The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals (never known for its pro-police views) to be precise. This perhaps landmark decision has been called, “The clearest and most complete statements yet from an appellate court about the limits of Taser use.” From the story by Hudson Sangree and Kim Minugh in the Sacramento Bee. In the summer…
Read more
So what’s the lesson with this guy? Seriously. It’s damn hard to stop people from doing harm if they’re willing to kill themselves… but that’s no real answer. Here’s one of many stories. [poor Nigeria, their rep was bad enough with simply internet scams!] [update:] Maybe it’s this, from David Brooks’ column in the New…
Read more
Two of the best police books out there are little read. Too little read. And top-quality and much more action packed than my book. I’ve written about both these books before, but it can’t hurt writing about them again. Beyond Hope? by Michael East is about policing in Saginaw, Michigan. Unless you live in Saginaw,…
Read more
From the Wall Street Journal: Growing numbers of Mexican and U.S. officials say—at least privately—that the biggest step in hurting the business operations of Mexican cartels would be simply to legalize their main product: marijuana. Long the world’s most popular illegal drug, marijuana accounts for more than half the revenues of Mexican cartels. “Economically, there…
Read more
Especially to those men and women working.
I don’t mind a mixed review of my book (Contemporary Sociology), but it does bother me when a reviewer calls my participant-observation research a “major flaw.” It’s like a man who doesn’t like olive oil, fish, and lamb bashing a Greek restaurant for being too “Mediterranean.” If you don’t like the concept, don’t review it.…
Read more
Everybody is talking about it… …so here’s my two-cents: For a cop, having a gun out isn’t such a big deal. Pointing a gun at someone is a big deal. Waving it around would be a big deal (and would also show a lack of professional training). I understand others may see any display of…
Read more
I wasn’t even going to link to this story because I don’t want to repeat myself more than necessary. Here’s the point: black New Yorkers are seven times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession. For a moment, let’s put aside the actually story (not that we should). For the sake of…
Read more
And the century has just barely begun. How come nobody is buying Cop in the Hood for Christmas? My Amazon sales rank is rapidly approaching infinity. Not good. Last I checked, more than 200,000 book were selling better than my book. That’s a lot of books being bought that aren’t mine. I can’t think of…
Read more
Only hours after the grieving family had finished burying [Ensign Melquisedet Angulo Córdova, a Special Forces sailor killed last week during the government’s most successful raid on a top drug lord in years] in his hometown, gunmen burst into the family’s house and sprayed the rooms with gunfire, killing his mother and three other relatives,…
Read more