Police

Memories

This is a story from way back when. I’ve never found a way to work it into anything I’ve written, but it’s too good to go to waste: Two cuffed men were seated on the curb on Bradford St. in front of their Lexus. We were all waiting for a wagon. I was helping guard them for the primary officer.…

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Shot in Drug Raid

Copp was unarmed when a deputy shot him in the chest at his off-campus apartment more than two weeks ago. West Michigan Enforcement Team officers entered the residence on a search warrant. Copp’s attorney has said “a few tablespoonfuls” of marijuana were found in the apartment. Police have not released any details on what was found in the residence. The…

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Broken Windows, Subways, and Crime

The danger in New York City of subway cuts and transit fare hikes looms. Keeping the transit system in decent shape affects more than your commute to work. It’s a public safety issue. The proposed MTA “doomsday” service cuts puts the past 15 years of public-safety gains in jeopardy. Many factors contributing to New York City’s crime drop, but a…

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Hellhole

Is solitary confinement torture? I think so. The New Yorkerhas a story by Atul Gawande.

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Why We Must Fix Our Prisons

Senator Jim Webb wrote a piece for ParadeMagazine: With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different–and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter. … Justice statistics also show that 47.5%…

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Judge Gray on Drugs

Steve Lopez of the LA Times write about fellow LEAP member, Judge Jim Gray: All right, tell me this doesn’t sound a little strange: I’m sitting in Costa Mesa with a silver-haired gent who once ran for Congress as a Republican and used to lock up drug dealers as a federal prosecutor, a man who served as an Orange County…

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Bad Judge

I can’t think of anything much more unconscionable than a selling a kid to jail for kickback money. Then multiply that times 2,000 and you’ve got Judges Mark Ciaverella and Michael Conahan. Things were different in the Luzerne County juvenile courtroom, and everyone knew it. Proceedings on average took less than two minutes. Detention center workers were told in advance…

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The Dumbest Criminal?

Is this man the dumbest criminal in Pennsylvania? There’s so much competition. Here’s the story in the BBC: Retired police chief John Comparetto was attending the meeting of 300 officers when he was allegedly held up at gunpoint in the men’s toilets. … He described the suspect as “probably the dumbest criminal in Pennsylvania”. The suspect said, “I’m smooth.”

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Rockefeller Drug Laws

It’s official. I don’t like them. See it says so right here: Professor Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who teaches law enforcement classes at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the Rockefeller laws “don’t make sense from a legal level or a moral level. They treat every problem as if prison was the answer.” “Nobody leaves…

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Police converge in Oakland for funeral

The Oakland Tribunereports on this as does the San Francisco Chronicle: “The funeral will be unprecedented in at least one other respect – all 815 members of the Oakland Police Department are being allowed to attend.” It is set for 11AM.