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Today's guest is Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He spent two years as a police officer in Baltimore. I asked him to come on and talk about his new book, Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. It's one of my favorite books I've read this year (and it was one of my three book recommendations on Ezra Klein's show last week).Peter spoke with hundreds of police officers and NYC officials to understand and describe exactly how the city's leaders in the early 1990s managed to drive down crime so successfully.We discussed:* How bad did things get in the 1970s?* Why did processing an arrest take so long?* What did Bill Bratton and other key leaders do differently?* How did police get rid of the squeegee men?I've included my reading list at the bottom of this piece. Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits.Subscribe for one new interview a week.Peter, how would you describe yourself?I would say I'm a criminologist: my background is sociology, but I am not in the sociology department. I'm not so big on theory, and sociology has a lot of theory. I was a grad student at Harvard in sociology and worked as a police officer [in Baltimore] and that became my dissertation and first book, Cop in the Hood. I've somewhat banked my career on those 20 months in the police department.Not a lot of sociologists spend a couple of years working a police beat.It's generally frowned upon, both for methodological reasons and issues of bias. But there is also an ideological opposition in a lot of academia to policing. It's seen as going to the dark side and something to be condemned, not understood.Sociologists said crime can't go down unless we fix society first. It's caused by poverty, racism, unemployment, and social and economic factors — they're called the root causes. But they don't seem to have a great impact on crime, as important as they are. When I'm in grad school, murders dropped 30-40% in New York City. At the same time, Mayor Giuliani is slashing social spending, and poverty is increasing. The whole academic field is just wrong. I thought it an interesting field to get into.We're going to talk about your new book, which is called Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. I had a blast reading it. Tell me about the process of writing it.A lot of this is oral history, basically. But supposedly people don't like buying books that are called oral histories. It is told entirely from the perspective of police officers who were on the job at the time. I would not pretend I talked to everyone, because there were 30,000+ cops around, but I spoke to many cops and to all the major players involved in the 1990s crime drop in New York City.I was born in the ‘90s, and I had no idea about a crazy statistic you cite: 25% of the entire national crime decline was attributable to New York City's crime decline.In one year, yeah. One of the things people say to diminish the role of policing is that the crime drop happened everywhere — and it did end up happening almost everywhere. But I think that is partly because what happened in New York City was a lot of hard work, but it wasn't that complicated. It was very easy to propagate, and people came to New York to find out what was going on. You could see results, literally in a matter of months.It happened first in New York City. Really, it happened first in the subways and that's interesting, because if crime goes down in the subways [which, at the time, fell under the separate New York City Transit Police] and not in the rest of the city, you say, “What is going on in the subways that is unique?” It was the exact same strategies and leadership that later transformed the NYPD [New York Police Department].Set the scene: What was the state of crime and disorder in New York in the ‘70s and into the ‘80s?Long story short, it was bad. Crime in New York was a big problem from the late ‘60s up to the mid ‘90s, and the ‘70s is when the people who became the leaders started their careers. So these were defining moments. The city was almost bankrupt in 1975 and laid off 5,000 cops; 3,000 for a long period of time. That was arguably the nadir. It scarred the police department and the city.Eventually, the city got its finances in order and came to the realization that “we've got a big crime problem too.” That crime problem really came to a head with crack cocaine. Robberies peaked in New York City in 1980. There were above 100,000 robberies in 1981, and those are just reported robberies. A lot of people get robbed and just say, “It's not worth it to report,” or, “I'm going to work,” or, “Cops aren't going to do anything.” The number of robberies and car thefts was amazingly high. The trauma, the impact on the city and on urban space, and people's perception of fear, all comes from that. If you're afraid of crime, it's high up on the hierarchy of needs.To some extent, those lessons have been lost or forgotten. Last year there were 16,600 [robberies], which is a huge increase from a few years ago, but we're still talking an 85% reduction compared to the worst years. It supposedly wasn't possible. What I wanted to get into in Back from the Brink was the actual mechanisms of the crime drop. I did about fifty formal interviews and hundreds of informal interviews building the story. By and large, people were telling the same story.In 1975, the city almost goes bankrupt. It's cutting costs everywhere, and it lays off more than 5,000 cops, about 20% of the force, in one day. There's not a new police academy class until 1979, four years later. Talk to me about where the NYPD was at that time.They were retrenched, and the cops were demoralized because “This is how the city treats us?” The actual process of laying off the cops itself was just brutal: they went to work, and were told once they got to work that they were no longer cops. “Give me your badge, give me your gun."The city also was dealing with crime, disorder, and racial unrest. The police department was worried about corruption, which was a legacy of the Knapp Commission [which investigated NYPD corruption] and [Frank] Serpico [a whistleblowing officer]. It's an old police adage, that if you don't work, you can't get in trouble. That became very much the standard way of doing things. Keep your head low, stay out of trouble, and you'll collect your paycheck and go home.You talk about the blackout in 1977, when much of the city lost power and you have widespread looting and arson. 13,000 off-duty cops get called in during the emergency, and only about 5,000 show up, which is a remarkable sign of the state of morale.The person in my book who's talking about that is Louis Anemone. He showed up because his neighbor and friend and partner was there, and he's got to help him. It was very much an in-the-foxholes experience. I contrast that with the more recent blackout, in which the city went and had a big block party instead. That is reflective of the change that happened in the city.In the mid-80s you get the crack cocaine epidemic. Talk to me about how police respond.From a political perspective, that era coincided with David Dinkins as [New York City's first black] mayor. He was universally disliked, to put it mildly, by white and black police officers alike. He was seen as hands off. He was elected in part to improve racial relations in New York City, to mitigate racial strife, but in Crown Heights and Washington Heights, there were riots, and racial relations got worse. He failed at the level he was supposed to be good at. Crime and quality of life were the major issues in that election.Dinkins's approach to the violence is centered around what they called “community policing.” Will you describe how Dinkins and political leaders in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s thought about policing?This is under Ben Ward, the [NYPD] Commissioner at the time. The mayor appoints the police commissioner — and the buck does stop with the mayor — but the mayor is not actively involved in day-to-day operations. That part does go down to the police department.Community policing was seen as an attempt to improve relations between the police and the community. The real goal was to lessen racial strife and unrest between black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) communities and the NYPD. Going back to the ‘60s, New York had been rocked by continued unrest in neighborhoods like Central Harlem, East New York, and Bushwick. Community policing was seen as saying that police are partly to blame, and we want to improve relations. Some of it was an attempt to get the community more involved in crime fighting.It's tough. It involves a certain rosy view of the community, but that part of the community isn't causing the problems. It avoids the fact there are people who are actively criming and are willing to hurt people who get in their way. Community policing doesn't really address the active criminal element, that is a small part of any community, including high-crime communities.Arrests increased drastically during this era, more than in the ‘90s with broken windows policing. If the idea is to have fewer arrests, it didn't happen in the ‘80s. Some good came out of it, because it did encourage cops to be a bit more active and cops are incentivized by