But the time has probably come for the Police Department to ease up on the low-level “broken-windows” stuff while re-evaluating the impact it may or may not have on real, serious crime. No one will welcome this more than the average cop on the beat, who has been pressed to find crime where so much less of it exists.
.. He should have been acknowledging our accomplishments months ago, instead of aligning himself with grandstanding opportunists. His words and actions before the killings of Officers Liu and Ramos showed a contempt for the police all too common on the left, and it is this contempt that the officers who have turned their backs to him are responding to.
Russia: Hostage Taking is Back
Oleg’s greatest crime is, of course, that he is Navalny’s brother. Even the prosecution had actually sought a lesser punishment for him (8 to Alexei’s 10), so his more serious sentence is hard to interpret as anything but an attempt to use him as a hostage. This is unlikely to work on previous experience, but it will also be a worrying signal to the Russian elite. Up to now, after all, while it has been no secret that the “law” is used as an instrument of political control and business rivalry, “noncombatants” have generally been considered exempt. Whether or not the Kremlin wanted to signal more generally that this is no longer the case, there will inevitably be wider concerns. I wonder how many oligarchs, minigarchs and the like will be revisiting plans to relocate family members abroad, a kind of “human flight” to mirror the rampant capital flight visible as they try to get their assets out of the Kremlin’s and their rivals’ reach…
Panel to Advise Against Penalty for C.I.A.’s Computer Search
A panel investigating the Central Intelligence Agency’s search of a computer network used by staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who were looking into the C.I.A.’s use of torture will recommend against punishing anyone involved in the episode, according to current and former government officials.
The panel will make that recommendation after the five C.I.A. officials who were singled out by the agency’s inspector general this year for improperly ordering and carrying out the computer searches staunchly defended their actions, saying that they were lawful and in some cases done at the behest of John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director.
While effectively rejecting the most significant conclusions of the inspector general’s report, the panel, appointed by Mr. Brennan and composed of three C.I.A. officers and two members from outside the agency
Few Officers File Disproportionate “Resisting Arrest” Charges
A small percentage of cops commit most of the abuses. A study by WNYC News in New York found that, since 2009, 40 percent of the “resisting arrest” charges were filed by just 5 percent of New York Police Department officers. In other words, most officers rarely get in a confrontation that leads to that charge, but a few officers often get in violent confrontations.