Month: June 2021

QPP 47: Arthur Storch and Louis Anemone “AKA Community Policing”

This is one of my favorite podcasts from Professor Peter Moskos. Arthur Storch is a great story teller and he sounds like a great police supervisor. It was also enjoyable listening to Louis Anemone adding/confirming to what Peter and Arthur were discussing. It reminded me of when I was reading Bill Bratton’s book “Turnaround” and how Anemone, Jack Maple, John Timoney were the brain trust during COMPSTAT meetings. I thought is was unbelievable to have such innovative police officers in one department.

This podcast is a great example of how Community Policing, Community Support, and Political Support works to make neighborhoods safer. It also briefly talks about Broken Windows policing and Stop & Frisk and how each are important to policing especially when done correctly.

Access the podcast HERE

QPP 48: Jeff Asher on Gun Arrests

This is an interesting podcast from Professor Peter Moskos’s website. Moskos and Asher and then Brandon Del Pozo (all PhDs) discuss the increase in firearm arrests from police stops. It is cool just to listen to Moskos and Asher discuss different thoughts, concepts, and ideas and then Del Pozo add in his perspective as he joins in at the end of the podcast.

Here are a couple of my thoughts as I listened to the podcast:
What methods were used to get the guns off of the streets? Self-initiated Field Activity (SIFA), Vehicle and Traffic Law stops by officers, was it searches incidental to arrest, and was citizen contact made because police were alerted by type of a shot detection equipment?

What kind of guns are being used?  Were Legal or illegal guns being recovered? Is the gun issue a supply issue or a demand issue? Was the gun a Newly purchased gun?  What was the length of time from purchase to use?

Asher noted several times that there was limited data from police departments regarding crimes. Jeff also noted that it would be difficult to get specific data about the guns recovered. I think if some of the police departments devised a program of prisoner debriefings for all gun arrests where a specific script is followed (at least to cover the data that is needed) it might be possible to develop a more fuller picture of the gun crime problem.

This podcast can be access HERE

The cumulative risk of jail incarceration

Research on incarceration has focused on prisons, but jail detention is far more common than imprisonment. Jails are local institutions that detain people before trial or incarcerate them for short sentences for low-level offenses. Research from the 1970s and1980s viewed jails as “managing the rabble,” a small and deeply disadvantaged segment of urban populations that struggled with problems of addiction, mental illness, and homelessness. The1990s and 2000s marked a period of mass criminalization in which new styles of policing and court processing produced large numbers of criminal cases for minor crimes, concentrated in low-income communities of color. In a period of widespread criminal justice contact for minor offenses, how common is jail incarceration for minority men, particularly in poor neighborhoods? We estimate cumulative risks of jail incarceration with an administrative data file that records all jail admissions and discharges in New York City from 2008 to 2017. Although New York has a low jail incarceration rate, we find that 26.8% of Black men and 16.2% of Latino men, in contrast to only 3% of White men, in New York have been jailed by age 38 y. We also find evidence of high rates of repeated incarceration among Black men and high incarceration risks in high-poverty neighborhoods. Despite the jail’s great reach in New York, we also find that the incarcerated population declined in the study period, producing a large reduction in the prevalence of jail incarceration for Black and Latino men.

Access the report HERE

LAPD shootings of unstable people wielding sharp objects a deadly problem

Any weapons less that a firearm are less sensational but can be just as deadly. People can be kill by hands and feet. It shouldn’t be shocking that that a sizable percentage of deadly attacks on police occur with weapons other than guns.

While LAPD shootings have dramatically declined in recent decades, scrutiny has grown in recent months of shootings where mentally ill, intoxicated or homeless people are shot by police while armed not with firearms but with knives, swords, heavy tools or other blunt objects, reports the Los Angeles Times. Police officials say such weapons represent real, imminent threats, but critics claim the danger is exaggerated and that officers are too quick to pull the trigger. The situation is another reason that many want mental health clinicians to take over calls from cops. LAPD data reviewed by The Los Angeles Times show suspects were allegedly armed with “edged weapons” in about 18 percent of police shootings between 2015 and 2019, and with “impact devices” like bats in 4 percent. In 2020, edged weapons were identified in 23 percent of cases.

See the news article HERE

Crisis in Policing (with Bill Bratton)

This is a good interview view with Bill Bratton. Unfortunately some of his recent interviews hvve tried to fit the current anti-police rhetoric and seemed to rewrite history. I was disappointed how one interview didn’t “stand p for Broken Windows policing that I was thinking of NOT reading his latest book – The Profession which he discusses in this interview. I purchased it mainly because of how this interview went and what I heard was the “old” Bill Bratton from the 1990’s

Preet interviews Bill Bratton, who has led the police departments in New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston. Often called “America’s top cop,” Bratton is credited with being the primary architect of modern policing in America.

Preet’s conversation with Bratton was hosted by the Temple Emanuel Streicker Center in New York City. Don’t miss the bonus for CAFE Insiders, where Preet asks Bratton a series of questions posed by the event’s live audience.

The interview with Bill Bratton starts a few minutes in.
You can get the interview HERE

Report and Recommendations to the East Lansing City Council on Community Oversight of Police

This report was written entirely by the volunteer members of the Study Committee. In addition to the people who drafted the chapters of the report, Study Committee members also served on subcommittees that played important roles at various times in the Committee’s work –subcommittees that researched oversight models nationally, outlined and planned this report, and planned and facilitated the community outreach meeting.

The report can be access HERE

California Lawmakers Approve District Attorney Recusal Law

WOW! This is interesting. Is this another move to push police in a corner? Another form of punishment of the police? To further erode the rights for police?

Why does it matter if a police organization supports a District Attorney in a political race and they win? Why is it that they then can’t investigate any police officer involved in a “bad” use of force or misconduct case?

How are campaign funds received from Defense Attorney organizations? What about endorsements by political committees? MUST the District Attorney recuse themselves when dealing with defense attorneys????? Which is always! What about being an endorsed the Democrat Committee and the person on trial in a registered DEMOCRAT voter? WHAT?! The District Attorney MUST obviously RECUSE.

How are monies received from large companies or associations where now the Distract Attorney has an employee or owner of the donating company or a member of the association in a case before them????
I know RECUSE!!!!

This law can’t be Just Against POLICE right? It can’t take away the 1st Amendment rights from the police to associate and take part in the political process RIGHT?

What the police associations should do is donate $1.00 to everyone’s campaign (Distract Attorney, State Attorney etc., Judges) so everyone has to recuse themselves.

The Article:
Looking to weed out conflict of interest, lawmakers approved legislation barring prosecutors who accept law enforcement campaign donations from trying officers for bad shootings and other cases of misconduct.

Read the article HERE