On Halloween night a light-colored, early 1980s Datsun 210 pulled alongside a parked Seattle police unit. Brit Sweeney, the trainee behind the wheel of the cop car, sensed danger. She ducked and shouted at her field training officer, Timothy Brenton. Shots rang out. Sweeney, grazed in the back, jumped from...

How's your recall? Better than Alberto Gonzales and Dick Cheney's, I'll bet.

Do you remember Attorney General Gonzales testifying on April 19, 2007 before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the politically-motivated firings of those U.S. Attorneys? I do. I remember arriving at the Omni Hotel in Chicago that day...

I'm midway through my month-long Australian drug policy reform tour, and the reception couldn't be more encouraging. The hundreds of people I've met along the way -- police officers, city officials, parliament members, university students and professors, everyday Australians -- have been warm and gracious, whether in agreement or in...

A week ago I was in the Bay Area, touring medical marijuana dispensaries in Oakland and Berkeley, speaking to the Sausalito Rotary Club, visiting with police and elected officials, and addressing NORML's annual conference. (Special thanks to the extraordinary Carol Ruth Silver, former member of the San Francisco Board of...

Four in the morning, the town still slumbering. Mockingbirds warble at one another in the courtyard of the old San Diego police headquarters down on Market Street. I sit at a government-issue metal desk across from a uniformed police officer and ask, "Do you use racial or ethnic slurs?"

Those five words are showing up with increasing frequency in blogs and e-letters to editors from Chula Vista to Bangor.

Comments worthy of censorship? Unless you caught them before the offending entry was expunged you'll never know. Still, scores of problematic remarks survive the cyber-censors, and some of them...

I'm a drug "legalizer," not an "incrementalist." I do not believe drug policy reform should end with the legalization of marijuana. Yet, when asked to contribute a foreword to the new book, Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink, I eagerly accepted. Steve Fox of...

President Obama was forced to dip deep into his cache of political capital to pay for his "indiscretion" in the "Gatesgate" affair. There's little doubt the uproar served to divert attention from the white-hot issue of health care, at least for a time. (Agree with him or not, the...

Whatever ultimate effect President Obama's "stupid" remark may have on his popularity, whatever long-term impact it will have on Professor Gates, Sgt. Jim Crowley, the Cambridge Police Department, or aggrieved cops across the land, it has certainly set us to talking. (Or SCREAMING, to judge by the multitudes of uppercase...

Nothing like a question from out of left field to elicit some bare-boned truths about policing, race, and stupidity.

President Obama in a televised news conference, billed as an attempt to shore up allied support and win converts for his health care plan, turned to Chicago Sun-Times Washington bureau chief...

President Obama recently created the first-ever position of White House adviser on violence against women. Across the land, at corporate water coolers and in taverns, in locker rooms and on bass boats a growing band of men immediately lifted their voices in protest: "What about an adviser on violence...

It's official. We can now talk openly about what the great majority of us have known for a long time: drug prohibition isn't working, and never will. It's time to try something different. News organizations are awash in stories about the failure of the "drug war." Latest issues of three...

"The discussion about legalization is not a part of the president's vocabulary under any circumstances and it's not a part of mine."
-- ONDCP Director Gil Kerlikowske, from interview withReuters

First, let's get that title business out of the way. I'd suggested in an earlier post that...

I was uneasy when some years back the term "racial profiling" wiggled its way into the language of police critiques, and stuck. To my ear, "profiling" has a vaguely sociological ring to it, as in, for example, the study of patterns of police misconduct.

What's wrong with words like "racism"...

Thus spake, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a city cop who joined other police officers and DEA agents in a packed federal courtroom last week. All those badges flashed in support of Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Lee Lucas who is facing an 18-count indictment. The 19-year veteran stands...

Gil Kerlikowske, the president's new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, scored big points when he told the Wall Street Journal he wants to put an end to the "war on drugs." Which he daringly described as a war on people.

Of course, banishing a phrase...

Dear Gil:

Congratulations on your confirmation as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Bit of an irony, isn't it? Two Seattle police chiefs on opposite sides of the drug war? As "drug czar" (please retire that ill-begotten label), you are responsible for advising the president and...

As 5:00 p.m. rolls around my interior clock starts chiming. I'll have an ice-cold, bone-dry martini, thank you. Jalapeno olives and a twist. If the occasion calls for it (temperatures in the twenties, a hot political debate on the tube) I may substitute two fingers of Kentucky sour mash. Four-twenty?...

Today, if I stare off into the middle distance and let it happen, images of homicide victims queue up, most of them cops I knew, and children. It's been a bad month for both.

"Bam, bam, bam," begins New York Times reporter Timothy Egan's April 8 must-read blog, "The...

Two themes emerge in response to my 3/28/09 post. Below, a shot at summarizing. Let's call the competing views Camp Yes, as in President Obama should have tackled the marijuana issue during his recent online town hall meeting, and Camp No representing those who believe he was wise to...