Daniel Okrent has a new book out, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. I haven’t read it yet. But I’ll be damned if Johann Hari in Slate hasn’t written one of the better book review I’ve ever read. It’s not easy to keep writing about the absurdity of prohibition in a new way.…
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I have an article in the current Political and Legal Anthropology Review, “Policing: A Sociologist’s Response to an Anthropological Account”: In order to be read (and who among us writes for sheer compositional joy alone?) writing needs to be good; people won’t read the other kind. The more jargon and sociobabble we anthropologists, sociologists, and…
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Off-duty Baltimore officer Gahiji Tshamba, the guy who seems to have emptied his glock at and into a man for touching his girlfriend seems to have a bit of a history. “Investigators found13 bullet casings at the scene and the officer’s gun was empty. Nine of those bullets ended up hitting the ex-Marine, which some…
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So says USA Today. The governor said, “If that means that fewer people are breaking the law, that is absolutely an accomplishment.” The good news is that at least one of the criminals–I mean business owner–plans to move to New York City. It would be nice if the aftermath of this law could to be…
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I was in the hardware store the other day. The one where the business owner is a middle-aged, liberal, dog loving, some’er teeth, former punk kind of guy (only in New York). Dire Straits “Walk of life” was on the radio and I mentioned how I loved that song when it came out… and how…
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I was listening to my all-time favorite interviewer, Milt Rosenberg, talk to a few Chicago cops. Like most cops talking in public, this interview starts out a bit stilted, but they open up by the end. [I was on this show last year–my life’s dream! I’ve been listening to Uncle Milt for about 30 years…
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Cops should not ask other people to commit crimes. Nor, legally, can they give you permission to do so. Certainly not for a felony. Seems pretty obvious to me. Specifically this is about pharmacists filling out prescriptions they know to be bogus so drug addicts can then be arrested for the more serious crime of…
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Barry Gibbs was framed by the Mob Cops and spend more than 18 years behind bars. He was innocent. This is the ten minute talk he gave at The Moth in 2006. After hearing him, I invited him to come to my classes and speak at John Jay College. He did. He recently got a…
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I enjoy watching California’s marijuana laws evolve. That’s the way we should be dealing with drugs. Delivery services are one way people are getting their weed in California (and in New York City, too, even though it’s clearly illegal here). I’m all for legal and regulated drugs. And yet I wouldn’t want to live next…
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I got another email from a somebody who worked with my father. He wrote: Charlie took me to a book party where he introduced me to Colin Powell. On the way out Charley and I were speaking about DADT and I suddenly realized that he thought that it was going to a permanent solution to…
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