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Traffic “Interceptors” and the Militarization of Police
Yesterday, as I strolled down my neighborhood’s main street, I noticed two rather portly New York City police checking parked cars for traffic violations. I deliberately use the word “portly” to...
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Police Militarization – Contd.
Reader Dan Newberry, in the course of offering a thoughtful response to my recent post on the militarization of police says: [T]hese names [like "interceptor"] are made up by the people who make and...
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Occupy Wall Street And The Police: Why So Estranged?
Last year, as OWS kicked off, and as New York’s Finest (and later California’s) began their usual heavy-handed crackdown on any dissent that might threaten the ruling classes, I was struck by the...
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Camden Can’t Afford Its Police and Its Union Any More
Today’s blog post has little ‘analysis’; all I need do is point. Perfect storms should be ‘admired’ from a distance. When I’m done, let the chants of ‘USA! USA! USA!’ ring out, loud and proud. So, let...
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2012′s Top Five Posts (Here, Not Elsewhere)
2012, the year that was (or still is, for a few more hours), turned out to be a busy one for blogging at this site. I wrote three hundred and twenty-four new posts, bringing the total for this blog to...
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The Boston Bombings Are Bad News
By now, the bombings at the Boston Marathon are ‘old news’ for our 24-hour news and social media cycle. We’ve now run through the standard template of responses to such an attack: suspicion of the...
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The Closing of the NYPD’s Mind
Today, Brooklyn College hosted a panel titled ‘Are We Safer? Costs, Benefits, and Alternatives to 20 Years of Aggressive Street Policing” (organized by the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Law and...
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The Police as Paramilitary Force: A Problematic Conception
It is rare to find a police force—anywhere in the world—that enjoys cordial relationships with the community it polices i.e., a police force that is viewed and treated inclusively as a member of the...
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S.2402 Makes The Thin Blue Line Just A Little Meaner
You might have thought that with laws prohibiting assault already in the books, there would be no need for S.2402, the bill passed by the New York State Senate on June 5th that ‘creates the crime of...
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Stop and Frisk, Jersey City Style
This horrifying story of TSA overreach prompts my post today. It has nothing to do with the TSA but everything to do with the abuse of power. Almost twenty-five years ago, while attending graduate...
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On Visiting a Prison
I first saw a jail–and its inhabitants–as a child. Our family car had been broken into and some of its contents had been stolen, so we drove to a police station to file a report. While seated in the...
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The Killing and Vigilante Justice
There are two instances of vigilante justice in The Killing‘s first season: Bennett Ahmed is brutally beaten by Stan Larsen and Belko Royce, and Councilman Darren Richmond is shot and critically...
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Police or Wanna-Be Commandos?
You might have noticed your local police force starting to look increasingly militarized, wearing riot-gear like the type Glenn sports in The Walking Dead, and armed with not just weaponry like Rick...
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The Police Precinct as Augean Stable
Over the past few years, I have met some–very personable and intelligent–young men who seemed possessed by the same passion: they wished to join the police, to “serve their community”, to “give...
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A Day in Gaol, Part Deux: Notes on Police, Precincts, and Penality
Spending a day in jail has some social scientific value for the temporarily detained; it enables a closer, albeit short-lived, look at the systems of policing and criminal justice. And because I often...
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Policing Ferguson: Executions, Demonizing Protest, Militarization
The killing–execution style–of Michael Brown, the protests in Ferguson that followed, and their policing, both rhetorically and literally, demonstrate some chilling facts about modern American life....
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Machine Gun Men: Not Your Grandfather’s Police
It was a common sight in New York City: soldiers, paramilitary or regular in origin, wearing battle fatigues and carrying assault rifles and machine guns, standing guard in various bustling points of...
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Ferguson And The Tale Of Two Wars
A nation at war–an indefinite, borderless one, conducted against a faceless enemy, with little legal or moral restraint, with an endless wallet to be dipped into–will find, sooner or later, that the...
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Calling Bullshit On ‘Outside Agitators’ in Ferguson
A few days ago, a friend on Facebook posted the following as his status: Would any of you be down to help me organize a march on Ferguson, MO? Dead serious. It’s something I hope would send a powerful...
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The Deadly Self-Pity Of The Police
In 1997, as a graduate teaching fellow, I began teaching two introductory classes in philosophy at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Many of my students were...
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