Oakland's police chief Anthony Batts resigned a couple weeks ago, because, when he wasn't busy applying for other jobs, he was busy trying to turn Oakland into a police state, and that mean old City Council wouldn't let him. His approach to policing was that crime would stop if you instituted a curfew for young people and if you could immediately arrest anyone found "loitering" anywhere in Oakland. Also, a decade on, he and his predecessors still couldn't enforce court-ordered changes to the police department arising from the sensational "Oakland Riders" trials, which also ended in zero convictions of police but a $10 million settlement to 119 different plaintiffs. The court supervision agreement includes not very outlandish things like "Improved reporting and investigation of use of force by officers." Apparently that is not something that can happen in ten years. Longtime department member Howard Jordan took over as chief—for the second time, as retention of chiefs has become a problem for what is an extraordinarily troubled police department. And then, last night happened. READ MORE

In the car, my friend Jonathan and I talked about my kids, and his job, and how we feel old all the time. He’d come up that morning from North Carolina, where we once lived together, to come to the concert with me; now we were driving together from Arlington to Baltimore in a CRV whose backseat was dense with child-safety seats and princess books. READ MORE

Tom Scocca: Did you ever read that Baltimore Sun piece? About the hit-and-run? READ MORE