I was recently emailed about a web site called True Cop Stories. From the mission statement on the website:

“Sergeant S. is a twelve year law enforcement veteran. Like so many police officers and managers, he’s frustrated by the constant negative press hurled at the men and women who patrol the thin blue line. Most police officers work hard to keep you and yours safe. Why doesn’t anyone ever tell their stories? To that end, he created www.truecopstories.com, a site where real cops share real stories.

“These words come from the officers who patrol your neighborhoods, cities, and states. The tales they tell are funny, tragic, ironic, and heroic. They are all told by real cops, in their own words.”

I went to the site, and I must admit that after reading that mission statement I thought the stories would be … well, bad. Starting out with such a clear agenda like that, I was afraid the stories wouldn’t be anymore real, but instead, a white-wash. I read the first five or so and they were great!

I have to ask though, there’s one story, dated 8/29, where the writer/cop talks about the fact that no one in the crowd that was watching helped him catch the guy he was chasing. I’d be pissed at the people treating the situation like live TV too, but I always thought cops wouldn’t be happy if the public got involved. I assumed they would see it as interference instead of help. I’d like to think I’d help depending on the circumstances, (some cop is alone in a life threatening situation) but I don’t think I would have done anything in the situation he described. I also wouldn’t have laughed and cheered like the crowd did either.

This website is well worth visiting. I’d love to see him occasionally ask people to submit stories based on a specific theme or question.

A charge has been made in a case of Detective James Osorio’s that I posted about earlier in the year. Authorities in Montenegro are charging Smail Tulja for the murder of “Mary Beal, a 61-year-old Yugoslav immigrant who was reported missing in New York on Sept. 15, 1990. Three weeks later, her decapitated, dismembered body was found in two bags near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.” According the the article, “the country’s laws do not permit extradition of its citizens,” so they are going to try him there. Article here.

I was looking around for homicide statistics and was once again amazed at what you can find on the internet (thank you, Department of Defense).

Here are murder rates by country. We’re somewhere in the middle, and I was surprised to see Saudi Arabia at the bottom (but that, of course, is more about my ignorance about homicide outside the United States).

Here are murder rates by country going back to 1900!

And here is a link to the most recent crime reports from the FBI. Murder is up 0.3 percent.

A new database called NamUs.gov has just been launched by the U.S. Department of Justice. Combining two databases of missing persons and unidentified dead cases into one, it will be open to both law enforcement and the public and searchable.

From the website:

“When fully operational, NamUs will link these databases to provide a powerful tool for families, law enforcement agencies, medical examiners and coroners, victim advocates, and the general public. It will allow searches for matches between missing persons and unidentified human remains records. NamUs also will provide central access to information from other Web sites, State clearinghouses, and other important resources.”

Sad, but this could evolve into an incredible resource. Some may watch TV and think something like this is already ubiquitous but it’s not, except for largely volunteer efforts as far as I can tell (but this is not an area I’ve researched extensively).

Former Police Commissioner Reveals Crime Plan, by Anna Ditkoff, June 27th, 2007, the Baltimore City Paper.

“At a press conference on Tuesday, June 19, former Baltimore City police commissioner Ed Norris unveiled before an audience of four TV news crews and three print journalists a plan to combat the wave of homicides and shootings that has swept the city this year. Held at the WHFS (105.7 FM) studio in Mount Washington, from which Norris hosts a weekday radio program, he detailed a seven-point plan of attack that, among other things, calls for an independent audit of crime statistics, increased police salaries, focus on violent crime instead of drugs, and processing the police department’s backlog of DNA evidence.”

The complete article is here. [The article has since been removed.]

Ed Norris was the first commanding officer of the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad, and I wrote about him in The Restless Sleep. In 2004 he was sentenced to prison for six months, to be followed by six months of home detention for using up to $30,000 of police funds for personal use while Police Commissioner of Baltimore, and for filing false tax returns. I really don’t know the whole story behind the prosecution, I’m guessing politics were involved in some way, and I’m not excusing bad behavior, but I was very impressed with his police work and his management of the people working for him. He was smart. I couldn’t help feeling that in the end it was a loss to law enforcement. I hope he can help again in Baltimore, because crime-wise, they are in serious trouble there these days.

(The top picture is of Norris in his NYPD days working homicide, and the picture below is of him and his father.)