As you may (or may not) have noticed, this blog has been on long-term hiatus. For now, not writing blog posts is more fun than writing them. Besides, I have other things to write, some of which might actually get me paid. Speaking of which, Cop in the Hood is still selling (just topped 20,000…
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Maybe I’ve become a bit cynical after my time in New York, but I don’t normally think of the police union as a good source for rational and cost-effective advice on better policing (though protecting workers’ rights is an important part of the union). But I’ve got to hand it to Robert Cherry, president of…
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I was interviewed by Videosurveillance.com about my thoughts on video surveillance’s effect on crime. I’m skeptical. (But impressed that a company such as theirs is willing to print my unadulterated skepticism.) Cameras are no substitute of cops.
Our home in Beirut (near the Greek Orthodox part of town, which my wife swears was just a coincidence). If you look closely you can that our 4th floor landing was once a sniper’s nest. The bullet pock marks on the wall are outgoing (incoming can be found if you lean over and look down).…
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Check out this lengthy piece (and well worth reading the whole thing) by David Simon about murders, stats, the BPD, the state’s attorney’s office, and the need for main-stream media. (And thanks to an anonymous comment for cluing me in.) The Stat: In 2011, the Baltimore Police Department charged 70 defendants with murder or manslaughter.…
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I’m off to Beirut to see the missus, who has been there for a month already. Yes, Beirut, the Pearl of the Levant, The Paris of the East, Chicago by the Sea. Except for rolling blackouts, a near civil-war next door (in the country that imposed peace in Lebanon, naturally), and some burning issues in…
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Need some good summer reading? Why not Eliot? It’s fiction set very firmly in Baltimore’s Eastern District. I know those streets well (even if the cameras are new to me). (and I love that he gives a shout out to Larry, the world’s best dispatcher.) I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say…
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In his autobiography Benjamin Franklin wrote: On the whole, I proposed as a more effectual watch, the hiring of proper men to serve constantly in the at business; and as a more equitable way of supporting the charge the levying a tax than should be proportion’d to the property…. It paved the way for the…
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Remember Dudas (AKA Christopher Coke), the Jamaican drug lord? He was sentenced in Manhattan (though most of his criminal acts were in Jamaica). When he was holding out in Tivoli Gardens, I did not think this he would ever be sentenced, much less by a US court. I wonder if life today is better or…
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From the Times: A federal judge ruled Thursday that the police did not sufficiently warn Occupy Wall Street protesters against walking on the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge before arresting about 700 of them in October. The ruling, by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, allows a class-action suit filed…
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