Episode 236: Al Baker

Al Baker is a crime reporter at The New York Times, where he writes the series “Murder in the 4-0.” “When there’s a murder in a public housing high rise, there’s a body on the floor. Jessica White in a playground, on a hot summer night. Her children saw it. Her body fell by a bench by a slide. You look up and there’s hundreds of windows, representing potentially thousands of eyes, looking down on that like a fishbowl. …They’re seeing it through the window and they can see that there’s a scarcity of response. And then they measure that against the police shooting that happened in February when there were three helicopters in the air and spotlights shining down on them all night and hundreds of officers with heavy armor going door to door to door to find out who shot a police officer. They can see the difference between a civilian death and an officer death.” Thanks to MailChimp and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. @bakeal [02:15] Murder in the 4-0 [04:15] Baker’s Archive at New York Daily News [08:15] "The myth of the killer-cop ‘epidemic’" (Michael Walsh • New York Post • Jan 2016) [09:15] The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Michelle Alexander • The New Press • 2012) [11:15] "A Bronx Precinct Where Killings Persist" (with Benjamin Mueller • New York Times • Feb 2016) [14:15] "From the archives: TWA Flight 800, flying with fear" (Newsday Staff Writers • Newsday • Jul 1996) [15:45] "A Bullet Misses Its Mark, and Then Takes a Fatal Detour" (with James C. McKinley Jr. • New York Times • Jan 2017) [21:15] "A Mother Is Shot Dead on a Playground, and a Sea of Witnesses Goes Silent" (with Benjamin Mueller • New York Times • Oct 2016) [22:45] "A Familiar Pattern in a Spouse’s Final Act" (with Benjamin Mueller & Ashley Southall • New York Times • Apr 2016) [22:45] "Quest for a New Life Ends in a Tangle of Gang Ties" (with James C. McKinley Jr. • New York Times • Aug 2016) [30:30] "Authorities Move to Charge 16 Officers After Widespread Ticket-Fixing" (with William K. Rashbaum • New York Times • Oct 2011) [36:15] Rukmini Callimachi on the Longform Podcast [37:30] Good Cop, Bad Cop: Joseph Trimboli vs Michael Dowd and the NY Police Department (Mike Mcalary • Pocket Books • 1996) [40:45] "A Cloak of Silence After a South Bronx Killing" (with Benjamin Mueller • New York Times • Mar 2016) [43:15] "Grandmother’s Killing Lays Bare a Dilemma in Child Welfare Work" (with James C. McKinley Jr. & Ashley Southall • New York Times • Nov 2016) [45:45] Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx (Adrian Nicole LeBlanc • Scribner • 2003) [47:30] "William Bratton, New York’s Influential Police Commissioner, Is Stepping Down" (with J. David Goodman • New York Times • Aug 2016) [47:30] "Ahmad Khan Rahami Is Arrested in Manhattan and New Jersey Bombings" (with Marc Santora, William K. Rashbaum, & Adam Goldman • New York Times • Sep 2016) [50:45] Seymour Hersh on the Longform Podcast [56:45] "Cops’ Favorite Target Thug, but Just Who Was the Guy?" (Michael Wilson • New York Times • Feb 2005) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices