More foot patrol is always possible. Back in the days, all patrol was foot patrol. Our almost complete dedication to cars responding to dispatched calls is a choice we make… or maybe a choice made for us. But if we really wanted and demanded more foot patrol, we could have it. Police departments need to…
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Steve Lopez of the L.A. Times has a good take on cameras in police cars.
The smart folks at Marginal Revolution mentioned my book again. There’s nothing I like talking about more than foot patrol. The following are taken mostly from a comment I wrote to this post. The Kansas City Preventative Patrol experiment is the most amazingly ignored police study ever. For police and crime prevention, it’s one of…
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Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weiss says he plans more foot and bike patrol and an emphasis on “broken windows” policing. This is great news for Chicago… if it actually happens. It’s tough to get cops out of cars. But Weiss is certainly saying the right things. This is reported in the Sun Times. The point…
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New Jersey Governor Corzine signed “Patricia’s Law” mandating that police must accept—without delay—any report of a missing person. I would assert that no law named after a person has ever been good. This one sure isn’t. The Recordreports: Under Patricia’s Law, police cannot refuse to take on the case of a missing person — whether…
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This one, if the Sunis to be believed, sounds wild. Though if the Sunis to be believed, this happened in East Baltimore (you know, where bad things happen). Best I can tell it started in the Central and ended in the Northern. Officer Anthony Jobst, 47, was in his patrol car in the first block…
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About a year after I left the B.P.D., this happened. 324 car got firebombed. Some locals didn’t like the officer driving it because he could outrun and catch anybody in the district who tried to run from him. Somebody led him on a foot chase while his friends torched the car. It was our best…
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Something strange is going on here. There are important details not reported. No matter, I’m glad the officer is alive. The rah-rah part of these stories bothers me. If the bullet was anything but a graze, odds are this officer will never patrol again. City officer shot by gunman who was hiding in bushes By…
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Rapid response doesn’t work for police. I’ve published an article in Law Enforcement Executive Forum saying as much. It’s also a chapter in my book. I was reminded of the futility of 911 yesterday when I came across an old man who had fallen down and cracked his head open here where I’m visiting my…
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Today’s Los Angeles TimesOpinion Section has an excellent article by an L.A. police officer about cameras in squad cars. I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I won’t. Here’s his piece: View from a squad carPutting video cameras in black-and-whites won’t clear up a distorted picture of the LAPD. By Jack Dunphy Los Angeles…
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