Month: August 2025

Data Shows Significant Decline in Police Violence in California – Davis Vanguard

Note: There is no exact definition for Police Violence. Many times Police Violence is defined as any force used by the police. This is a poor and misleading definition. At the end of the article the point is made that “Red States” are driving increases of police violence. This can be because of legitimate uses of police use of force.

California law enforcement officers killed fewer people, fired fewer shots, and used force less often in 2024 than in any year since the state began tracking the data, according to an analysis by the San Francisco Chronicle, while red states such as Texas and Florida saw an increase in police killings.
— Read on davisvanguard.org/2025/08/california-officer-involved-shootings/

Appeals court upholds punishment for Cambridge cop| Universal Hub

A federal appeals court in Boston yesterday upheld the administrative leave and four-day suspension a veteran Cambridge cop got for a 2021 Facebook post in which he called police-brutality victim George Floyd  “a career criminal, a thief and druggie,” concluding the Cambridge Police Department’s need to maintain its “public trust” outweighed his First Amendment right to post his thoughts off duty on his personal Facebook page. Read more.
— Read on www.universalhub.com/2025/appeals-court-upholds-punishment-cambridge-cop-who-called-george-floyd

Minimal Impact Analyzing State Sentencing Reforms and Racial Disparities in Selected State Prison Populations

Introduction

Over the past 20 years, most American states have adopted a wide range of changes to their criminal sentencing statutes. The goals of the reforms varied. Some targeted certain offenses for greater or lesser penalties. Others aimed to cut correctional costs, expand alternatives to incarceration, and reduce recidivism. Few laws were enacted explicitly to reduce racial and ethnic disparities. Still, many policymakers hoped they would do just that, and the starkly disproportionate incarceration of Black people has been a central component of the national conversation about criminal justice reform.

— Read on reports.counciloncj.org/racial-disparities/multi-state-report

Teenage victims and criminals have increased since ‘raise the age’ law passed

This year, New York City residents have been benefitting from historic declines in shootings and homicides, and from less-sharp, but still meaningful, decreases in other crime categories.
— Read on nypost.com/2025/08/08/opinion/teenage-victims-and-criminals-have-increased-since-raise-the-age-law-passed/

Anatomy of a Ferguson Cycle – by Charles Fain Lehman

Back in 2015, my Manhattan Institute colleague Heather MacDonald popularized the term “Ferguson effect” to refer to a dramatic increase in homicide which (the term and she implied) was caused by the wave of protests, in turn instigated by the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the year before. The homicide rate rose 11 percent in 2015, and another 10 percent in 2016, before cresting and receding. This, MacDonald and others argued at the time, was the result of a reduction in police proactivity, itself caused by political attacks on and criticism of the police in the wake of Brown’s death (among other high-profile incidents).
— Read on thecausalfallacy.com/p/anatomy-of-a-ferguson-cycle