Two weeks ago, Jay-Z went on Fresh Air with Terry Gross to talk about his new, much-hyped book about his life and music. During the interview, he went into greater detail about the police stop recalled in the second verse of “99 Problems”: GROSS: So, you know, part of that story is that the canine Read More
On this week’s podcast, Nicole, Jamelle, Monica and G.D. sit around an actual dinner table to discuss some depressing new stats about the academic woes of black boys. They also try to make sense of some high-profile attempts to regulate food purchases (including a push to forbade people on government assistance from buying soda, a Read More
The TSA’s new airport security protocols, in which folks are either subjected to high-tech x-ray screening or patdowns, have ruffled a lot of feathers from people who have become rather convenient civil libertarians. I caught Dave Barry, the humorist, on NPR the other day joking about an embarrassing search as he waited to board a plane, Read More
Late pass me on this, but Adam Serwer responded to my post on how Batman bears some of the blame for all the bodies the Joker has caught. The right answer is that Batman is already an outlaw, but his extralegal behavior is premised on preserving and strengthening what legitimate authority exists in Gotham so Read More
I love The Wire as much as the next person, but we’d all be better off if real life didn’t seem to emulate it so damn much: Year in and year out, the New York Police Department proudly broadcasts its statistics for major crimes. And each year for more than a decade, its numbers have showed Read More
[cross-posted from TAPPED] From ColorLines comes this excellent video, and accompanying story, of what it feels like to be stopped and frisked by police in Brownsville, Brooklyn. That neighborhood, along with nearby neighborhoods of Crown Heights and East New York, are some of the “Impact Zones” flooded with police officers to address the sorts of Read More
(x-posted from TAPPED) The New York Times has a great story about police officers using the stop, question, and frisk tactic in Brownsville, Brooklyn — one of the many areas designated an “impact zone” under commissioner Ray Kelly. Those zones are flooded with police officers, often new recruits, who reinforce small quality-of-life crimes like having Read More
ColorLines has been doing a fantastic job covering the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant on a subway platform. Kai Wright flags a comment from the blog on the verdict. As a former defense attorney, I respect the jury system–it’s better than any alternatives. But jury trials can and Read More
The girl punched in the face by an officer in Seattle has apologized. One of the frustrating things about how incidents like this play out is how rarely anyone in the situation apologizes, or has anything explained to them. Many people operate under misunderstandings on how policing works, and it’s pretty rare for anyone to Read More
Earlier this week, the FBI reported that crime was down across the country last year despite the faltering economy and rising unemployment. Over at TAPPED, Adam Serwer has a post that does a good job explaining why the commonly held idea that prolonged downturns lead to spikes in crime is off base: UCLA professor Mark Read More
