Police

On Point

I was on National Public Radio’s “On Point” today. You can listen to it here. It’s a quick hour.

Police

Unprecedented

Pulled from the shelves! Indeed, if you don’t already have a copy of Cop in the Hood, odds are you’re not getting one for a couple of weeks. No, I didn’t fake the whole thing. No, the book isn’t a safety hazard. No, there’s nothing substantively wrong with the book. But the book is an editing mess. There are errors,…

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Police

Police “kill Colombian drug lord”

These kind of headlines, this one from the BBC, always crack me up… and make me sad. Why? Do you feel safer? This guy’s death won’t mean shit. Some other drug lord will take his place. I nominate his second-in-command. I mean, really… Does anybody think that killing some bad guy is going to win the global war on drugs?…

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Police

Police-involved shootings

For those interested in an honest police perspective on shooting (and not shooting) people, I recommend Into the Kill Zone: A Cop’s Eye View of Deadly Force by professor and former police officer David Klinger. It’s a lot of 1st-hand accounts of deadly force incidents. And it’s good stuff. You can read an excerpt here.

Police

Marijuana Arrest Crusade

I haven’t digested all this yet, but there’s an interesting little brouhaha about a recent study released by the NYCLU by Queens College Professor Harry Levine and Deborah Small. The paper is called, “Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City, 1997-2007.” The report claims that 35,000 people a year are arrested in New York City…

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Police

Buying drugs in Amsterdam

Buying drugs doesn’t need to involve criminals, violence, and neighborhood blight. These are pictures I took a few years back of a friend buying drugs in an Amsterdam “coffee shop.” I show it to my classes at John Jay College of Criminal justice. Amsterdam is a beautiful city of canals and old buildings. I love being on a boat. In…

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