I’m sure it seemed like a great idea. The NYPD asked New Yorkers to pose with NYPD officers and post their heart-warming photographs to twitter with the hashtag #myNYPD. I guess the geniuses in their social media department thought this would elicit Mayberry style images of neighborhood cops being heroes. Well, this isn’t the 50s. […]
Continue reading →John Morales, the actor who played McGruff the Crime Dog (you know: “Take a bite out of crime!”), was recently sentenced to sixteen years in prison three years after police seized a thousand marijuana plants and twenty-seven weapons (including a grenade launcher) from his house. Apparently he thought “Crime Dog” meant that he was supposed […]
Continue reading →You’ve done it, I hope. You are driving down the road and you see a police car lying in wait to pull over unsuspecting drivers. So, after you have passed, you let traffic coming from the opposite direction know there is a police car ahead—by flashing your brights a couple of times. A federal judge […]
Continue reading →Pirates and privateers engage in the exact same kinds of actions. In fact, the only difference between a pirate and a privateer is which side you’re on and which side is defining the law. Wikipedia points out the nice difference between the two: “The actual work of a pirate and a privateer is generally the same (raiding and plundering […]
Continue reading →I once languished in debtors prison. When I was about seventeen, I got strep throat something terrible. It got so bad I couldn’t swallow my own saliva without great pain. I was lying in my bed trying to recuperate when my father came to my door: “Son, the police are here for you.” “Huh? What […]
Continue reading →A lawsuit filed against the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department claims that drug dogs are little more than “trick ponies” used to legitimize the seizure of property from innocent victims. A 2010 study conducted by UC Davis is central to the lawsuit, as it indicated that drug dogs failed 85% percent of the time. In […]
Continue reading →A new study conducted by the Government Accountability Office confirms what the vast majority of Americans could have told you without thinking: the TSA’s behavioral screening program, SPOT, is not effective in singling out real threats to airline safety. The report cites both recent and decades-old research that “found that the human ability to accurately […]
Continue reading →In the wake of 9/11, the American civil government produced one of the most anti-constitutional laws ever to be passed: the USA PATRIOT Act. More about that and the misuse of the term “domestic terrorism” here. Not only did it seriously curtail many of your civil liberties, it also set the stage for every similar piece […]
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