The career of Gates should not be celebrated. My sincere condolences to his family and those who loved him. Seriously. But LA Police Chief Daryl Gates didn’t like to give breaks to other people. So why should I give him one? Gates is still popular among conservative law-and-order types. Drugs on a block? Send in…
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Forgive me if I don’t send flowers to his funeral. What an SOB.
A study by Daryl Fischer shows that 94 percent of Arizona state inmates are repeat or violent offenders. That “or” is important. “The myth that we’re filling our prisons with first-time drug offenders is not true.” Well sort of. It is generally true (with some notable exceptions) that people don’t do prison time for non-violent…
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Last week the BPD announced that they were suspending comstat. I’m not certain if that’s cutting edge or retro. Perhaps it’s time to suspend compstat here in NYC. I don’t think anybody wants a police department that doesn’t hold commanders accountable and use the timely analysis of crime data, but (and this is putting it…
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In this era of tight budgets, smaller cities and towns should consider disbanding the local SWAT team. They’ll save money on training, equipment and overtime. They’ll be returning to a less aggressive, less militaristic, more community-oriented method of policing. And though there always will be crime, it seems unlikely that should they do away with…
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Prince George’s County Police Department Chief Roberto L. Hylton has been very quick to express outrage at the beat down a few of his officers gave to a college student. I’m just curious where chief Hylton was that night. Did he have somewhere more important to be? Really. Where was he if not out there…
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The beating looks bad (oh, hell, it is bad), but will be defending by some. Hell, it isn’t easy being told to restore order in riot. But lying on your report? Now that gets you fired. But regardless of the specifics, what are you supposed to do with thousands of stupid drunk stupid college students…
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Streetsblog New York did an interview with me about police and traffic enforcement. It’s a good interview, even if “Talking Traffic with Peter Moskos” sounds like the world’s worst Sunday morning AM radio show.
“Southern Succession and the Civil War were about slavery.” If your response is, “duh!” then just ignore this. But if you believe otherwise, if you think hundreds of thousands of people were fighting and dying for the principle of preserving the union or abstract concepts of state’s rights, if you think Robert Lee was an…
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