Sometimes the kids get to you. I was riding with the Cook County Sheriff’s anti-gang unit sometime back. We were driving through the hopeless fourth-generation welfare towns that surround Chicago - Markham, Robbins, Ford Heights, what have you. These drab little burgs are almost entirely black, heavily dependent on public assistance of one sort or... Read More

The terrorism racket grows more interesting. What with trials of terrorists in New York for the bombing of the World Trade Center, and now the fellows who were going to blow up Manhattan's subways, things don't look as safe as they might. A sort of terrorism that hasn't yet gotten a lot of attention, but... Read More

Shoplifters are some of my favorite criminals. Various times over the years I've gone with the Arlington police to pick them up in the big Pentagon City department stores. These are a favorite destination for shoplifters from Washington and PG County. The security forces catch them, but the cops have to take them away. Lots... Read More

As you go through the city on Metro, from Rosslyn to New Carrollton, you come out from underground and begin to pass through suburbia. Here and there you see graffiti spray-painted on walls and abutments. There isn't much of a pattern to it. Some of it suggests a degree of artistic talent. Gangs in Washington... Read More

I don't guess it was the story of the century, but it caught my attention. I was riding with a friend one night in the satellite suburbs of Chicago. I know that sounds vague. Years back I got to know some cops in The City That Works and we got along. When I'm out that... Read More

Having watched yet another movie about serial killers, who are actually rare, I figured it might be interesting to take a look at what these loons are really like. So I dragged out my copy of Sexual Homicides, by Ressler, Burgess, and Douglas, of the FBI's old Behavioral Sciences Unit at Quantico. These folk did... Read More

Manzanillo, Mexico. Last week, wanting a different perspective on the street trades, I spent a day with the Red Cross ambulance service here, Manzanillo being a port city on the West Coast with a population of something over a hundred thousand. If nothing else, it made me appreciate the advantages of money My introduction to... Read More

Manzanillo, Mexico - Listening to the radio here the other day, I encountered a journalist who has spent the last couple of years investigating the drug racket hereabouts. I had never heard of the guy before and can't vouch for the accuracy of his information. He made some interesting points. For starters, he calculates (how,... Read More

Sometimes the best thing a columnist can do is to shut up and let people speak for themselves. I get a lot of unhappy mail from cops in PG. The following, a few months old now, is an example. I've removed potentially identifying details and nothing else. "Hello Fred, "Let me start out by saying... Read More

I had hoped to spend the summer running columns from my recent trip to Chicago, which gives a picture of big-city policing that Washington can’t. As it happens, however, the growing racial problem, in which cops are declining to risk arresting blacks for fear of being prosecuted, has upset the apple cart. My email on... Read More

Chicago -- When Bill Plahm of the Child Exploitation Unit of the Cook County Sheriff?s Police hands you a photo of a six-month old baby with an adult penis in its mouth, you can develop a dim view of kid porn and pedophilia. They are nasty. For Plahm, who spends his life posing as an... Read More

Suppose that a car full of unwise drunks careens into the Potomac River in the environs of Washington. A car floats for about two minutes, usually, allowing the sober to get out, provided of course that they can swim. Suppose these drunks don't get out. Maybe they like the car. Down they go. Hereabouts, a... Read More

Even on nights when nothing much happens police-wise, a lot usually does, and it gives you a funny perspective on human nature. Let me run through a recent night?s worth, or as much as will fit. Starting with the guy trying to pull up the ?No Parking? sign at Taco Bell in Rosslyn. It was... Read More

Regarding the imposed demise of Timothy McVeigh, and the gnashing of teeth following said demise, a few thoughts: Much noise ensued from Amnesty International, one of those organizations which consist three-quarters of some good idea, and one-quarter of excessive satisfaction with themselves for espousing the good idea. The execution, said Amnesty, was barbaric, cruel and... Read More

From time to time women ask me what to do about the possibility of sexual assault. While the prevalence of rape is greatly exaggerated by radical feminists, it happens. What can a woman do to avoid it? Common sense is a good beginning, of course. Don't walk on dark streets in questionable neighborhoods, for example.... Read More

It was after ten on Friday night in Arlington and I was riding with Officer Matt O'Brien and absolutely nothing was happening. Nobody was in the streets. The weather was cold. The criminals, who lack strength of character, were hiding indoors. O'Brien told me that nothing would happen until just before his shift ended, so... Read More

If you are unfamiliar with guns, and yet want an idea of why shootings by cops happen, let me suggest a few practical exercises that may shed light on the subject. First (and for a variety of reasons I don't suggest trying this should the occasion arise in real life), have a friend stand in... Read More

Like other states, Virginia has decided to allow felons in jail DNA testing of old evidence which they say will exculpate them. Not everyone seems happy with the idea. I think these folk are nuts. It is one thing to favor heavy penalties for, say, murder, arson, rape, looting, and burning. It is another thing... Read More

When you read about violent crimes, with remarkable regularity they turn out to have been committed by felons on parole. Wanna know how parole boards can be stupid enough to let dangerous people out to kill someone else? Over and over? All across the country? Here's a hint. There is a book called "Games Criminals... Read More

Since the looting and burning in Cincinnati, the mainstream media have mentioned over and over the fifteen black men killed by police in the city in recent years. The implication, never so far as I know buttressed with data, has been that the police were unjustified, that they kill blacks for reasons of racism. The... Read More

Saturday night in 1-D, riding with Officer Pete Barlow, who after eleven years on the Metropolitan Police has seen most of what there is to see.One-D has a little of everything -- bad projects, upscale stores, small parks that are home to the homeless, regions of offices that lose their population at night. If I... Read More

Friday night in Arlington, riding with officer S. M. Carrig, a tall white guy I've worked with before. Nothing much was happening. For a while we did little stuff. A call came, a Latino woman and her new boyfriend being hassled by her old boyfriend, who was apparently banging on doors and being generally disagreeable.... Read More

Sez me, you have to be crazy to become a cop these days. There is a great uproar over the discovery that Washington's cops, not realizing that email sent between police cars on computers was being recorded, have said things that were racially offensive. Politicians are pretending to be appalled and shocked. They talk of... Read More

What is the difference between a coral reef and the streets of Washington? Answer: The animal life is stranger in Washington. We were in Chinatown, I and Officer Mike Halstead, who is part of the Asian liaison unit of the MPD. We were walking. The street guy with the motorcycle helmet, a white fellow with... Read More

Every few weeks I read that the cops somewhere have shot a felon, or someone acting like one, often in the course of a pursuit, and have been charged by the press with the use of unnecessary force. Maybe. Sometimes it happens. Always it is made to seem to have happened. The cops may perhaps... Read More