Crime
Mercurio rising
When a drama begins with news of a ‘Chis handler’ receiving ‘intel graded A1 on the matrix’ that causes a…
The politicisation of Sarah Everard’s death
A woman called Jenny Jones, now elevated to Baroness Moonbeam, or something, in the House of Lords has proposed a…
Barometer
Calculated risk It is a year since Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College team published the paper that inspired the government to…
The conservative appeal of drug gangs
According to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, the easing of lock-down will be accompanied by a rise in crime…
A three-pipe problem
It has been described as Britain’s Dreyfus Affair — the wrongful imprisonment in 1903 of a half-Indian solicitor George Edalji…
Real life
‘Anything you say may be given in evidence. Do you have anything to say?’ I looked at the baby-faced police…
Sitting pretty
With the arts world still largely in hibernation, the launch of a big podcast is as close as we get…
Cruelty and chaos
Karachi, Pakistan’s troubled heart, is known to cast a seductive spell over residents and visitors alike. In Karachi Vice, the…
A brief history of luck
One of the staples of crime drama is the ‘cold-case squad’. This allows programme-makers to add period detail to the…
A macabre legend
The problem with telling stories about Harvard is that Harvard, if it teaches anything these days, teaches distrust of stories.…
High life
New York Back when people used to read newspapers, they called it a ‘human interest’ story. Now it appears as…
High life
New York It’s nice to finally be in the Bagel, a place where the cows have two legs and no…
High life
New York New York, New York, once a wonderful town/ The people are crap and the mayor’s a clown/ The…
Policeman’s Notebook
There’s no such thing as a typical week in policing and this last one was no different. It started on…
A murderer among us
I was Dennis Nilsen’s boss
Letters
Growing pains Sir: James Forsyth (‘Rewiring the state’, 4 July) shocked this loyal Spectator reader with the following: ‘Even before…
Extra, extra — read all about us!
Instead of telling us about America, or even the world outside, American journalists now tell us about other American journalists. The…
Letters
Police relations Sir: As a former Met Police officer, with a similar background to Kevin Hurley, I was surprised how…
Letters
Deterring crime Sir: Rod Liddle is right to highlight the politicisation of the police as a source of their inadequacies,…
Defund the police
Forces have become too politicised to function
Cop out
To save black lives, top brass must face reality
Speak of the devil
Did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself or was he murdered — and frankly who cares? Actually, having watched the four-part Netflix…
Is change on the horizon in Baltimore?
Crime-ridden Baltimore finally dodged a bullet this week. The bullet, in this case, was former mayor Sheila Dixon, who nearly…
Abolish the police. Then what?
One of the best rules of thumb to emerge from systems theory is Stafford Beer’s famous statement: the purpose of…
The roots of riot
That LEGO set or Louis Vuitton bag you’ve always wanted can be yours free if you just wait for the…