overtime. Arrests were so incredibly time-consuming, which kind of defeated the purpose of community policing. If you made an arrest in that era, there was a good chance you might spend literally 24 hours processing the arrest.Will you describe what goes into that 24 hours?From my experience policing in Baltimore, I knew arrests were time-consuming and paperwork redundant, but I could process a simple arrest in an hour or two. Even a complicated one that involved juveniles and guns and drugs, we're talking six to eight hours.In the ‘80s, Bob Davin, [in the] Transit Police, would say they'd make an arrest, process at the local precinct, search him in front of a desk officer, print him, and then they would have to get a radio car off patrol to drive you down to central booking at 100 Centre Street [New York City Criminal Court]. Then they would fingerprint him. They didn't have the live scan fingerprints machine, it was all ink. It had to be faxed up to Albany and the FBI to see if it hit on any warrant federally and for positive identification of the person. Sometimes it took 12 hours to have the prints come back and the perp would be remanded until that time. Then you'd have to wait for the prosecutor to get their act together and to review all the paperwork. You couldn't consider bail unless the prints came back either positive or negative and then you would have that initial arraignment and the cop could then go home. There are a lot of moving parts, and they moved at a glacial pace.The system often doesn't work 24/7. A lot of this has changed, but some of it was having to wait until 9 am for people to show up to go to work, because it's not a single system. The courts, the jails, and policing all march to their own drummer, and that created a level of inefficiency.So much of the nitty-gritty of what cops actually do is boring, behind-the-scenes stuff: How do we speed up the paperwork? Can we group prisoners together? Can we do some of this at the police station instead of taking it downtown? Is all of this necessary? Can we cooperate with the various prosecutors? There are five different prosecutors in New York City, one for each borough.There's not a great incentive to streamline this. Cops enjoyed the overtime. That's one of the reasons they would make arrests. So during this time, if a cop makes an arrest for drug dealing, that cop is gone and no cop was there to replace him. If it's a minor arrest, there's a good chance in the long run charges will be dropped anyway. And you're taking cops off the street. In that sense, it's lose-lose. But, you have to think, “What's the alternative?”Bob Davin is a fascinating guy. There's a famous picture from 1981 by Martha Cooper of two cops on a subway train. It's graffitied up and they're in their leather jackets and look like cops from the ‘70s. Martha Cooper graciously gave me permission to use the picture, but she said, "You have to indemnify me because I don't have a release form. I don't know who the cops are." I said, "Martha, I do know who the cop is, because he's in my book and he loves the picture.” Bob Davin is the cop on the right.Davin says that things started to get more efficient. They had hub sites in the late ‘80s or ‘90s, so precincts in the north of Manhattan could bring their prisoners there, and you wouldn't have to take a car out of service to go back to Central Booking and deal with traffic. They started collecting prisoners and bringing them en masse on a small school bus, and that would cut into overtime. Then moving to electronic scan fingerprints drastically saves time waiting for those to come back.These improvements were made, but some of them involve collective bargaining with unions, to limit overtime and arrests that are made for the pure purpose of overtime. You want cops making arrests for the right reason and not simply to make money. But boy, there was a lot of money made in arrests.In 1991, you have the infamous Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn. Racial tensions kick off. It's a nightmare for the mayor, there's this sense that he has lost control. The following year, you have this infamous police protest at City Hall where it becomes clear the relationship between the cops and the mayor has totally evaporated. How does all that play into the mayoral race between Dinkins and Giuliani?It was unintentional, but a lot of the blame for Crown Heights falls on the police department. The part of the story that is better known is that there was a procession for a Hasidic rabbi that was led by a police car. He would go to his wife's grave, and he got a little three-car motorcade. At some point, the police look at this and go "Why are we doing this? We're going to change it." The man who made the deal said ‘I"m retiring in a couple weeks, can we just leave it till then? Because I gave him my word." They're like, "Alright, whatever."This motor car procession is then involved in a car crash, and a young child named Gavin Cato is killed, and another girl is severely injured. The volunteer, Jewish-run ambulance shows up and decides they don't have the equipment: they call for a professional city ambulance. Once that ambulance is on the way, they take the mildly-injured Jewish people to the hospital. The rumor starts that the Jewish ambulance abandoned the black children to die.This isn't the first incident. There's long been strife over property and who the landlord is. But this was the spark that set off riots. A young Jewish man was randomly attacked on the street and was killed.As an aside, he also shouldn't have died, but at the hospital they missed internal bleeding.Meanwhile, the police department has no real leadership at the time. One chief is going to retire, another is on vacation, a third doesn't know what he's doing, and basically everyone is afraid to do anything. So police do nothing. They pull back, and you have three days of very anti-Semitic riots. Crowds chanting "Kill the Jews" and marching on the Lubavitch Hasidic Headquarters. Al Sharpton shows up. The riots are blamed on Dinkins, which is partly fair, but a lot of that's on the NYPD. Finally, the mayor and the police commissioner go to see what's going on and they get attacked. It's the only time in New York City history that there's ever been an emergency call from the police commissioner's car. People are throwing rocks at it.It took three days to realise this, but that's when they say “We have to do something here,” and they gather a group of officers who later become many of Bratton's main chiefs at the time [Bill Bratton was Commissioner of the NYPD from 1994-1996, under Giuliani]: Mike Julian, Louis Anemone, Ray Kelly, and [John] Timoney. They end the unrest in a day. They allow people to march, they get the police department to set rules. It still goes on for a bit, but no one gets hurt after that, and that's it.It was a huge, national story at the time, but a lot of the details were not covered. Reporters were taken from their car and beaten and stripped. The significance was downplayed at the time, especially by the New York Times, I would say.That's followed by the Washington Heights riots, which is a different story. A drug dealer was shot and killed by cops. There were rumors, which were proven to be false, that he was executed and unarmed. Then there were three days of rioting there. It wasn't quite as severe, but 53 cops were hurt, 120 stores were set on fire, and Mayor Dinkins paid for the victim's family to go to the Dominican Republic for the funeral. The police perspective again was, “You're picking the wrong side here.”Then there's the so-called Police Riot at City Hall. Nominally, it was about the CCRB, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and setting up an accountability mechanism to control cops. But really it was just an anti-Dinkins protest. It was drunken and unruly. The cops stormed the steps of City Hall. I have the account of one of the cops who was on the top of those steps looking at this mob of cops storming to him, and he's getting worried he's going to be killed in a crush. There were racist chants from off-duty cops in the crowd. It did not reflect well on police officers. But it showed this hatred of David Dinkins, who was seen as siding with criminals and being anti-police. The irony is that Dinkins is the one who ends up hiring all the cops that Giuliani gets credit for.In the “Safe Streets, Safe City” program?Yes. That was because a white tourist, Brian Watkins, was killed in a subway station protecting his parents who were getting robbed. That led to the famous headline [in the New York Post] of “Dave, do something! Crime-ravaged city cries out for help.” He, with City Council President Peter Vallone, Sr., drafted and pushed through this massive hiring of police officers, “Safe Streets, Safe City.”The hiring wasn't fast-tracked. It might be because Dinkins's people didn't really want more cops. But it was a Dinkins push that got a massive hiring of cops. When the first huge class of police officers graduated, Bill Bratton was there and not David Dinkins.Some interviewees in your book talk about how there's physically not enough room in the police academies at this time, so they have to run classes 24/7. You cycle cohorts in and out of the same classroom, because there are too many new cops for the facilities.You