This one, if the Sunis to be believed, sounds wild. Though if the Sunis to be believed, this happened in East Baltimore (you know, where bad things happen). Best I can tell it started in the Central and ended in the Northern. Officer Anthony Jobst, 47, was in his patrol car in the first block…
Read more
Too often, almost predictably, undercover vice units are involved in scandal. Even the Sean Bell shooting has a strong narc connection. The Night Club Task Force involved in the Sean Bell shooting was formed in reaction to the Chelsea abduction and murder of 18-year-old Jennifer Moore. These undercover vice and narcotics officers worked to establish…
Read more
Occasionally I will repost op-eds of mine to give them fresh life and allow people to comment. The following was published in theWashington Post, August 2, 2004. You can read all my op-eds here. When you board a plane, both you and your carry-on bags are searched. A civilian employee of the Transportation Security Administration…
Read more
There are many day-to-day things in the ghetto that start to seem normal, or at least routine, when you’re in too deep. These are things that would shock most outsiders. Take evictions. Every day you’d turn your police car into a street and see the insides of an entire home neatly piled up in the…
Read more
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer slept with a whore. She was an expensive whore, as is befitting a man of his station. I believe once the price is more than $1,000 an hour, the word is “high class.” So there you have it: Man Pays for Sex. There really isn’t much else to say. I…
Read more
About a year after I left the B.P.D., this happened. 324 car got firebombed. Some locals didn’t like the officer driving it because he could outrun and catch anybody in the district who tried to run from him. Somebody led him on a foot chase while his friends torched the car. It was our best…
Read more
Something strange is going on here. There are important details not reported. No matter, I’m glad the officer is alive. The rah-rah part of these stories bothers me. If the bullet was anything but a graze, odds are this officer will never patrol again. City officer shot by gunman who was hiding in bushes By…
Read more
I just stumbled across “Murder I Wrote” (from a link related to Bradford Pulmer’s blog). In 1997, David Simon, producer of The Wire (the best TV show ever), wrote in The New Republic how corner boys were recruited for a day to be slinging extras for the TV show Homicide(not the best show ever). The…
Read more
In his blog, Bradford Plumer writes a thoughtful analysis of one chapter of Cop in the Hood (scroll down to “Call a Cab Cause a Cab Will Come Quicker,” and the comments in particular). I learned of a 911 operator in Detroit criminally convicted of negligence for failing to take a call from a 5-year-old…
Read more
Sean Bell, an unarmed black man, should not have died. But the officers on trial won’t be convicted of anything major. The police certainly make mistakes. We all do. Like it or not, mistakes aren’t usually crimes, especially for police. After any high-profile police shooting, there is the hope that time will reveal the truth…
Read more