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Washington and on...

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Leaving on a jet plane This has been a bit of a busy week for me, spent, in the main closing down my apartment, saying goodbye to friends and preparing to board the bus back home to Edinburgh.  All of which has been a good bit harder than I expected! First off, I’ve managed to accumulate a lot of stuff, such as bedding, pots and pans and the like.  Craigslist is a fantastic place to stick these for sale, but many of the responses were not what I had expected.  I priced everything to sell -  there was no room in my hand luggage for the two single beds my kids slept on - so my prices were low.  To that end, responses were high and not always from people wanting to buy.  I got, I think about 60 calls, emails and texts for each item from people who wanted what I had for free.  I got calls from homeless shelters, families in poverty and homes for battered women all looking for my stuff.  I don’t know if that happens when things like th...
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Oh, a storm is threat'ning

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To rely on the kindness of strangers As I was leaving the Metro tonight I passed somebody who started to say ‘hello’.  Nothing strange there, the mobile signal in Metro stations is pretty good and people talking on hands free is a regular occurrence.  Then I heard the ‘hello’ repeat as I walked by along with a ‘can you help me’?   I turned to see a blind lady with a stick.  I asked if I could help and she introduced herself at Kathy.  She told me she needed to leave the station by a particular route in order to catch a specific bus and asked if I would help her do that.  I offered her my arm and off we went.  Our journey together lasted around 7 minutes and included stairs, ice, road crossings, more ice, a grilled footpath and even more ice.  A bus came, it was the number 42 Kathy had wanted and I put her on it.  During our few minutes together she had shaken my hand, told me she felt safe with me because I was tall, let me know s...
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Talking with the Taxman about poetry

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The Sunshine State I was in Jacksonville, Florida this week, the home of Lynard Skynard .  Where I was at the University of North Florida .  What a great place it was too.  I was really flattered to be contacted a couple of weeks ago by UNF and asked to go down to speak to their students about the work I’ve been doing during my Fulbright adventure.  They had me speaking to a couple of large classes as well as a seminar presentation.  All of which was great and whilst I’ve banged on about guns enough, it was fair to say many of the students I met could not get their heads around the fact we had crime in Scotland, including drugs crime without perpetrators always having a gun.  It’s just a different culture here.  There was lots going on down there.  The UNF hosts the Institute of Police Technology and Management .  Like the rest of the States, Florida comprises vast numbers of police departments from sizeable organisations to one ...
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A yellow taxi turn to me and smiled

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Where police performance was born I headed up the New York last weekend, home of the Yankees , The Ramones , where the line from the title was written about and of this chap... He’s called Jack Maple.   Its unlikely, unless you’ve looked at the pictures already, you know who he is but for the cops who are reading this, he has had a profound effect on our lives - he was the architect of COMPSTAT.   Maple was the man who envisaged, then developed the practice of bringing local commanders together and holding them, to account in front of their peers.   This was not always a pleasant process for those under the spotlight.   The COPMSTAT room at the NYPD headquarters is large and at one end there is a podium for those under scrutiny to stand at in order to be questioned on their performance by more senior leaders.   Whilst I am told, it’s “not as bad now” (!), in the early days this was a brutal process.   Think about that for a moment, being req...
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