have thousands of cops going through it at once. Everyone describes it as quite a chaotic scene. But it would have been hard to do what the NYPD did without those cops. Ray Kelly, who was police commissioner under Dinkins at the end [from 1992 to 1994] before he became police commissioner for 12 years under Bloomberg [from 2002 to 2013] probably could have done something with those cops too, but he never had the chance, because the mayoral leadership at the time was much more limiting in what they wanted cops to do.Crime starts declining slowly in the first few years of the ‘90s under Dinkins, and then in ‘93 Giuliani wins a squeaker of a mayoral election against Dinkins.One of the major issues was the then-notorious “squeegee men” of New York City. These were guys who would go to cars stopped at bridges and tunnel entrances and would rub a squeegee over the windshield asking for money. It was unpleasant, intimidating, and unwanted, and it was seen as one of those things that were just inevitable. Like graffiti on the subway in the ‘80s. Nothing we can do about it because these poor people don't have jobs or housing or whatever.The irony is that Bratton and Giuliani were happy to take credit for that, and it was an issue in the mayoral campaign, but it was solved under David Dinkins and Ray Kelly and Mike Julian with the help of George Kelling [who, with James Wilson, came up with broken windows theory]. But they never got credit for it. One wonders if, had they done that just a few months earlier, it would have shifted the entire campaign and we'd have a different course of history in New York City.It's a great example of a couple of things that several people in your book talk about. One is that disorder is often caused by a very small set of individuals. There's only like 70 squeegee men, yet everybody sees them, because they're posted up at the main tunnel and bridge entrances to Manhattan. And getting them off the streets solves the problem entirely.Another emphasis in the book is how perceptions of crime are central. You quote Jack Maple, the father of Compstat, as saying, “A murder on the subway counts as a multiple murder up on the street, because everybody feels like that's their subway.” The particular locations of crimes really affect public perception.Absolutely. Perception is reality for a lot of these things, because most people aren't victimized by crime. But when people perceive that no one is in control they feel less safe. It's not that this perception is false, it just might not be directly related to an actual criminal act.The other thing I try to show is that it's not just saying, “We've got to get rid of squeegee men. How do you do it?” They had tried before, but this is why you need smart cops and good leadership, because it's a problem-solving technique, and the way to get rid of graffiti is different to the way you get rid of squeegee men.This book is in opposition to those who just say, “We can't police our way out of this problem.” No, we can. We can't police our way out of every problem. But if you define the problem as, we don't want people at intersections with squeegees, of course we can police our way out of the problem, using legal constitutional tools. You need the political will. And then the hard work starts, because you have to figure out how to actually do it.Will you describe how they tackle the squeegee men problem?Mike Julian was behind it. They hired George Kelling, who's known for broken windows. They said, “These people are here to make money. So to just go there and make a few arrests isn't going to solve the problem.” First of all, he had to figure out what legal authority [to use], and he used Traffic Reg 44 [which prohibits pedestrians from soliciting vehicle occupants]. He talked to Norm Siegel of the NYCLU [New York Civil Liberties Union] about this, who did not want this crackdown to happen. But Norman said, “Okay, this is the law, I can't fight that one. You're doing it legally. It's all in the books.” And So that took away that opposition.But the relentless part of it is key. First they filmed people. Then, when it came to enforcement, they warned people. Then they cited people, and anybody that was left they arrested. They did not have to arrest many people, because the key is they did this every four hours. It was that that changed behavior, because even a simple arrest isn't going to necessarily deter someone if it's a productive way to make money. But being out there every four hours for a couple of weeks or months was enough to get people to do something else. What that something else is, we still don't know, but we solved the squeegee problem.So in 93, Giuliani is elected by something like 50,000 votes overall. Just as an aside, in Prince of the City, Fred Siegel describes something I had no idea about. There's a Puerto Rican Democratic Councilman who flips and supports Giuliani. Mayor Eric Adams, who at the time was the head of a nonprofit for black men in law enforcement, calls him a race traitor for doing that and for being married to a white woman. There was a remarkable level of racial vitriol in that race that I totally missed.10 years ago when I started this, I asked if I could interview then-Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams, and he said yes, and the interview kept getting rescheduled, and I said, “Eh, I don't need him.” It's a regret of mine. I should have pursued that, but coulda, woulda, shoulda.Giuliani is elected, and he campaigns very explicitly on a reducing crime and disorder platform. And he hires Bill Bratton. Tell me about Bratton coming on board as NYPD commissioner.Bratton grew up in Boston, was a police officer there, became head of the New York City Transit Police when that was a separate police department. Right before he becomes NYPD Commissioner, he's back in Boston, as the Chief of Police there, and there is a movement among certain people to get Bratton the NYC job. They succeed in that, and Bratton is a very confident man. He very much took a broken windows approach and said, “We are going to focus on crime.” He has a right-hand man by the name of Jack Maple who he knows from the Transit Police. Maple is just a lieutenant in transit, and Bratton makes him the de facto number two man in the police department.Jack Maple passed away in 2001 and I didn't know what I was going to do, because it's hard to interview a man who's no longer alive. Chris Mitchell co-wrote Jack Maple's autobiography called Crime Fighter and he graciously gave me all the micro-cassettes of the original interviews he conducted with Maple around 1998. Everyone has a Jack Maple story. He's probably the most important character in Back from the Brink.Jack Maple comes in, no one really knows who he is, no one respects him because he was just a lieutenant in Transit. He goes around and asks a basic question — this is 1994 — he says, “How many people were shot in New York City in 1993?” And nobody knows. That is the state of crime-fighting in New York City before this era. There might have been 7,000 people shot in New York City in 1990 and we just don't know, even to this day.One citation from your book: in 1993, an average of 16 people were shot every day. Which is just remarkable.And remember, shootings have been declining for two or three years before that! But nobody knew, because they weren't keeping track of shootings, because it's not one of the FBI Uniform Crime Report [which tracks crime data nationally] index crimes. But wouldn't you be curious? It took Jack Maple to be curious, so he made people count, and it was findable, but you had to go through every aggravated assault and see if a gun was involved. You had to go through every murder from the previous year and see if it was a shooting. He did this. So we only have shooting data in New York City going back to 1993. It's just a simple process of caring.The super-short version of Back from the Brink is it was a change in mission statement: “We're going to care about crime.” Because they hadn't before. They cared about corruption, racial unrest, brutality, and scandal. They cared about the clearance rate for robbery a bit. You were supposed to make three arrests for every ten robberies. It didn't matter so much that you were stopping a pattern or arresting the right person, as long as you had three arrests for every ten reported crimes, that was fine.This is a story about people who cared. They're from this city — Bratton wasn't, but most of the rest are. They understood the trauma of violence and the fact that people with families were afraid to go outside, and nobody in the power structure seemed to care. So they made the NYPD care about this. Suddenly, the mid-level police executives, the precinct commanders, had to care. and the meetings weren't about keeping overtime down, instead they were about ”What are you doing to stop this shooting?”Tell listeners a little bit more about Jack Maple, because he's a remarkable character, and folks may not know what a kook he was.I think he was a little less kooky than he liked to present. His public persona was wearing a snazzy cat and spats and dressing like a fictional cartoon detective from his own mind, but he's a working-class guy from Queens who becomes a transit cop.When Bratton takes over, he writes a letter up the chain of command saying