Police

We Got Another Kingpin! (15)

It’s amazing there are any drug kingpins left since we’ve gotten so many of them. It seems there was one last to get: “La Tuta.” Now he’s history. (I’m a bit disappointed in the monicker. “The teacher” is a pretty lame nickname by drug lord standards, I have to say. We may not be running out of kingpins, but they…

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Police

Fight Police Brutality

No point here. I just like old pictures. From Shorpy.com. Caption: Washington, D.C., circa 1925. “Protesters” is all it says on the caption card for this National Photo glass negative showing what seems to be a meeting of the “Communist Party Young Communist League.”

Police

Body Cams and the mean streats of Basingstoke

The BBC has a short (2 min) and surprisingly informative clip on body cameras. But the real reason I’m posting this is because this attack on a police officer took place in Basingstoke, England. Now you may know Basingstoke for its roundabouts (traffic circles)… actually you probably have never heard of Basingstoke. And that’s OK. But I know Basingstoke because…

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Prop. 47’s effect on jail time

From LA, where Proposition 47 reclassified many crimes as misdemeanors. Drug arrests are down by about one-third. Property crimes are up nearly 10 percent. The problem seems to be this: “The new law specifies that the financial savings on the incarceration side be reinvested in truancy, drug treatment and mental health programs. But that provision does not take effect until…

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Police

This is what rational drug policy looks like

The other day my wife and I visited a friend from way back who now works in a coffee shop. Actually a famous one, the Bulldog, which is soon to celebrate it’s 40th anniversary. Mostly I just love how a legal and regulated drug trade becomes, well, boring. There actually is a worker on duty who is registered by the…

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Don’t snort the white heroin!

So a few months ago in Amsterdam, a couple British tourists died from a drug overdose. The Brits are kind of like the canaries in a coal mine of tourists. Brits are usually the first to somehow kill themselves, if given the opportunity. (It has to do with alcohol.) Anyway, they did die. It turned out that some guy on…

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Police

Dateline: Amsterdam

I’m in Amsterdam. It’s been three years since I’ve been here, which is the longest I’ve ever been away since 1991, when I first visited (and then lived in) this fine city. Like New York or Chicago, Amsterdam has gentrified. A lot. The city is also less interesting. It’s called vertrutting: dulling. There’s a movement to “stop the verturtting of…

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