Police

Seven (7!) Percent of Oakland Cops Live in Oakland

I don’t know what the right percentage is, regarding cops living where they work. Though I am partial to 100 percent of cops living or having had lived in the city they police. But whatever the right number is, the percentage is larger than friggin’ seven percent, which is what you find in Oakland. Now is this why Oakland cops…

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Police

How much would they have pay you to do this?

Civil servants too often get disparaged. But that man on the ladder is a New York City civil servant and he is climbing up, not down. I’m no longer a civil servant, but this makes me proud just to be fellow worker for the City of New York. Here’s a video of climbing down here. Previously unidentified, he is Bronx…

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Police

Blacks against Black-on-Black Violence

This isn’t really news. But some seem to think that blacks only care about black lives murder when it’s at the hands of police. (And certainly police-involved killings seems to be the only ones that get a lot of press). But when blacks do protest and act against violence in the black community, very few seem to notice. This happenedin…

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Police

Crime up in NYC (this time for real)

Compared to last year, shootings and homicides in NYC are up 20 percent. Twenty percent is a real increase. Here’s the compstat page and also a link to last week’s summary (no matter when you click the link). I don’t know why crime is up. But… I can’t help but think it’s part of (or some combination of) everything that…

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Police

“Why become a cop?”

My latest piece at CNN.com is up. They titled it: “Why would you want to be a cop?” I speak to a lot of police officers, retired, on the job, and soon-to-be. Anybody who knows cops knows it’s in their nature to complain (there’s an old barb about there being just two things cops don’t like: change and the status…

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Police

“Generating New Revenue Streams” by policing

Sometimes it’s important to remember how you got to Point B from Point A to where you are today. You don’t just stumble into a system like Ferguson’s where the city tries to get 30 percent of it’s total budget from fines, citations, and court fees. Ferguson isn’t unique. I just stumbled across this article from 2010, writen by a…

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Police

Value Over Replacement Cop

This was gonna be my idea! “Bobbies and Baseball Players: Evaluating Patrol Officer Productivity Using Sabermetrics.” So kudos to Luke Bonkiewicz because he actually researched and wrote the article and I didn’t. Here’s the abstract from the current issue of Police Quarterly (2015, Vol. 18(1) 55–78): Police officer productivity is an understudied topic in police research. Prior studies on productivity…

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Police

Shootings up in NYC

Shootings are up 20 percent this year. Bratton is blaming marijuana. I doubt it. But maybe. I’m certainly willing to consider the idea. Most liberals, I find, never ever consider the idea that their advocacy might have unintended consequences, like more young black men getting murdered. That said, Bratton pointed to drug dealers getting killed. That was illegal last year…

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Police

Dan Aykroyd continues to “embrace the police”

Dan Aykroyd is making a donation to the children of slain Philadelphia Police Officer Robert Wilson III. Wilson was killed by two robbers last Thursday. Seems Wilson just happened to be in a store, in uniform, when armed robbers decided hold the place up: Officer Wilson stopped by the GameStop store to purchase a video game for his son as…

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