I don’t really have a problem with the first two minutes. The suspect, Walter Harvin, was aggressive and uncooperative. Harvin pushes Officer London at 0:26 and has to go. I turns into a messy arrest, but that’s sometimes how it is. As much as I don’t like tasers… tasing this guy sure would have saved…
Read more
The more of these tapes I hear, the more I think how good these secretly recorded NYPD officers sound. And this is the best [read: worst] they could come up with? To me it shows what a good job most men and women in the NYPD do. In the latest batch, particular kudos to Lt…
Read more
Cops arrest an off-duty cop for being drunk and obnoxious at the ballpark. This doesn’t surprise me. But I mention it for those who talk too much of the Blue Wall of Silence and some secret code of brotherhood and that cops never arrest another cop unless they have to and somebody is hurt. Now…
Read more
Barry Gibbs was framed by the Mob Cops and spend more than 18 years behind bars. He was innocent. This is the ten minute talk he gave at The Moth in 2006. After hearing him, I invited him to come to my classes and speak at John Jay College. He did. He recently got a…
Read more
When I saw the headline, “City to Pay $9.9 Million Over Man’s Imprisonment,” my first thought was, “I hope that’s not mycity.” But it is. That means a few bucks straight out of my pocket. I hate that! Especially for bad policing. But then I saw that the man getting the money is Barry Gibbs.…
Read more
The NYPD Tapes, Part 2, by Graham Rayman in the Village Voice. (And a link to my comments on Part 1) Commentary: “Oh, You Mean Those Quotas” by Radley Balko. “Those Schoolcraft Tapes” by Leonard Levitt. Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.
Ninety percent of those stopped by the NYPD are black and latino. So says the New York Times. Is this a cause for concern? I don’t know. Something certainly bothers me when my male black and hispanic students complain of being stopped by the police often (and often rudely stopped). But there is one touchy…
Read more
A reader pointed me to this story in New York’s Village Voice. In the 81st Precinct in New York City, a cop, Schoolcraft, secretly recorded roll call and other happenings over the course of the year. Bold. Though all he seems to show is something we all should already know. In the NYPD, everybody is…
Read more
A US citizen from Pakistan. The story in the New York Times.
Kudos to the NYPD and the bomb squad for doing their job well. That work is no joke. In her wonderful The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote, “It does not take many incidents of violence to make people fear the streets. And as they fear them, they use them less,…
Read more