Crime and Punishment

My wife and I walked into a CVS store on the Brookline side of Commonwealth Avenue this evening and happened upon an unexpected scene. Seven Brookline police officers were in the process of detaining one black woman and one black man, both suspected of shoplifting if I correctly understood the interaction between the police officers [...]

There are problems on the Emerald Island: One of Ireland’s leading Catholic clergymen today called for national unity in the face of the evil of spiralling gangland murder. As pressure mounted on the Government with five murders in six days, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said a culture of violence was beginning to devastate the [...]

It somewhat annoys me when college students can’t tell the difference between a rate and a sum, as in this paragraph from the student-run The Daily Free Press: While 2005 saw record crime rates in Boston — with reaching a 10-year high at 73 homicides — 2006 is poised to end an even bloodier year, [...]

A brawl between Charlestown High School students and residents of a local housing project apparently resulted in a shooting aimed at some other students. Reports the Boston Globe: “I believe it is common knowledge that there is Blood activity in the projects around the school,” said Michael Contompasis, the interim school superintendent. “That’s what the [...]

Swedish daily Aftonbladet reports a drunk 18-year old was arrested inside the U.S. embassy’s fence. The man was reportedly trying to dig a hole in the dig ground to hide in when police arrived. The report doesn’t mention whether he was armed, but I’m guessing he wasn’t. Drunk kids are the pride of Sweden! Link [...]

Ireland’s opposition Fine Gale/Labor Rainbow Coalition wants to get rid of the Garda Inspectorate, the Irish police quality-assurance commission headed by former Boston police chief Kathleen O’Toole: Senior sources in both parties have confirmed that they intend to remove policing strategy from the Department of Justice, following five damning reports on garda behaviour published by [...]

A couple of weeks ago the Boston Police Department’s blog BPDnews.com reported on an incident that angered quite a few Bostonians: A rookie cop was allegedly assaulted by a crowd of partygoers in Roxbury, one of Boston’s black neighborhood (and also one of the city’s high-crime neighborhoods). Some bloggers commented on the partygoers in rather [...]

The Boston Police Department has been hit by a serious and potentially massive corruption and crime scandal. So far three officers have been arrested, but the investigation isn’t over. Here are the crimes the arrested officers are suspected of having been involved in: …an intricate network of schemes that included stealing the identities of unsuspecting [...]

When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail, as the old saying goes. Perhaps now that we are rightfully concerned about terrorists, domestic and alien, everything looks like a terrorist group in the eyes of law enforcement officials. Like Boston Globe metro columnist Adrian Walker, I’m no at this point convinced that the sect/cell/fraternity [...]

Years ago, but probably not too many years ago, this situation what have resulted in an epice melee, but not anymore.