Richard Gonzales of National Public Radio report that California is pulling in $100 million a year in taxes from medical marijuana. This is a federal crime. The main opposition to medical marijuana comes from Big Government Conservatives. Big Government Prohibitionists would be a better label. They have a moral agenda and are only conservative (states’…
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My thanks to Marni Soupcoff of the (Canadian) National Post for her kind words about my blog. She’s right, the real purpose of this blog is to get people to buy my book, Cop in the Hood. And she did! So thanks, Marni. Hopefully the weak dollar will inspire many others up north to buy…
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The Sunreports that a man was sentenced to 11 years for dealing crack. That’s a lot of years for crack, I thought. Of course, like everything with crime and criminals in Baltimore, that’s not the whole story. This 28-year-old man, William Floyd Crudup, shot two city police officer in 2005. His trial ended in a…
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Ending the war on drugs seems obvious to me. But many need more proof. Now the American-led international war on drugs is approaching our borders in New Mexico and Texas. One article yields New Mexicans saying “legalize drugs.” But a fellow New Mexican (my wife) warns, “But of course those Americans saying ‘legalize drugs’ are…
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Get this… this is a story about two men. So there’s this man, right? And it’s like 4am and he gets jacked in West Baltimore. A man comes up to him and pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and tries to rob him. In response, the man getting robbed pulls out hisfake handgun. Somehow, fake-handgun man…
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My book review of Bernard Harcourt’s, Against Prediction,was just published in the American Journal of Sociology. You can read it here.
I heard Harvard Professor Bruce Western speak tonight at New York University. A short while back I heard him speak at John Jay College and he was nice enough to give me his powerpoint presentation. I use some of it in my class. This is one of those slides: We now lock up 730 people…
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The trial of the officers involved in the Sean Bell Shooting continues with lots of interesting testimony. The justice department declares that New York City’s auxiliary police aren’t really police. At least when it comes to paying benefits to the family of two officers killed while patrolling in uniform. And Governor Paterson, who I seem…
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The Drug War Rant and Stop the Drug War turned me on to a report by the Center for Disease Control. The just released “Deaths: Final Report for 2005” (hey, it takes a while to count all the dead folk) may not be the most uplifting title, but they do breakdown the two-and-a-half million deaths…
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New Jersey Governor Corzine signed “Patricia’s Law” mandating that police must accept—without delay—any report of a missing person. I would assert that no law named after a person has ever been good. This one sure isn’t. The Recordreports: Under Patricia’s Law, police cannot refuse to take on the case of a missing person — whether…
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