All the drug dealers and gang members with whom I dealt had [a cell phone] long before any police officer I knew did.

Goodman is underscoring a recurring pattern in policing and security: adversaries often adopt new technologies faster than institutions tasked with stopping them. The remark points to how criminals, unburdened by procurement rules, training cycles, or bureaucratic caution, can exploit emerging tools—here, early mobile phones—to coordinate, evade surveillance, and outpace law enforcement capabilities. In a broader sense, the quote supports Goodman’s larger argument that technological change shifts power toward agile actors and that public safety agencies must modernize quickly, invest in technical literacy, and anticipate misuse rather than reacting after the fact.