Complaint Against the Officer or Officers who are Withholding Documents from the CCRB

As we learned from ProPublica on August 17, NYPD officers are withholding documentary evidence and body-worn camera footage related to a number of CCRB investigations.

On August 18, I filed a complaint against those officers. The CCRB has previously threatened to substantiate allegations of abuse of authority against officers who refused to attend interviews — when it did so, the NYPD relented and made the officers available.

The CCRB has negotiated with the NYPD and the NYPD has still failed to provide officers and footage. The CCRB should substantiate allegations against the officers refusing to provide this footage because they are violating the Patrol Guide and the City Charter.

My full letter written in support of the complaint, which explains the facts and the legal theory behind it, is available by clicking the button below.

On Junk Science, Pop Forensics, and Crime Fiction - CrimeReads

Very grateful to have had the chance to write about the over-reliance on junk science in crime fiction for CrimeReads last year. The article is available here.

The Arpaio Pardon and the Judiciary

Last summer, I tweeted about my experience clerking in the District of Arizona for the racial profiling trial of Joe Arpaio. That led to some news coverage and an op-ed in the Washington Post. It's nice to get recognition, but now that Arpaio has announced a senate run the stakes are quite serious.

Arpaio's career and the Arpaio pardon are among the most awful examples of where law enforcement has failed in this country. We rely on law enforcement, in this country, to carry out laws made by others. At his most fundamental, what Joe Arpaio did was decide what he thought the law ought to be, and then enforced that law. When it was shown in court that he was wrong (in front of a judge who, as I noted, was no liberal) and he was ordered to comply with the law as written, he simply refused. Arpaio represents a law enforcement officer who directed his officers to track, stop, arrest, and jail people who had not committed any crime. People that the officers knew had not committed any crime.

I have received criticism for my novel The Big Fear from those who seem angry that I paint an unflattering picture of the police. If you are looking for books in which hero cops always get the bad guy and are celebrated even when they bend the rules a little, I suppose you won't like mine. But given we are living in a world that can produce a Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and which threatens to produce a senator Arpaio, I can't imagine writing them any other way.

Investigating NYPD Misconduct - Strand Magazine

Since the release of The Big Fear, I have been asked to write a number of guest posts, which I'm linking to here.

This week, The Strand Magazine, a terrific online journal covering crime fiction, published a personal essay about my work investigating NYPD misconduct, available here.

Ray Chandler, T.S. Eliot, and Crime Fiction - in Fiction Books

Since the release of The Big Fear, I have been asked to write a number of guest columns. I'm linking to them here for those of you who have been reading and following.

Today, I'm posting an article I did for Fiction Books, a British website covering new fiction. The pieces is about my transition from playwright to crime writer and my history with classic crime. Enjoy.