David Koresh was a spiritual leader who saw himself as the final prophet in a world that was coming to an end. Though Koresh and his followers were largely peaceful, they were amassing weapons as a way to defend themselves when the apocalypse came. Numbering about 100, the Branch Davidians lived a quiet existence in […]
Earlier this month, a Virginia man was killed when police officers and hospital employees “smothered” him to death. Now, the officers and medical workers involved in the killing have been charged with second-degree murder. Seven Henrico County sheriffs’ deputies face charges for their involvement in the man’s death. “The family is truly grief-stricken after learning […]
Many observers expect New York authorities to arrest former President Donald Trump this week. It’s hard to imagine this being anything but a boon for Trump, who is running for president again. Decisions about whether to bring criminal charges against a politician or authority figure certainly shouldn’t hinge on whether it will help or hurt […]
State lawmakers in at least six states have recently introduced bills related to sex work. Some of these measures would decriminalize prostitution, while others would stipulate stronger criminal penalties for prostitution. States considering the former have the right idea. Decriminalizing prostitution has been linked to an array of positive outcomes, from lower rates of sexual […]
My guest today is William Bratton, the former police commissioner of New York City and former [Right?] chief of police in Los Angeles. He is widely credited for playing a major role in the historic decline of crime in the Big Apple in the 1990s, and he’s a major presence in the new documentary Gotham: […]
Jeronimo Yanez remembered smelling “the odor of burning marijuana” as he approached the white Oldsmobile sedan he had stopped near the intersection of Larpenteur Avenue and Fry Street in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. It was a little after 9 p.m. on a Wednesday in July 2016, and Yanez, who worked for the St. Anthony Police Department, […]
Liberalizing prostitution laws “leads to a significant decrease in rape rates,” according to a study published in The Journal of Law and Economics, “while prohibiting it leads to a significant increase.” For the study, researchers Huasheng Gao and Vanya Petrova of China’s Fudan University looked at data from 31 European countries, spanning a period between […]
Based on mounting evidence that minors are especially susceptible to false confessions, criminal justice reformers in several states are demanding tighter rules for juvenile interrogations. The latest such push is happening in New York, where reformers hope to pass legislation requiring that minors have access to legal counsel prior to police interviews. Maryland and Washington […]
How did New York City shed its crime-ridden reputation, going from a place with more than 2,200 murders a year, 93,000 violent robberies, and 500,000 annual felonies, to one of America’s safest big cities? That’s the question tackled in Gotham: The Fall and Rise of New York, a new documentary available for pre-order that will […]
So the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is celebrating its 20th birthday—the perfect opportunity to rethink the whole concept of “homeland security” and how to best provide it. DHS has grown into a monster that is massively expensive, incredibly ineffective, and reliably destructive of basic civil liberties. It’s time to abolish it and replace it […]