this is what we should do. Bratton read it and said, “This guy is smart.” Listening to 80 hours of Jack Maple, everyone correctly says he was a smart guy, but he had a very working-class demeanor and took to the elite lifestyle. He loved hanging out and getting fancy drinks at the Plaza Hotel. He was the idea man of the NYPD. Everyone has a Jack Maple imitation. “You're talking to the Jackster,” he'd say. He had smart people working under him who were supportive of this. But it was very much trying to figure out as they went along, because the city doesn't stop nor does it sleep.He was a bulls***er, but he's the one who came up with the basic outline of the strategy of crime reduction in New York City. He famously wrote it on a napkin at Elaine's, and it said, “First, we need to gather accurate and timely intelligence.” And that was, in essence, CompStat. “Then, we need to deploy our cops to where they need to be.” That was a big thing. He found out that cops weren't working: specialized units weren't working weekends and nights when the actual crime was happening. They had their excuses, but basically they wanted a cushy schedule. He changed that. Then, of course, you have to figure out what you're doing, what the effective tactics are. Then, constant follow up and assessment.You can't give up. You can't say “Problem solved.” A lot of people say it wasn't so much if your plan didn't work, you just needed a Plan B. It was the idea that throwing your hands in the air and saying, “What are you going to do?” that became notoriously unacceptable under Chief Anemone's stern demeanor at CompStat. These were not pleasant meetings. Those are the meetings that both propagated policies that work and held officers accountable. There was some humiliation going on, so CompStat was feared.Lots of folks hear CompStat and think about better tracking of crime locations and incidents. But as you flesh out, the meat on the bones of CompStat was this relentless follow-up. You'd have these weekly meetings early in the morning with all the precinct heads. There were relentless asks from the bosses, “What's going on in your district or in your precinct? Can you explain why this is happening? What are you doing to get these numbers down?” And follow-ups the following week or month. It was constant.CompStat is often thought of as high-tech computer stuff. It wasn't. There was nothing that couldn't have been done with old overhead projectors. It's just that no one had done it before. Billy Gorta says it's a glorified accountability system at a time when nobody knew anything about computers. Everyone now has access to crime maps on a computer. It was about actually gathering accurate, timely data.Bratton was very concerned that these numbers had to be right. It was getting everyone in the same room and saying, “This is what our focus is going to be now.” And getting people to care about crime victims, especially when those crime victims might be unsympathetic because of their demeanor, criminal activity, or a long arrest record. “We're going to care about every shooting, we're going to care about every murder.”Part of it was cracking down on illegal guns. There were hundreds of tactics. The federal prosecutors also played a key role. It was getting this cooperation. Once it started working and Giuliani made it a major part of claiming success as mayor, suddenly everyone wanted to be part of this, and you had other city agencies trying to figure it out. So it was a very positive feedback loop, once it was seen as a success.When Bratton came on the job, he said, “I'm going to bring down crime 15%.” No police commissioner had ever said that before. In the history of policing before 1994, no police commissioner ever promised a double-digit reduction in crime or even talked about it. People said “That's crazy.” It was done, and then year after year. That's the type of confidence that they had. They were surprised it worked as well as it did, but they all had the sense that there's a new captain on this ship, and we're trying new things. It was an age of ideas and experiment.And it was a very short time.That's the other thing that surprised me. Giuliani fired Bratton in the middle of ‘96.It's remarkable. Bratton comes in ‘94, and August 1994 is where you see crime drop off a cliff. You have this massive beginning of the reduction that continues.That inflection point is important for historical knowledge. I don't address alternatives that other people have proposed [to explain the fall in crime] — For example, the reduction in lead [in gasoline, paint, and water pipes] or legalized abortion with Roe v. Wade [proposed by Stephen Dubner].Reasonable people can differ. Back from the Brink focuses on the police part of the equation. Today, almost nobody, except for a few academics, says that police had nothing to do with the crime drop. That August inflection is key, because there is nothing in a lagged time analysis going back 20 years that is going to say that is the magic month where things happened. Yet if you look at what happened in CompStat, that's the month they started getting individual officer data, and noticing that most cops made zero arrests, and said, “Let's get them in the game as well.” And that seemed to be the key; that's when crime fell off the table. The meetings started in April, I believe, but August is really when the massive crime drop began.To your point about the confidence that crime could be driven down double digits year over year, there's a great quote you have from Jack Maple, where he says to a fellow cop, “This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. As long as we have absolute control, we can absolutely drive this number into the floor.”One detail I enjoyed was that Jack Maple, when he was a transit cop, would camp out under a big refrigerator box with little holes cut out for eyes and sit on the subway platform waiting for crooks.For people who are interested in Jack Maple, it is worth reading his autobiography, Crime Fighter. Mike Daly wrote New York's Finest, which uses the same tapes that I had access to, and he is much more focused on that. He's actually the godfather of Jack Maple's son, who is currently a New York City police officer. But Maple and co were confident, and it turned out they were right.As well as having changes in tactics and approach and accountability across the NYPD, you also have a series of specific location cleanups. You have a specific initiative focused on the Port Authority, which is a cesspool at the time, an initiative in Times Square, the Bryant Park cleanup, and then Giuliani also focuses on organized crime on the Fulton Fish Market, and this open-air market in Harlem.I was struck that there was both this general accountability push in the NYPD through CompStat, and a relentless focus on cleaning up individual places that were hubs of disorder.I'm not certain the crime drop would have happened without reclamation of public spaces and business improvement districts. Bryant Park's a fascinating story because Dan Biederman, who heads the Corporation, said, “People just thought it was like a lost cause, this park can't be saved. The city is in a spiral of decline.” He uses Jane Jacobs' “eyes on the street” theory and then George Kelling and James Q. Wilson's broken windows theory. The park has money — not city money, but from local property owners — and it reopens in 1991 to great acclaim and is still a fabulous place to be. It showed for the first time that public space was worth saving and could be saved. New York City at the time needed that lesson. It's interesting that today, Bryant Park has no permanent police presence and less crime. Back in the ‘80s, Bryant Park had an active police presence and a lot more crime.The first class I ever taught when I started at John Jay College in 2004, I was talking about broken windows. A student in the class named Jeff Marshall, who is in my book, told me about Operation Alternatives at the Port Authority. He had been a Port Authority police officer at the time, and I had not heard of this. People are just unaware of this part of history. It very much has lessons for today, because in policing often there's nothing new under the sun. It's just repackaged, dusted off, and done again. The issue was, how do we make the Port Authority safe for passengers? How do we both help and get rid of people living in the bus terminal? It's a semi-public space, so it makes it difficult. There was a social services element about it, that was Operational Alternatives. A lot of people took advantage of that and got help. But the flip side was, you don't have to take services, but you can't stay here.I interviewed the manager of the bus terminal. He was so proud of what he did. He's a bureaucrat, a high-ranking one, but a port authority manager. He came from the George Washington Bridge, which he loved. And he wonders, what the hell am I going to do with this bus terminal? But the Port Authority cared, because they're a huge organization and that's the only thing with their name on it — They also control JFK Airport and bridges and tunnels and all the airports, but people call the bus terminal Port Authority.They gave him almost unlimited money and power and said, “Fix it please, do what you've got to do,” and he did. It was environmental design, giving police