Here’s another piece of mine in CNN, also out today. I hope this gets a bit of attention because I was able to move past the headlines (thanks to my wonderful editor at CNN for her encouragement and mad editing skillz) to question the very concept police patrol. That’s the type of moderately deep-thinking that…
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Here’s my piece in today’s New York Times: Critics of police — and there have been a lot this past year — are too focused on what we don’t want police to do: don’t make so many arrests; don’t stop, question and frisk innocent people; don’t harass people; don’t shoot so many people, and for…
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From Shorpy:
This is huge: The NYPD has authorized, effective as of 0001 hrs, 4 June 2015, the use of — are you seated? — black OR BLUE ink for all department business. Too much. Too soon. It’s gotta be DeBlasio’s fault. For sure.
From the Daily Beast: “I was around for the first Baltimore riots,” Waters says. “My first apartment in Baltimore was on 25th Street and Calvert, and there were tanks outside of my house. Everywhere was burning. Believe me, these riots were not as bad as those. But the riots in Baltimore this time were more…
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The recent crime numbers in NYC will soon come out, and they’re not good. Homicides this week are way up compared to last year. Of course that’s just one week… till it’s not. Shootings are up in NYC. Not Baltimore up. But up. People are dying. It is time to ring the alarm. Maybe not…
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This interview with David Simonis well worth reading in its entirety. Does he get some things wrong? Sure. Is he a little too believing that cops with the best stories are representative of the entire police department? Sure. (Among other things, drug-free zones were never used to arrest people. Too much paperwork. But that change…
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Arrests are way down in Baltimore. But not just this month (though they are) but over many years. There were 40,000 arrests in 2014 (3,300 a month). In 2003 there were 114,000 arrests. Like I said, arrests are way down. This is worth repeating because it goes against a narrative that the riots were somehow…
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The Sun reported that this month has been the fifth deadliest in 40 years. Actually, by rate, since Baltimore has fewer people than it used to have, May has been the most deadly month ever. In number of dead, the deadliest months have been: Aug 1972: 45 Dec 1971: 44 Aug 1990: 42 Aug 1996:…
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Maybe you were too busy blocking traffic into the city to notice, but this past weekend 32 people were shot in Baltimore. Nine were killed. (as usual, click to embiggen) This past weekend. In Charm City. With just over 620,000 people. Meanwhile, from April 25 to May 23, this past month, 122 people were shot…
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