flâneur

Vital City | The Right Role for Police

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In the late 1990s, when I was in my early 20s, I patrolled Flatbush as part of a special NYPD unit. We were the neighborhood’s Scrubbing Bubbles: We broke up dice games, cited the men who got drunk on street corners and harassed women, went after terrible drivers, chased stolen cars and responded to serious crimes in progress. We also hunted for guns and drugs. My partner was a cop we’d nicknamed Bull for his resemblance to the bailiff on “Night Court.” One early winter evening in 1998, Bull and I were cruising the side streets off Flatbush Avenue. A flash of movement caught our eye. Two people had ducked into an abandoned lot through a hole cut in its fence. We got out of our squad car, sidled up to the lot, and darted through the hole. We startled a man and a woman with their backs to us. The man let something drop. It was a burnt glass pipe, stuffed at one end with a piece of metal screen and a rock of crack cocaine. It was a crack pipe. The couple was in their 40s. They were terrif

What should officers and departments do to answer the opioid crisis? In the late 1990s, when I was in my early 20s, I patrolled Flatbush as part of a special NYPD unit. We were the neighborhood's Scrubbing Bubbles : We broke up dice games, cited the men who got drunk on street corners and harassed women, went after terrible drivers, chased stolen cars and responded to serious crimes in progress. We also hunted for guns and drugs. My partner was a cop we'd nicknamed Bull for his resemblance to the bailiff on "Night Court." One early winter evening in 1998, Bull and I were cruising the side stre

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