overtime so they'd be part of this, a big part of it was having a social service element so it wasn't just kicking people out with nowhere to go.Some of it was also setting up rules. This also helped Bratton in the subway, because this happened at the same time. The court ruled that you can enforce certain rules in the semi-public spaces. It was not clear until this moment whether it was constitutional or not. To be specific, you have a constitutional right to beg on the street, but you do not have a constitutional right to beg on the subway. That came down to a court decision. Had that not happened, I don't know if in the long run the crime drop would have happened.That court decision comes down to the specific point that it's not a free-speech right on the subway to panhandle, because people can't leave, because you've got them trapped in that space.You can't cross the street to get away from it. But it also recognized that it wasn't pure begging, that there was a gray area between aggressive begging and extortion and robbery.You note that in the early 1990s, one-third of subway commuters said they consciously avoided certain stations because of safety, and two thirds felt coerced to give money by aggressive panhandling.The folks in your book talk a lot about the 80/20 rule applying all over the place. That something like 20% of the people you catch are committing 80% of the crimes.There's a similar dynamic that you talk about on the subways, both in the book and in your commentary over the past couple years about disorder in New York. You say approximately 2,000 people with serious mental illness are at risk for street homelessness, and these people cycle through the cities, streets, subways, jails, and hospitals.What lessons from the ‘90s can be applied today for both helping those people and stopping them being a threat to others?Before the ‘80s and Reagan budget cuts there had been a psychiatric system that could help people. That largely got defunded. [Deinstitutionalization began in New York State earlier, in the 1960s.] We did not solve the problem of mental health or homelessness in the ‘90s, but we solved the problem of behavior. George Kelling [of broken windows theory] emphasized this repeatedly, and people would ignore it. We are not criminalizing homelessness or poverty. We're focusing on behavior that we are trying to change. People who willfully ignore that distinction almost assume that poor people are naturally disorderly or criminal, or that all homeless people are twitching and threatening other people. Even people with mental illness can behave in a public space.Times have changed a bit. I think there are different drugs now that make things arguably a bit worse. I am not a mental health expert, but we do need more involuntary commitment, not just for our sake, but for theirs, people who need help. I pass people daily, often the same person, basically decomposing on a subway stop in the cold. They are offered help by social services, and they say no. They should not be allowed to make that choice because they're literally dying on the street in front of us. Basic humanity demands that we be a little more aggressive in forcing people who are not making rational decisions, because now you have to be an imminent threat to yourself or others. That standard does need to change. But there also need to be mental health beds available for people in this condition.I don't know what the solution is to homelessness or mental health. But I do know the solution to public disorder on the subway and that's, regardless of your mental state or housing status, enforcing legal, constitutional rules, policing behavior. It does not involve locking everybody up. It involves drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It's amazing how much people will comply with those rules.That presents the idea that someone's in charge, it's not a free-for-all. You get that virtuous loop, which New York had achieved in 2014–2016, when crime was at an all-time low in the city. Then the politicians decided public order wasn't worth preserving anymore. These are political choices.I had a similar version of this conversation with a friend who was shocked that there were zero murders on the subway in 2017 and that that number was stable: you had one or two a year for several years in the mid-2010s.It was five or fewer a year from 1997 to 2019, and often one or two. Then you have zero in 2017. There were [ten in 2022]. It coincides perfectly with an order from [Mayor] de Blasio's office and the homeless czar [Director of Homeless Services Steven] Banks [which] told police to stop enforcing subway rules against loitering. The subways became — once again — a de facto homeless shelter. Getting rule-violating homeless people out of the subway in the late ‘80s was such a difficult and major accomplishment at the time, and to be fair it's not as bad as it was.The alternative was that homeless outreach was supposed to offer people services. When they decline, which 95% of people do, you're to leave them be. I would argue again, I don't think that's a more humane stance to take. But it's not just about them, it's about subway riders.There's one story that I think was relevant for you to tell. You were attacked this fall on a subway platform by a guy threatening to kill you. It turns out he's had a number of run-ins with the criminal justice system. Can you tell us where that guy is now?I believe he's in prison now. The only reason I know who it is is because I said, one day I'm going to see his picture in the New York Post because he's going to hurt somebody. Am I 100 percent certain it's Michael Blount who attacked me? No, but I'm willing to call him out by name because I believe it is. He was out of prison for raping a child, and he slashed his ex-girlfriend and pushed her on the subway tracks. And then was on the lam for a while. I look at him and the shape of his face, his height, age, build, complexion, and I go, that's got to be him.I wasn't hurt, but he gave me a sucker punch trying to knock me out and then chased me a bit threatening to kill me, and I believe he wanted to. It's the only time I ever was confronted by a person who I really believe wanted to kill me, and this includes policing in the Eastern District in Baltimore. It was an attempted misdemeanor assault in the long run. But I knew it wasn't about me. It was him. I assume he's going to stay in prison longer for what he did to his ex-girlfriend. But I never thought it would happen to me. I was lucky the punch didn't connect.Peter Moskos's new book is Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop.My reading listEssays:Johnny Hirschauer's reporting, including “A Failed 'Solution' to 'America's Mental Health Crisis',“ “Return to the Roots,” and “The Last Institutions.” “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson. ​“It's Time to Talk About America's Disorder Problem,” Charles Lehman.Books:Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, Jill Leovy.​Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life, Fred Siegel.​ Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District, Peter Moskos.​Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, Sam Quinones.​Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Welcome to Episode 210, where we have the pleasure of welcoming back Our Mystery Man, John Valeri! For those of you who are new to the Book Cougars, John is a frequent guest. He's a reader, professional reviewer, and interviewer extraordinaire (check out his BookTube channel, CENTRAL BOOKING). John joins us to not only recommend some hot new mystery/thrillers but also to share insights on the guiding principles of cozy mysteries, making this a conversation you won't want to miss! This episode is packed with a diverse range of books. We share our thoughts on THE AWAKENING: THE DRAGON HEART LEGACY, BOOK ONE by Nora Roberts, our second quarter readalong pick in our year of reading romance. We also delve into other intriguing reads such as THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS by Laurie Frankel, THE MYSTERY GUEST by Nita Prose, and LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE HAUNTED PLACES by Claire Kann. Emily also read two captivating short stories: “Lucky Girls” by Nell Freudenberger from LUCKY GIRLS: STORIES and “That of Which We Cannot Speak” by Alethea Black from I KNEW YOU'D BE LOVELY: STORIES. In Biblio Adventures, we recap an exciting Biblio Adventure to Hartford, CT, where we had the privilege of seeing Michael Harriot (BLACK AF HISTORY: THE UN-WHITEWASHED STORY OF AMERICA) in conversation with Percival Everett about his new novel, JAMES, thanks to the Mark Twain House. Chris attended CULTIVATING VOICES: LIVE POETRY hosted by Sandra Yannone via Facebook. Emily binged some PRESUMED INNOCENT movie/series adaptations. At the Book Barn in Niantic, CT, she found a copy of FELLOWSHIP POINT (which we're both reading this summer) and a fantastic gift for Chris. Of course, we also talk about what we're currently reading, want to read, and upcoming #biblioadventures. We hope you enjoy the episode and if so, please consider leaving a review wherever you listen, as it really does help others find us. Happy Listening & Happy Reading! https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/2024/episode210

