From the desk
Writing
Essays, op-eds, and mind wanderings on justice, policing, aging, the trail, and whatever else won’t leave me alone.
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Broken-Down Computers
by Joe Broadmeadow Stephen Hawking said it in an interview with the Guardian in May 2011: “There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” Consider the source before…
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My Vote is Not for Sale. But It Is for Rent.
“The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest… are perversions.” Aristotle…
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Behind the Veil: Designing a Society Without Knowing Your Place in It
Joe Broadmeadow Imagine someone hands you the authority to build a society from nothing. You write the constitution. You set the tax rates, the criminal code, the property rules, the rights of the accused, the obligations of the wealthy, and…
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Twenty-Five Years, and We Still Have Not Read the File
by Joe Broadmeadow (repost of Op-ed in Providence Journal 9/11/2026) Every investigation follows the same discipline. Establish what happened. Establish why. Build a record clear enough for the next investigator to pick up cold and understand it. Twenty-five years after…
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The Missing S
By Joe Broadmeadow Faith, family, freedom: Political slogan or roadmap to tyranny? Faith, Family, Freedom. Read it again and find what’s missing from all three words. Faith, not faiths. Family, not families. Three singular nouns standing in for a country…
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Stewards of Principle
by Joe Broadmeadow In 1964, seven Rhode Island police officers lost their jobs for saying out loud what everyone in the building already knew. The answers to a promotional exam had circulated in advance. The seven had no contract, no…
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One Lie Offends. Thirty Thousand Anesthetize.
By Joe Broadmeadow In twenty years of police work, I came to appreciate a suspect’s first lie. It handed me something to use. A single false statement, documented and locked into a recording, becomes a lever. You return to it.…
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Two Sticks
By Joe Broadmeadow Somewhere between then and now, without a press release or a moment of silence, the two-stick root beer popsicle disappeared. Nobody investigated. No one filed a report. The thing simply stopped being on the shelf, and then…