Was the blog Marginal Revolution?
Moskos has some interesting remarks in the comments on that post, if it was. I'm very interested in the Kansas City Preventative Patrol experiment he mentioned.
Ivory tower goes to the mean streets
Nice to see another American academic has left his university (aka ivory tower) for the reality of the mean streets and put a uniform on. There was a classic sociology professor who did this in the early 1980's, alas name lost.
Although both books are from the early 1980's I always enjoyed James McClure's observations on policing: Spike Island (set in Liverpool) and Cop World (set in San Diego). McClure was a South African born journalist, who wrote several novels on policing in South Africa and died a few years ago.
I've seen US policing first hand, mainly in urban areas and have been a UK cop for 25yrs plus. Motorised policing is far too confrontation orientated and few US departments actually did patrol by walking and talk. Here there is a noticeable difference between those who started by walking and talking compared to those who were taught in a car.
The UK has gone through periods when local / neighbourhood policing has been emphasised and then withers - we currently are in a neighbourhood team everywhere process, with the Prime Minister's personal endorsement.
The option for cycling patrol now exists locally and one colleague just loves it, being paid to cycle around for eight hours talking to people great.
One snag with neighbourhood policing is that they can prefer to let others do the hand on bit, arrests and searching. Secondly in this IT age access to robust IT kit without going back to the local station (the Japanese get over this by having small facilities in every neighbourhood). Once the neighbourhood officer is in a station it is hard to get them out again.
In the Northern Ireland Troubles context the police, the RUC (now PSNI), could not patrol urban Republican areas without protection, armoured Land Rovers and community policing was largely done in plainclothes in clearly defined, safe contexts - with people you knew. Protestant or Loyalist areas were very different, some needed the same level of protection, there is testimony in several court cases where interaction with the public and suspects was possible.
One particular problem for both communities was the stealing of cars, their racing around and abandonment. Once the RUC had the power to remove such cars and reduce the local nuisance impact that helped with wider community policing issues. Interestingly this lesson learnt took several years to migrate across the Irish Sea to England.
Community or neighbourhood policing must be visible and seen by the local residents to have an effect now, not in some distant future.
davidbfpo
Finished Cop in the Hood the other night
Very quick read, clocking in at less than 200 pages. The first ¾ of the book is a drive by of what it’s like to be a patrol officer in an urban environment. Nothing big or shocking for anyone that’s currently or has ever been on the job. For those unfamiliar it might be a bit of an eye opener. Moskos gives pretty fair treatment to officer’s attitudes and discretion. The last ¼ of the book is dedicated to the War on Drugs and legalization. Overall not bad, but the last quarter should be expanded into a stand alone publication.
Quote:
An innovative analysis by Eric Cadora highlights "million-dollar blocks"-individual city blocks where more than one million dollars per block per year are spent to incarcerate individuals from that block. Some blocks cost over five million dollars per year. Cadora does not question the justness of these incarcerations. But he does suspect there may be better ways to spend these criminal-justice dollars. A million dollars, coincidentally, is roughly what it would cost to pay for one patrol officer, twenty-four hours a day, every day for one year. pg. 188
Has anyone ever laid out the mechanics of how legalization would function? (Prescription only? Dispensation at public health clinics? Who manufactures?) Also, has anyone considered the pushback from current suppliers if they’re suddenly cut out of the market? Does anyone think a multi-billion dollar tax-free industry is going to go quietly into the night?