Month: April 2025

Why doesn’t Texas law regulate police chases? State lawmakers, experts explain

Police chases, at their worst, are deadly. They tend to damage property. They can leave communities grieving. Most states — including Texas — have no idea how many chases happen within their own state beyond how highway troopers engage.

Despite their prominence in policing and the risk they pose, there are no laws dictating how most Texas law enforcement agencies should carry out chases.

In his 12 years as a state representative, Houston Democrat Gene Wu said he hasn’t heard much discussion among his colleagues seeking to address that.

“The way I perceive it is that most cities have good policies on chases because it affects their bottom line,” Wu said. “When those chases go wrong and it kills innocent people, they pay, and they pay a lot. So, I think from my perspective — I won’t speak for everyone — but the perspective is that it seems like something that the cities would take care of themselves to protect themselves.”

KERA News spoke to Wu and other state lawmakers in Austin last month as the clock ran out to file bills in the Texas Legislature. They, along with outside experts, offered some insight into what drives the lawmaking process in Texas and whether police chases – which killed nearly 100 people in Texas in 2022 – will ever be regulated statewide.

Read more HERE

NYPD Vehicle Stops Data – NYCLU

NYPD officers stop over one million New Yorkers in vehicles every year and these stops are likely the largest category of police-civilian interaction. One reason for the enormous number of vehicle stops is that courts have ruled police officers generally have the authority to stop any vehicle as long as they can claim a traffic or vehicle infraction. This standard is so low – especially since it is difficult to drive without violating one of the numerous traffic laws – that it makes it difficult to challenge stops that are made for impermissible reasons, including racial profiling.
— Read on www.nyclu.org/data/nypd-vehicle-stops-data

Trump DOJ’s Freeze on Police Reform Work Raises Fears of More Abuse — ProPublica

Federal investigators had identified at least eight police departments with patterns of unlawful behavior. But Trump’s freeze on oversight activities leaves many reform efforts in the hands of local leaders.
— Read on www.propublica.org/article/trump-doj-freeze-police-reform-abuse-phoenix-trenton-louisville-minneapolis

Understanding street protests: from a mathematical model to protest management | PLOS One

Street protests have been a common feature of human society for many centuries. They often act as a driver of social changes but they may also disrupt everyday life and lead to considerable economic losses. Understanding of factors that may affect the duration of street protests and the number of participants is a problem of pivotal importance. Mathematical modelling is an efficient research approach to study this problem. Here we present a novel modelling framework that takes into account heterogeneity of protesters behaviour and the effect of policing. Using the 2018–2019 Yellow Vest Movement in France as a case study, we show that our model is in a very good agreement with data. We also show that a moderate increase in the efficiency of police actions on particular days may have a significant effect on protest’s intensity and duration. Our findings open a possibility for a more efficient protests management.
— Read on journals.plos.org/plosone/article

Exclusive | New York’s parole board stacked with lefty cronies earning $190K

The real issue is how the parole board members follow their personal agendas.

A Post examination of the 16-member panel — whose salaries have skyrocketed 87% since 2019 and who have freed 43 cop killers in the past eight years  — is almost as disturbing as many of its decisions.
— Read on nypost.com/2025/04/12/us-news/new-yorks-parole-board-stacked-with-lefty-cronies-earning-190k/