Quality Policing Podcast and Blog

Mehserle Convicted of involuntary Manslaughter

This is the officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant on the BART train platform. He could be been convicted of the more serious charges of Voluntary Manslaughter or Murder. He also could have been acquitted. I didn’t follow the trial, but this seems about right to me. I certainly believe it’s much more likely…
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When, in the course of human events…

Happy 4th of July! Might I recommend you conduct a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence tonight? It’s become our tradition. And a good tradition it is. And the more drunk you are, the more you’ll capture the true spirit of our Founding Father (man, those boys could drink!). It’s good to remember what…
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Tax the Rich

Why? Because they’ve got the money. And more and more of it. And the system is rigged in their favor. And it’s becoming more and more rigged. SocioBlog explains more.

Right Wing Lies (IV)

Perhaps The Onionsays it best. It often does.

Mineo gets what he deserves

Nada. Nichts. Zilch. Niks. Τίποτα! That’s what the lying Mineo gets for his $440 million B.S. lawsuit against the NYPD. Even better, he’s got to pay court fees. The jury was deadlocked (11-1, against Kern) on whether Officer Kern brutalized Mineo with a baton. From the Daily News: Jurors did find Kern liable for malicious…
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Right Wing Lies (III)

Fox News says an ever-increasing number of people are losing their jobs. 15 million alone in a 3-month period in 2010! That’s patently absurd. But it’s cited to the Bureau of Labor Statistics so it must be true. They “corrected” their graph to read: “total unemployed.” Straight up, I guess ever since Obama started handing…
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A technicality?

It’s not easy to separate emotion from constitutional issues. Ronell Wilson killed two NYPD detectives in 2003 and was found guilty and sentence to death by a federal jury. Good. Now, in 2010, an appeals court struck down the sentence (but not the conviction… the bastard did it). It’s easy for cops and conservatives to…
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Gates Arrest was “Avoidable”

Ya think? Here’s the final report by the Cambridge Review Committee. I haven’t read it yet, but this may be the key sentence: “But instead of de-escalting, both men continued to escalate the encounter.” And the key insight may be here: “To say that the arrest of Professor Gates was avoidable is not to say…
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Checks and Balances

Wouldn’t it be nice if the Senate said, “Liberal or conservative, we’re not going to approve any Supreme Court justice that won’t tell us his or her position on issues”? The Senate is not supposed to be a rubber stamp. The founding fathers had no stated opinions on many current issues. Semi-automatic handguns didn’t exist…
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Brother, can you spare a dime?

So I’m in the grocery store, buying a few things, and decide to use the self-serve lane for a change. I realize I have just $15.25 in cash. So I start scanning things… careful not to go over. Then I go over. An employee walks by and I tell the lady, a middle-aged black lady,…
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