John Valeri, our Mystery Man and host of Central Booking, returns to offer Halloween season recommendations for middle-grade, young adult, and adult readers. Emily has nothing but high praise for THE BOOK OF FORM AND EMPTINESS by Ruth Ozeki. She's also thrilled to discover author Zoraida Cordóva (THE INHERITANCE OF ORQUİEDA DIVINA), and you'll have to listen to hear her favorite line from the book. And even though she would have preferred to read cupcake books while on vacation, Emily did finish the dark novel, MRS. MARCH by Virginia Feito for book club. Chris finished listening to Farah Jasmine Griffin's READ UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature, which is part memoir, part literary criticism, and an exploration of African-American cultural themes. She also had a deliciously creepy experience listening to the sexy Audible Original production of CARMILLA by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. And Chris highly recommends the graphic novel SHADOW LIFE about a 70-something woman who fights death by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu. It's also another 10th episode, which means it's GIVEAWAY time! All you have to do to be entered to win is subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which you can do here: https://www.bookcougars.com/subscriber (If you're already subscribed, you're in!)

getting arrested, drinking, boys, and road rage

On this episode of Reel Insider News, the boys discuss some news straight from the Department of Justice, how Apple is planning on competing with other streaming services, a new A24 animated show, and an update on Mulan. Then we'll talk to Tim Van Patten who has managed a Boston based film and television production scheduling service for the past 27 years.

If you've ever been arrested and spent a night in Brooklyn's Central Booking, you want to just hold it but some years are pandemic years and holding it feels less like an option. Watch for cops.

Episode One Hundred Four Show Notes We are excited to announce that we are now an affiliate of Libro.fm audiobook platform: Listeners can receive three months for the price of one. Follow this link to learn more.– 14th Readalong discussion– Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)The Goodreads discussion thread can be found HERE.– Currently Reading –Eat Joy: Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers – edited Natalie Eve Garrett (EF)Empire of Wild – Cherie Dimaline (CW) release date July 28, 2020Building Your Ideal Private Practice – Lynn Grodzki (CW)(audio)– Just Read –Friends and Strangers – J. Courtney Sullivan (EF) release date June 30, 2020Mother Land – Lea Franqui (EF) release date July 14, 2020Shelter – Jung Yun (EF) (audio)Urban Trauma: A Legacy of Racism – Dr. Maysa Akbar (EF)– Biblio Adventures –We had a joint jaunt as GUESTS on Our Mystery Man John Valeri’s YouTube channel, Central Booking. You can watch the interview HERE.Emily attended an event through The Strand Bookstore. Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half, was in conversation with Gloria Edim, author of Well-Read Black Girl.Chris attended the 65th Annual Willa Cather spring conference: Untethered Cather on the Cusp of the 1920’s. The focus this year was on Cather’s book of short stories Youth and the Bright Medusa. She enjoyed sessions that included author Erica Ryan discussing her book When the World Broke in Two: The Roaring Twenties and the Dawn of America’s Culture Wars and Alex Ross discussing his book releasing on September 15, 2020, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music.Chris browsed inside two bookstores, Breakwater Books in Guilford,CT where she purchased How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson. She also visited Bank Square Books in Mystic, CT.– Upcoming Jaunts –Emily will be attending a virtual event via Politics & Prose with Megha Mujumdar, author of A Burning, in conversation with C. Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills is Gold. Chris will attend a virtual event on June 10 at Savoy Bookshop & Café. Erica Ruth Neubaur will discuss her book Murder at Mena House with Juliet Grames. Read Chris’s review here.On June 11, Chris will tune in to hear author Irene Butter discuss her book Shores Beyond Shores via CapRadio Reads. You can register here.– Upcoming Reads –Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts (EF)How to Write Non-Fiction: Turn Your Knowledge Into Words – Joana Penn (CW)– Author Spotlight with Jung Yun –We were thrilled to welcome author Jung Yun to discuss her book, Shelter.You can learn more about Jung here including news about her forthcoming novel, O Beautiful.– Also Mentioned –All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony DoerrThe Marrow Thieves – Cherie DimalineTwelve Months To Your Ideal Private Practice: A Workbook – Lynn Grodzki Matterhorn – Karl MarlantesThe Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century – Alex RossKramerbooks Book By Book BlogThe Creative Pen podcastPurchase Book Cougars Swag on Zazzle!We are an affiliate of Bank Square Books and Savoy Bookstore & Café. Please purchase books from them and support us at the same time. Click HERE to start shopping.If you’d like to help financially support the Book Cougars, please consider becoming a Patreon member. You can DONATE HERE. If you would prefer to donate directly to us, please email bookcougars@gmail.com for instructions.Join our Goodreads Group! We have a BookTube Channel – please check it out here, and be sure to subscribe!Please subscribe to our email newsletter here.

