One of the reasons I like NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton is that he is prone to quoting Robert Peel, the man who invented police as we know them back in 1829 London. Bratton has reprinted “Peel’s” principles online. Those nine principles are an excellent philosophical base for policing, they’re just not Robert Peel’s. And now…
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I love any memothat instructs police officers to “use discretion and common sense” and the arrest “as a last resort.” This is the type of common sense one would expect from Bratton because jaywalking in NYC is not a “broken window.” It’s actually quite poetic. Whoever wrote this should be promoted to editor of Spring-3100!…
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I don’t apply for many grants, in part because they’re so hard for a qualitative researcher to get. Ethnographic work and qualitative research isn’t taken seriously in a generally quantitative field. My research doesn’t follow the standard “theory, hypothesis, experiment, verify” model of hard science. Nor should it. But it’s hard to get grants or…
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Not yet. But the sky did get a little lower in NYC last month. Over the 28-day period ending 4/6/14, compared to 2013, the number of people shot increased 40 percent (101 vs 72). The increases were found, not surprisingly, in the Bronx (27 vs 18), Brooklyn North (28 vs 17) and Queens South (12…
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One of my life’s great regrets is that I can’t for the life of me imitate the Baltimore accent. And I love the Baltimore accent. Well, I’m not the only one who has trouble with those sounds that go from DC to Philly. This is actually about the Philly accent, but a lot of it…
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From the NYT:
Not too long ago I sent my Greek Americans book to John Kiriakou. He’s a proud Greek American and about as close to a political prisoners as we have. In his own words: I’m one of the people the Obama administration charged with criminal espionage, one of those whose lives were torn apart by being…
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Neill Franklin, once my commanding officer and now my friend (and coauthor) featured in Vice Magazine. I love Vice Magazine. And just because I’ve also been featured in it.
A nice New York Times video piece about the coming of the “superpredators” who never came. File under C for crack babies? From the Times: What happened with the superpredator jeremiads is that they proved to be nonsense. They were based on a notion that there would be hordes upon hordes of depraved teenagers resorting…
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I’ve never heard such uniformity in belief from police officers that crime is going to go up in New York City. Why with stop, question, and frisks down and a liberal mayor in charge, it’s almost like they want crime to go up just so they can say, “we told you so” and reminisce about…
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