Police

It's hard to say.

No.

Pro-tip: Do not call in a hoax to send well-armed, trigger-happy cops to someone’s house.

In a move that will surprise no one who reads science-fiction, Amazon is now selling a facial recognition tool, called Rekognition, to local police departments, marketing it as a “low cost” way to track persons of interest. According to the company, this tool recognizes “tens of millions of faces”…

In 1997, The Scrapbook saw a funny New York Times headline: “Crime Keeps on Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling.” Astonishingly, we noted, “the possibility that longer sentences and less parole might be playing a large part in that falling crime rate” had failed to penetrate the furrowed brows at…

Robert Mueller was supposed to be fired by now. That was, at the end of 2017, the fervent hope of both Democrats eager for a Saturday Night Massacre rerun and of some burn-it-all-down fans of the president. They saw the document demands by GOP lawmakers and their challenges to the impartiality of…

Donald Trump’s Friday morning appearances were an amusing reminder of a central presidential incongruity: He loves and supports law enforcement, except the ones trying to enforce the law on him.

Over the last quarter-century, America has witnessed a remarkable decline in urban crime—most notably in New York City, where murders dropped from a record high 2,245 in 1990 to 335 in 2016. This drop coincided with a change in police practices, with the NYPD leading the way in more active…

On the day of Freddie Gray's funeral—April 27, 2015, when the city of Baltimore erupted in a wave of violence, crime, and arson—the police force did not employ a single chaplain. In the two years since, they've grown an ecumenical corps of 134 men and women of the cloth who ride along with officers…

A good way to look at the Obama era is as a giant experiment in misdirection—the Age of Missing the Point. When a huge majority of Americans told pollsters that they were happy with their health care, the administration decided to remake the entire system of delivering health care. When vast,…

Policing has always been a difficult job. It has recently become more so. On a daily basis, officers around the country find themselves yelled at, protested against, and even targeted for assassination. They are scorned by the left as brutes and distrusted by the right as the enforcers of big…

It is national news, reported with an urgency bordering on hysterical when

After initial reports that the Nice attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was a self-radicalized lone wolf, French prosecutors said last week that he had a group of accomplices. Like Lahouaiej Bouhlel, all had been living in France for several years, some with dual citizenship. As the threat of…

Last week’s big stories tended to drown out another big story that should not go unnoticed. For the third time in eight months, a Baltimore police officer who had been tried in the death of Freddie Gray was acquitted of all charges. (A fourth policeman's case ended last December in a hung jury,…

President Obama said at a Saturday press conference in Poland that it is "very hard to untangle the motives" of the shooter in Dallas who killed five police officers Thursday evening.

Vice President Joe Biden has canceled two planned campaign appearances on behalf of Hillary Clinton following the fatal shooting of five law enforcement officers in Dallas.

House speaker Paul Ryan spoke Friday morning on the floor of the House on the fatal shooting of five police officers in Dallas Thursday.

Donald Trump offered "thoughts and prayers" to the victims and their families of Thursday night's attack on police officers in Dallas. In Friday morning posts on both Twitter and Facebook, the presumptive Republican nominee for president said America must "restore law and order."

Hillary Clinton said on Twitter that she "mourns" the police officers in Dallas who were shot by snipers in the midst of protests Thursday night. The presumptive Democratic nominee for president tweeted her message Friday morning:

Four Dallas police officers and one Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer have been killed in what the Dallas Morning News called a "coordinated attack during [a] demonstration against recent shootings of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota." Altogether, 11 officers and one bystander were…

The nation’s capital, a top terrorist target, has received new advice should it come under a Paris-style attack. Instead of waiting for police to arrive, D.C.’s police chief is advocating a more aggressive -- albeit unarmed -- approach.

The murdering of policemen to protest alleged police targeting of black people is not a new phenomenon. Nor are chants like “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” which featured at a Black Lives Matter protest in August. In the 1960s and ’70s, the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army…

I've suggested before that 2016 is beginning to look more and more like 1968. This is true in terms of the presidential contests—on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is Eugene McCarthy, Hillary Clinton is Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden will be Hubert Humphrey, and (the big question!) Elizabeth Warren…

For the last year or so, the issue of whether or not cops have been too eager to punish -- and even kill -- African Americans has dominated the news. Yet, one very big story relating to cops and racial tension has been completely swept under the rug. Guardian reporter Spencer Ackerman has been…

Over the weekend, the New York Times weighed in on an important issue facing the city of New York. It seems that the fairer sex, despite making up about half the city’s population, constitutes merely a third of the users of the city’s bikeshare system.

Speaking of New York, The Scrapbook was walking through Central Park the other day when a police car came cruising down one of the interior roads. As it rolled by, almost as an afterthought, its loudspeakers blared “The sign says don’t walk!” and the car leisurely disappeared around the next…

New York City police chief Bill Bratton is worried about ISIS. So worried, in fact, that he's going to assign 450 New York Police Department cops to fight terrororism that may come from the Islamic State.

