Drug Trade
Stop and Frisk: Policing by Numbers
The NYPD conducted 4.4 million stop-and-frisk encounters between 2002 and 2013. Ninety percent targeted Black and Latino New Yorkers. Eighty-eight percent were found to have done nothing wrong.
NayNay
Independent history writing about the parts of the American record that get skipped. Every claim here is sourced — check the citations and argue with them.
Drug Trade
Three Strikes Laws: Life Sentences for Petty Crime
California's three-strikes law gave a man 25 years to life for stealing a pizza slice. Applied at 13 times the rate against Black defendants as white defendants — and reversed by voters in 2012.
Drug Trade
Mandatory Minimums: The Laws That Filled the Prisons
Federal mandatory minimums drove the U.S. prison population from 24000 to 210000 between 1980 and 2010. The crack-powder disparity meant 88 percent of federal crack defendants were Black.
Drug Trade
Nixon's War on Drugs: The Strategy Behind the Slogan
Nixon's own domestic policy chief admitted the War on Drugs was designed to target Black communities and antiwar activists — not protect public health. What Ehrlichman said and what Nixon actually built.
Outlaws & the Wild West
Depression Era Outlaws: Crime as Folk Hero
Dillinger Bonnie and Clyde Pretty Boy Floyd Baby Face Nelson — the Depression outlaws became folk heroes because the banks had already taken everything else.
Outlaws & the Wild West
Ma Barker: The Mother Who Ran a Criminal Empire (Maybe)
J. Edgar Hoover called Ma Barker a criminal mastermind after shooting her in 1935. Her gang's actual planner says she did jigsaw puzzles while the men ran the jobs.
Outlaws & the Wild West
Baby Face Nelson: The Most Dangerous Man in America
Baby Face Nelson killed more FBI agents than anyone in Bureau history — three — and died from 17 bullet wounds having just killed the two men who shot him.
Outlaws & the Wild West
Pretty Boy Floyd: The Outlaw Oklahoma Loved
Pretty Boy Floyd robbed banks across Oklahoma and killed officers. Woody Guthrie wrote him into folk legend. The song left out the people he killed.
Outlaws & the Wild West
Bonnie and Clyde: America's Most Famous Criminal Couple
Bonnie and Clyde killed 13 people including 9 law enforcement officers. The 1967 film turned them into antiheroes. The officers they killed became footnotes.
Outlaws & the Wild West
Outlaw Legends: The Men Who Made Crime Romantic
Jesse James Billy the Kid Butch Cassidy the Dalton Gang — the American outlaw myth was manufactured by the outlaws themselves and the journalists who needed them.
Outlaws & the Wild West
John Dillinger: Public Enemy Number One
John Dillinger robbed 24 banks in eleven months and was shot outside a Chicago theater. Hoover used him to build the FBI — the folk hero story came later.
Outlaws & the Wild West
John Wesley Hardin: The Deadliest Gunfighter in the West
John Wesley Hardin killed 27 documented men — more than any other gunfighter on record. His first victims were a Black man and three Union soldiers in Reconstruction Texas.