Lena Hall is an American actress, singer and songwriter best known for her work on Broadway originating the role of Nicola in Kinky Boots, and her Tony Award-winning performance as Yitzhak in the 2014 revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which also earned her a Grammy nomination for the musical's official album. She made history by becoming the first person to play both Hedwig and Yitzhak in the same production during the national tour of the musical in 2016. Her other Broadway credits include Cats, 42nd Street, Dracula, the Musical and Tarzan, the Musical. Hall has also starred in Off-Broadway productions such as Radiant Baby, Bedbugs!!!, Rooms: A Rock Romance, The Toxic Avenger, Prometheus Bound, Chix6, and the 2017 original play How to Transcend a Happy Marriage. Hall has appeared in films such as Sex and the City (2008), The Graduates (2008), Born from the Foot (2009), The Big Gay Musical (2009), and Becks (2017), for which she received widespread critical acclaim. She has also appeared on TV shows like ABC's All My Children, HBO's Girls, Amazon Prime's Good Girls Revolt, and voiced the role of Countess Coloratura on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In 2020, she will star on TNT's science fiction epic Snowpiercer. Hall was the lead singer of the band The Deafening, they released an album with original songs in 2012 titled Central Booking. In 2015, Hall released her first solo album, Sin & Salvation: Live At the Carlyle.

This week the lawyers are joined by Natalie Finegar.  Natalie served in the Office of the Public Defender for 21 years and 2 years ago joined private practice.  She worked as a supervisor in Baltimore City's infamous Central Booking and Intake Facility, as a Northwest Defender Project supervisor, and as the Deputy District PD for Baltimore City.  Natalie has seen it all during her time defending indigent criminals in Baltimore.  Natalie brings a spark and fire to the conversation when discussing the rights of the sick, mentally ill, and downtrodden.  Today we sample the Trader Vic's Mai Tai recipe.  Here is some history to the drink and a huge shout out to CLOCK restoration at QG for saving the day with the Orgeat syrup. Here's the ingredients: 1 oz amber Martinique rum 1 oz dark Jamaican rum 1 oz fresh lime juice 1/2 oz orgeat syrup 1/2 oz of Cointreau garnish with mint (a lime if you like) Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker, except the garnish. Shake and strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with fresh mint and a lime if you fancy that. You can also float some dark rum on top of the cocktail. On the agenda for today Part 1: Discussion of the Alabama and Georgia abortion laws. I can't believe it's not Baltimore: Follow up to DUI on horse - Livestock = farm equipment under transportation article But NOT on a electric personal mobility device  PART 2 Can you be Facebook friends with a Judge and still appear in front of them as an attorney? DNA databases and Cold Criminal cases.  Should you get a DNA ancestry test?  resounding NO from the lawyers. Lawyers on the Rocks features Jeremy Eldridge, Kurt Nachtman and Adam Crandell. This triumvirate of lawyers will give you their unsolicited opinion on everything legal and illegal, while enjoying a handcrafted cocktail. Lawyers on the Rocks is sponsored by the Law Office of Eldridge, Nachtman & Crandell, LLC and produced by Up Next Creative, LLC.

This week the lawyers are joined by Natalie Finegar.  Natalie served in the Office of the Public Defender for 21 years and 2 years ago joined private practice.  She worked as a supervisor in Baltimore City's infamous Central Booking and Intake Facility, as a Northwest Defender Project supervisor, and as the Deputy District PD for Baltimore City.  Natalie has seen it all during her time defending indigent criminals in Baltimore.  Natalie brings a spark and fire to the conversation when discussing the rights of the sick, mentally ill, and downtrodden.  Today we sample the Trader Vic's Mai Tai recipe.  Here is some history to the drink and a huge shout out to CLOCK restoration at QG for saving the day with the Orgeat syrup. Here's the ingredients: 1 oz amber Martinique rum 1 oz dark Jamaican rum 1 oz fresh lime juice 1/2 oz orgeat syrup 1/2 oz of Cointreau garnish with mint (a lime if you like) Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker, except the garnish. Shake and strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with fresh mint and a lime if you fancy that. You can also float some dark rum on top of the cocktail. On the agenda for today (Part 1): Discussion of the Alabama and Georgia abortion laws. I can't believe it's not Baltimore: Follow up to DUI on horse - Livestock = farm equipment under transportation article But NOT on a electric personal mobility device  Part 2 Can you be Facebook friends with a Judge and still appear in front of them as an attorney? DNA databases and Cold Criminal cases.  Should you get a DNA ancestry test?  resounding NO from the lawyers. Lawyers on the Rocks features Jeremy Eldridge, Kurt Nachtman and Adam Crandell. This triumvirate of lawyers will give you their unsolicited opinion on everything legal and illegal, while enjoying a handcrafted cocktail. Lawyers on the Rocks is sponsored by the Law Office of Eldridge, Nachtman & Crandell, LLC and produced by Up Next Creative, LLC.

This week the lawyers are joined by Natalie Finegar.  Natalie served in the Office of the Public Defender for 21 years and 2 years ago joined private practice.  She worked as a supervisor in Baltimore City's infamous Central Booking and Intake Facility, as a Northwest Defender Project supervisor, and as the Deputy District PD for Baltimore City.  Natalie has seen it all during her time defending indigent criminals in Baltimore.  Natalie brings a spark and fire to the conversation when discussing the rights of the sick, mentally ill, and downtrodden.  She was also kind enough to bring some homegrown and homemade blueberry simple syrup for the Blueberry Mojito Mocktails we sampled today!  Here's the ingredients: 3 Tablespoons simple syrup 8-10 mint leaves + sprig for garnish 1/2 lime + slices for garnish 4-6 Tablespoons lemon lime sparking water Light Rum as needed. Ice INSTRUCTIONS To make the simple syrup, combine all of the ingredients in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes or until sugar is fully dissolved. Cool completely. To make the drinks, place 3 Tablespoons of the simple syrup plus the mint leaves in the bottom of a glass. I like to include some of the whole berries in the drink, but feel free to strain them out if you prefer. Using a muddler or the end of a wooden spoon, muddle the mint and blueberries together in the bottom of the glass. Add the juice of 1/2 a lime, enough ice to fill the glass, plus the club soda to top it off. Garnish each glass with a lime wedge or slice and a sprig of mint. Stir and serve immediately. On the agenda for today: Natalie talks about Baltimore, how she got to be a PD, and shares many war stories, particularly from central booking. The group discusses sneaking contraband into CBIF, like this inmate who brought a gun onto the floor.  Follow up to the original story.  He was in a wheelchair? I can't believe it's not Baltimore: I EAT ASS.  Video is a must watch! THERE IS NO SECTION WHERE JEREMY ELDRIDGE EXPLAINS EATING ASS TO YOUR 10 YEAR OLD CHILD.  NOPE, NOT GONNA HAPPEN. Lawyers on the Rocks features Jeremy Eldridge, Kurt Nachtman and Adam Crandell. This triumvirate of lawyers will give you their unsolicited opinion on everything legal and illegal, while enjoying a handcrafted cocktail. Lawyers on the Rocks is sponsored by the Law Office of Eldridge, Nachtman & Crandell, LLC and produced by Up Next Creative, LLC.

