alvarez released from hospital, arrested

This is the guy shot 20 times by the police. One week later, he’s out of the hospital. How is that possible!? From the Times: The police have arrested Mr. Alvarez on charges of attempted murder, attempted assault in the first degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and criminal use of…
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Ghetto Mortality

In the course of writing Cop in the Hood, I researched what I thought was the bombshell statistic that, conservatively estimated, more than 10 percent of the men in the Eastern District are murdered between the ages of 15 and 35 (pp. 219-220). That bomb sure was a dud. Maybe everybody already knew. I like…
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ICE Agent Almost Gets It

The key to combating [Mexican Drug Cartels], said Alonzo R. Pena, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy assistant secretary for operations said, is to go after their money — money used to corrupt officials and to buy weapons. William J. Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said…
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