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Police Issues’ Oink-Oinks
for 2011
POSTED 12/31/11 -- As our fifth year of pontificating about criminal justice draws to a close we’ve endeavored to bring you some of the most noteworthy events of 2011. Or at least a few of the most amusing...More
Faster, Cheaper, Worse
POSTED 12/11/11 -- Is “corrections” a non-sequitur? No, insists NIJ. Its landmark 1997 report, “Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising,” argued that carefully designed and appropriately targeted programs of sufficient dosage...More
From Eyewitnesses to GPS
POSTED 11/20/11 -- Beginning last month, and continuing through April 2012, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on cases accepted for the 2011-12 term. In this posting we’ll look at five...More
N.Y.P.D. Blue
POSTED 11/6/11 -- Less than a year after a fellow officer (and jilted lover) aimed her pistol and pulled the trigger, leaving him with bullet holes in the arm and shoulder, officer Jose Ramos wound up...More
There’s No Escaping
the Gun
POSTED 10/23/11 -- A paunchy middle-aged man turned away from the grisly scene and headed for his car. Eight were dead or dying, including...More
When One Goof is
One Too Many
I do believe I should have photographed the flumazenil on the floor before I put it on the table. Yes, in hindsight I would have done that.
POSTED 10/9/11 -- One would think that if there was a time to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s this would have been it. So why did the coroner’s investigator pick up that object before photographing it...More
Did Georgia Execute
an Innocent Man?
POSTED 9/24/11 -- During the early morning hours of August 19, 1989 Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail was in uniform working an off-duty security job at a Burger King when he came to the aid of a citizen...More
Forty Years After
Kansas City
POSTED 9/10/11 -- Nearly forty years have passed since a notable (some would say, notorious) experiment in Kansas City shook the foundations of American policing, bringing into question...More
Policing is a Contact Sport
(Part II)
POSTED 8/26/11 -- During the early morning hours of Saturday, August 6, University of Cincinnati campus police were summoned to a fight in a residence hall. That’s where they ran into Everett Howard. More
False Confessions Don’t
Just “Happen”
POSTED 8/12/11 -- Forget C.S.I. Confession is the grease that keeps the wheels of American justice turning. Really, it’s hard to imagine how our bursting-at-the-seams criminal justice system could function without it...More
Rush to Judgment (Part II)
POSTED 7/29/11 -- Coming only three weeks after asserting that LAPD “absolutely” had the responsible party, Chief Charlie Beck’s explanation that “we would have been derelict had we not made the arrest”...More
“Teaching” Police Departments?
That’s Right, Teaching
POSTED 7/15/11 -- The 2011 NIJ Conference was full of surprises, most good, a few not so much. But of the sessions attended by your blogger, none proved a bigger head-scratcher than “Teaching Rounds in Police Departments,” which promoted the notion...More
Translational?
That’s Right, Translational
POSTED 7/1/11 -- Translational? Um, what’s that? It’s criminology’s new direction, that’s what. More
The Church, Absolved
POSTED 5/23/11 -- “Predictably and conveniently, the bishops have funded a report that tells them precisely what they want to hear: it was all unforeseeable, long ago, wasn’t that bad and wasn’t their fault.” More
Physician, Heal Thyself
POSTED 5/8/11 -- Did Michael Jackson commit suicide? Improbable as it might seem, that’s essentially the theory being advanced by the legal team representing Dr. Conrad Murray, the physician who...More
Time or Money
POSTED 4/24/11 -- During the evening hours of March 1, 2011 a Cleveland police sergeant was working off duty directing traffic in front of a downtown parking garage. An SUV exiting the garage made an...More
The Long Arm of the Law
POSTED 4/10/11 -- By all accounts Victor Bout was a self-made man. And when the Soviet Union fell the energetic Russian entrepreneur spied a great opportunity. More
Risky Business
POSTED 3/27/11 -- Aggressive policing is back in style. With support from NIJ and university-based researchers, police departments across the U.S. have implemented a variety of hard-hitting....More
Letting Guns Walk
POSTED 3/13/11 -- “If you’re going to make an omelette, you’ve got to break some eggs.” That, said ATF special agent John Dodson, was his agency’s excuse for allowing more than 1,700 firearms...More
A Dangerous Loser
POSTED 3/4/11 -- On February 24 FBI agents in Lubbock, Texas arrested Ali-M Aldawsari for attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, a crime that could land him in prison for life. More
Having Your Cake, and Eating it Too!
POSTED 2/18/11 -- In these days of shrinking budgets who wouldn’t want to take a bite out of crime while reducing prison populations at the same time? More
Which Way, C.J.?
POSTED 2/3/11 -- Normally we avoid quoting at length, but in this case it seems appropriate to let John Jay College’s Evan Mandery and David Kennedy have their uninterrupted say. More
First, do no Harm
POSTED 1/18/11 -- It’s noon on Martin Luther King day, January 17, 2011. While on routine patrol you observe a man sleeping on the sidewalk...More
Absolute Power
Corrupts Absolutely
POSTED 1/4/11 -- “This is wrong, that’s why they did it on the last day, so they wouldn’t have to answer to anybody. More
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