Welcome and Welcome Back! In light of the NBA Playoffs, we have some special commentary and questions from a near and dear friend HAK-A-SHAQ on who on earth is capable of beating the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals, and a thorough list of of not so capable playoff contenders. This weeks beer quest was pleasantly uplifting in a Forget Me Not, Boardwalk, Deck Chair, Bridesmaids kinda way! Pick Your Poison made a comeback that's all about the tools to get you through Central Booking and a 24 hour holding cell with the worst of the worst...And finally we bring to the Kiddie table a shocking icon, and a not so shocking baseball player. B*tch of the Week will have a NBA Legend sitting across from a World Series Champion, and we have no idea how they got there, actually,...YES WE DO! Until Next week and as always STAY SUCKA FREE...PEACE!

The San Francisco Writers Conference Podcast: THREE QUESTIONS ABOUT..   Meet Kevin Smokler, the "unofficial educator" for the San Francisco Writers Conference. Kevin was the founder and publisher of Central Booking, which grew to serve nearly 50,000 bibliophiles worldwide and was praised by media outlets such as Wired, USA Today, and Forbes, which referred to it as the "Paris Review of the 21st Century.” He is a writer, public speaker and performer based in San Francisco. He writes about technology and culture, is the author of several books including Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to 80s Teen Movies, Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven’t Read Since High School, Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times and The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles.   Listen in as host Alex White asks Kevin three questions about the publishing industry today. Lots of great insight.

The people wanted him back... so I tracked down this guy ova here. The first guest to be on the show three times. The Return of Tommy Rebel. This time around he talks about his obsession with collecting. Yes... collecting. Things like old, classic Coney Island memorabilia, signs, stickers and a vast assortment of stuff. And of course we talk a couple crazy graffiti stories, being on trial for vandalism, and about how Central Booking is never a fun or comfortable place to be. Enjoy the rambling of the infamous Tommy Rebel... for the third time.

Morgan State graduate Evan Howard tells his story of how he was arrested and held in Central Booking for 56 hours without committing a crime during the height of Baltimore's zero tolerance era, and with the repercussions for him that linger years later.

Platypus Revenge performs live at the Central Booking Art Gallery in NYC. Demian Richardson, Rev John Henry, Steven Bartashev, Charly Couture, Ayumi Ishito, Daniel Carter

April 10, 2017 / The van driver stopped twice, we are told, to check on Freddie Gray, while en route to Central Booking. Very little of the story of these two stops adds up. Episode scoring music by AnimalWeapon, Blue Dot Sessions, Chris Zabriskie, Fleslit, H-LR, Jahzzar, Remain, Uncanny Valleys and VYVCH. #undisclosed #freddiegray #justiceforfreddie Support the show.

JaNae Contag is an artist, curator, musician, a lecturer at two universities, and runs a studio where she produces photographic work for clients and collaborators. She has spent her artistic career looking at the connections she finds in the world and making visual cultural critiques of the ideas she encounters in her life. Our conversation focuses on how she finds new ideas and connections in her work and personal life as well as what she tells her photography students who are just starting their career. MEET JANAE CONTAG: JaNae Contag received her BA in Studio Art, Political Science, and Spanish from Trinity University in San Antonio and her MFA in Visual Art from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis. Contag’s work deals with aspirational middle-class America, idiosyncratic moments in which tourism and elitism co-exist (malls, airports, lifestyle centers, megachurches, cemeteries), and overlooked architectural elements that reveal a checkered history of dwelling, shopping, and consuming. Her work has been exhibited at Central Booking, New York, Intersect Art Center, St. Louis, The Luminary Center for the Arts, St. Louis, Points North, Farmington, Maine, and Trestle Projects, Brooklyn, among others. Giving Up the Ghost was completed through a grant from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. Contag lives in Chicago and teaches Photography and Film & Video Production DePaul University and at The Illinois Institute of Art – Schaumburg in addition to freelancing as a co-owner of Concrete Imaging. She is also working on recording and production for a full-length synth pop album under her music pseudonym, NAE. Her other current collaborative projects include a feature-length documentary about the former Chicago Mayor, Harold Washington, as well as a podcast called Unfolding Six Points, about esoteric Chicago history. CONTACT: www.janaecontag.com (http://www.janaecontag.com) www.concreteav.com (http://www.concreteav.com) www.naemusic.com (http://www.naemusic.com) janaecontag@gmail.com (mailto:janaecontag@gmail.com) BOOKS: ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career by Heather Darcy Bhanda (http://amzn.to/2o36nqa) ri Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton (http://amzn.to/2oCGjA2) Sprawl: A Compact History by Robert Bruegmann (http://amzn.to/2o366TV) Teaching Artist Handbook, Volume One: Tools, Techniques, and Ideas to Help Any Artist Teach Paperback by Nick Jaffe (http://amzn.to/2ouLZip) Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi (http://amzn.to/2ov1SVR) BONUS: This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audiobooks. Click on the link to get a 30-day free trial, complete with a credit for a free audiobook download Audible.com (http://www.audibletrial.com/Yuri) QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

In episode 1 of the first season of Reboot, Adarsh talks with Gordon Fontenot, an iOS developer at thoughtbot, about his career path, moving from college dropout, to bartender, to film editor and finally iOS developer. Gordon Fontenot on Twitter Gordon’s podcast with Mark Adams on iOS development Waltham, Massachusetts Avid Video Editor Central Booking AppleScript Pragmatic Programmers Stack Overflow Careers Imposter Syndrome Dog typing on computer thoughtbot

Michael Friedman gets arrested and spends the night at Central Booking. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 29 After a period of massive readjustments, Blogs On Tape catalogues what people have been up to in the meantime. including: a trip to South by Southwest, a trip to the Carver County Library, and a trip to Jail.   WE HAVE A NEW NUMBER! (BLO) GS2-1314  (256) 472-1314 or email us letters, audio, or pictures, at BLOGSONTAPE@GMAIL.COM for the next episode We have lost EVERY CALL YOU HAVE EVER MADE to our previous phone number, so we are desparate for your calls, and desperate to have you back on the internet! Just call! That's it! www.blogsontape.com