Month: January 2023

Boulder Police Oversight Panel reaffirms appointees, setting up showdown at city council

This article presents a good example where pro-police citizens are upset over appointment of ant-police agenda driven members to the police oversight panel.

Boulder’s elected officials may exercise authority over civilian group for the first time, halting oversight work
— Read on boulderbeat.news/2023/01/14/police-oversight-appointees-showdown/

Pittsburgh Police resume certain minor traffic stops despite policy against them | 90.5 WESA

This has been an interest of mine. How can a municipality dictate the enforcement of State Law? In this case vehicle and traffic law.

The below article has likes to the specific law and it allows for “secondary enforcement” but not primary enforcement.

The two violations I’ll discuss are expired registration and expired inspection. I am surprised that expired registration gets a pass because it’s a money grab for the State and expired inspection is a SAFETY issue and/or an EMISSIONS issue. Emissions! Hello environmentalists.

The main question is how can a municipality set aside a subset a laws and label them “Do Not Enforce”. Every other municipality enforces these laws yet in Pennsylvania yet in Pittsburgh these laws are purposefully under enforced.

What other State laws can be ignored? Theft? Damage to property? Assault? Murder? Or just vehicle and traffic laws?

When police take the oath of office the swear to uphold the laws and the constitution of the State and the municipality that they work in. How can a municipality have police stop enforcing state law?

The ARTICLE:

Pittsburgh Police officials say a city ordinance that blocks enforcement of certain minor traffic violations is “preventing them from doing their jobs.”
— Read on www.wesa.fm/politics-government/2023-01-12/pittsburgh-police-resume-secondary-traffic-stops-despite-city-ordinance-against-them

Race and Washington’s Criminal Justice System: 2021 Report to the Washington Supreme Court

See the report HERE: digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi

See ALSO

This is the Prequel Report that provides historical background to the 2021 report.
Research Working Group, Preliminary Report on Race and Washington’s Criminal Justice
System, 47 G ONZ . L. R EV . 251 (2011–2012), 35 S EATTLE U. L. R EV . 623 (2012), 87 W ASH . L. R EV . 1 (2012) [hereinafter 2011 Preliminary Report]. Because of the difficulties of providing pinpoint citations to all three journals, page references to this report will be to the PDF of the report released to the public as part of its historic presentation to the Court,
available here: https://perma.cc/6BV4-RBB8.

Weighing the Impact of Simple Possession of Marijuana | United States Sentencing Commission

(January 2023) This publication assesses recent trends in federal sentencing for simple possession of marijuana, as well as how prior sentences for simple possession affect criminal history calculations under the guidelines.
— Read on www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/weighing-impact-simple-possession-marijuana