There's still a lot we don't know about what happened in Garland, Texas, earlier this week, including the name of the heroic police officer who averted certain disaster by outshooting two heavily armed terrorists. But blogger Bob Owens, who generally knows his stuff when it comes to firearms, has…

Later today, Hillary Clinton is expected to give a speech where she comes out in favor of police being required to wear body cameras. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea, except to say that I doubt it will prove to be the panacea for reining in law enforcement abuses that many of its advocates…

At an Ivy League university, Hillary Clinton will propose having "body cameras for every officer nationally," the New York Times's Maggie Haberman reports on Twitter.

President Obama called the Baltimore riots "counterproductive" in remarks today at the White House:

New Jersey governor Chris Christie will be sending New Jersey cops to Baltimore. The Republican governor made the announcement on Twitter. 

CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill advised that "we should be strategic in how we riot."

Baltimore police are warning that there is a "credible threat" to "take-out" law enforcement officers, according a press release from the Baltimore Police Department. 

Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told the press that her city "gave those who wished to destroy space to do that" at last night's protest. Watch here:

The green-lipstick wearing interviewer of President Barack Obama expressed her concern that the "po-po" (meaning: police officer) might shoot and kill her husband. The interviewer, GloZell Green, made the remarks to the president in an "interview" held today at the White House:

A "die-in" protest greeted Democratic Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar yesterday in St. Paul, Minnesota, at an event marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Other notable politicians present include Governor Mark Dayton and Rep. Keith Ellison.

Reuters is reporting that 

America is "less racially divided" now than it was six years ago, President Obama told NPR in an interview. The president was responding to this question, from NPR host Steve Inskeep, "Is the United States more racially divided than it was when you took office six years ago, Mr. President?"

CNN reports that thousands of police officers turned their backs on New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, when he spoke this morning at the funeral of slain NYPD officer Rafael Ramos:

Vice President Joe Biden will attend the funeral of a slain NYPD officer, the White House announced.

Heather Mac Donald writes at City Journal on how an anti-cop lie has left two New York police officers dead:

New York Police Department chief Bill Bratton said that "some people get caught up" in the "anti-police" movement: 

President Obama reacts to the murder of two New York City police officers:

WNYW, the local New York City Fox affiliate, reports that New York Police Department officers turned their back on Mayor Bill de Blasio after two of their own were shot execution style earlier today in Brooklyn:

President Obama alluded to the recent unrest in Ferguson and New York City in remarks today at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. The president talked of "restoring a sense of common purpose."

Ahead of the grand jury in Ferguson announcing whether it will indict a police officer for killing a man in Ferguson, Missouri, Attorney General Eric Holder has released a video announcement telling law enforcement to behave. 

Hillary Clinton has made several trips to San Francisco in the past year, with all of them costing the city's police department more than $21,000 in extra expenses—including more than $10,000 for a single event with Nancy Pelosi.

“There is little debate that all patrol officers should be issued BWCs,” wrote attorney Eugene Ramirez in a white paper his law firm issued on so-called body worn cameras (BWCs). Ramirez is correct that there is little debate. In the wake of the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the…

Sometimes it’s the little things that draw your attention. The other morning (August 20), for example, The Scrapbook noticed a subordinate headline for the main story on the front page of the Washington Post, about the racial confrontations in Ferguson, Missouri: “County prosecutor’s past raises…

Possible 2016 presidential candidate Chris Christie refused speak out against the police in Ferguson, Missouri, following the ongoing unrest there.

Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN contributor, reported late last night that out of towners from Oakland might be the ones responsible for inciting violence in Ferguson, Missouri. He made the comments when talking about the continued unrest last night:

Vice President Joe Biden made a joke today at the memorial service for slain MIT police officer Sean Collier:

The police chief of the Watertown police department shares amazing new details of the chase for the Boston bombings suspects from Thursday night into Friday evening:

In a statement meant to update the press on how the president is dealing with the situtation in Boston, the White House reveals that two officers were killed there last night:

The Senate has sent out a message to staff: A "suspicious package" is being investigated by Capitol Police in one of the Senate office buildings.

Lines to get into the Capitol today are “ridiculous” and a “disaster,” according to staffers who work in members’ offices on Capitol Hill.

A notional woman named “Julia” recently made her debut on the Obama campaign’s website. Julia, it seems, needs help at every stage in her life, and if the president has his way, the government will be there to assist her in, among other things, getting a college education, finding a job, securing…

A group of Occupy Wall Street protesters recently decided to torment New York Police Department officers tasked with keeping the unruly group out of Union Square in New York City. First, the Occupiers threw a doughnut on a string to the men in blue standing shoulder-to-shoulder, yanking…