Just wanted to give Mower's "Deadly Force" series another shoutout, and not just because he's my friend or former colleague, or that I've been the reporter who had to follow up on his massive undertaking since he left our Vegas newspaper a few years back.

The series is really a fascinating look at the culture of police… Read more

Former MLB-pinch hitter extraordinaire Matt Stairs is (or maybe was) an assistant coach of the John Bapst hockey team. They were (or maybe still are) not very good. Read more

Come on, Timothy. Admit it. This last season of the Miami Heat was pretty funny. Read more

"The magazine would be echoed after the incident by columnists like Bob Broeg of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who wrote,"These young Caribbean hot bloods absolutely must be taught restraint."" Read more

Yes. To all. The drug war has cost this country well over a trillion dollars. It's resulted in the incarceration of tens of millions of low-level, nonviolent drug offenders — overwhelmingly young people, poor people, people of color. It's severely damaged the relationship between the police and those communities that… Read more

Fascinating. Cops need to know that "snitching" off fellow officers who engage in racism or excessive force or corruption or sexual harassment (up through and including sexual assaults) is, or should be, part of their job description...a condition of employment. Read more

Tasers (and pepper spray and a variety of other weapons) were developed as a "less lethal" alternative to lethal force. Law enforcement agencies, many of them, adopted Tasers in the wake of a "tragic incident" in their communities. Police officers (and their trainers) will tell you that if your life is at stake a… Read more

Can't speak to the German experience. Police in the UK have generally been unarmed throughout their history. They face fewer firearms, by far, than is the case for U.S. police. Read more

You tell me. Read more

About the same, I'd say. Policing has been getting increasingly safer (notice I'm not saying safe), and crime has been dropping...even as the institution is becoming more militaristic. Read more

Whatever reasons they give are explanations, too often defensive and self-serving. There is no excuse, in 2014, for an agency being so utterly underrepresented, racially, as is the case in Ferguson. Read more

Absolutely. SWAT should be reserved for active shooter/barricaded armed and dangerous suspects/hostage situations. Think Columbine, Sandy Hook, the McDonald's Massacre (to cite one close to home for me). Read more

There are roughly 18K police agencies in the country, all with different (though often similar) policies. Some do track, some don't. Read more

What is the least effective or practical aspect of police officer training in the US? Read more

Are you ready to admit that the War on Drugs directly targeted low-level offenders (black and brown skinned people) as a means of populating and advacning the privatization of the prison system? Also, are you willing to admit that police respond and treat potential suspects differenly on the basis of color and/or… Read more

Do police forces in the US look at responses to violent situations by police forces of other countries—such as the UK, where the two people who beheaded Lee Rigby were detained without incident—and if so, how do they directly apply to your learnings if at all? Read more

Did you ever have to deal with racial profiling inside your department? If so how did you handle it? Read more

Why aren't tasers used more often in situations like the one in Ferguson? Read more