From LA, where Proposition 47 reclassified many crimes as misdemeanors. Drug arrests are down by about one-third. Property crimes are up nearly 10 percent. The problem seems to be this: “The new law specifies that the financial savings on the incarceration side be reinvested in truancy, drug treatment and mental health programs. But that provision…
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Ron Smith ain’t your average police union president.
The other day my wife and I visited a friend from way back who now works in a coffee shop. Actually a famous one, the Bulldog, which is soon to celebrate it’s 40th anniversary. Mostly I just love how a legal and regulated drug trade becomes, well, boring. There actually is a worker on duty…
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So a few months ago in Amsterdam, a couple British tourists died from a drug overdose. The Brits are kind of like the canaries in a coal mine of tourists. Brits are usually the first to somehow kill themselves, if given the opportunity. (It has to do with alcohol.) Anyway, they did die. It turned…
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I’m in Amsterdam. It’s been three years since I’ve been here, which is the longest I’ve ever been away since 1991, when I first visited (and then lived in) this fine city. Like New York or Chicago, Amsterdam has gentrified. A lot. The city is also less interesting. It’s called vertrutting: dulling. There’s a movement…
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NYC style. Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
…Occasionally a man does put on his papou’s (grandfather’s) 1930s AHEPAfez while giving a Greek Americans talk at New York’s Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity.
So there’s something very odd about this: According to the [New York City] Department of Health, New York University students were dispatched to gather shisha from of 13 hookah bars; after samples were analyzed, it was found that all 13 samples contained tobacco. Well I should hope so! You might find the same if you…
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It does seem pretty stupid to rob a gun store. But it also calls into question the deterrent effect of guns. A good man with a gun was not enough to stop four bad people with guns. There was a gunfight. The store owner was killed. His wife believes her life was saved because of…
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When 311 is introduced for non-emergency calls, there’s always talk about how the new 311 system will ease pressure on the 911 system. That never happens (but “hope springs eternal…”). I can’t actually find the 911 numbers, but I know there are more 911 calls now than in 2003, when 311 was introduced here in…
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