Author: scott prell

ACLU: Violent Policing Continues in Cities Where Trump DOJ Abandoned Reform — ProPublica

Police forces with records of unconstitutional policing continued to engage in excessive force even as the Trump administration declared federal oversight unnecessary, according to a new yearlong review by the ACLU.
— Read on www.propublica.org/article/aclu-trump-police-reform-doj-minneapolis-louisville-phoenix-memphis

Get a copy of the PDF HERE

Fare evasion: Transit and legal advocates slam Mamdani’s NYPD for continuing ‘aggressive’ enforcement despite campaign promises to ease back | amNewYork

The Legal Aid Society on Friday took Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s NYPD to task, charging that it has maintained the same “aggressive enforcement” of fare evasion
— Read on www.amny.com/nyc-transit/fare-evasion-mamdani-nypd-aggressive-enforcement/

Video, Audio: Heather Mac Donald | Crime Stats Don’t Lie. Why Are We Ignoring Them? | Ep. 53 – Independent Institute

Scott welcomes Heather Mac Donald, one of the country’s most important voices who exposes the truth and the data behind it. Heather is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor of City Journal. Her latest book is When Race Trumps Merit. In it she explains what she calls the foolish pursuit of undermining meritocracy in favor of equal outcome. They discuss critical social issues including crime, media bias, and cultural shifts, including the feminization of American society and an anti-male narrative that MacDonald sees as harmful to families and societal success.
— Read on www.independent.org/multimedia/2025/09/04/heather-mac-donald-crime-stats-dont-lie-why-are-we-ignoring-them-ep-53/

REPORT TO THE COURT ON POLICE MISCONDUCT AND DISCIPLINE | James Yates September 19, 2024

Background

In 2013, after a lengthy trial, United States District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin found that the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”), violated City residents’ Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights and that the City did so with deliberate indifference to NYPD officers’ “practice of making unconstitutional stops and conducting unconstitutional frisks.” In addition, the Court found that the City had a “policy of indirect racial profiling by targeting racially defined groups for stops based on local crime suspect data . . . [that] resulted in the disproportionate and discriminatory stopping of Blacks and Hispanics in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.” In a “Remedies Opinion,” a Monitor was appointed by the Court with authority to implement reforms related to training, documentation, supervision and discipline.

For more HERE

Get the report HERE

2009–2025Contact Cards in Cincinnati A Review of Racial Bias in Police Stops,

Twenty-five years after the killing of Timothy Thomas sparked a citywide reckoning with police accountability in Cincinnati, a new Campaign Zero analysis reveals that racially biased policing has not only persisted — it has deepened. Drawing on over 472,000 police contact cards filed between 2009 and 2025, our report Contact Cards in Cincinnati documents what the data makes undeniable: Cincinnati Police officers stopped Black people 3.4 times more often than White people in 2025, searched them at twice the rate, and were nearly twice as likely to use force against them once stopped. These disparities exist across every neighborhood, every stop type, and every outcome measured — and they are getting worse, not better.

Website HERE

Copy of the report HERE

Assessing “Reasonable” Police Uses of Force After Barnes v. Felix: How Time Framing Affects Public Perceptions – Scott M. Mourtgos, Ian T. Adams, Kyle McLean, Seth Stoughton, Geoffrey P. Alpert, 2026

Note at the time of this posting the article was available “open access”.

Assessing “Reasonable” Police Uses of Force After Barnes v. Felix: How Time Framing Affects Public Perceptions
— Read on journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10986111261462411

What Works in American Policing: A Strategy-by-Strategy Assessment – R Street Institute

This seven-part series examines major policing strategies through a research-grounded lens, assessing each strategy against multiple criteria:

Credible empirical support
Measurable outcomes
Operational realism (given current staffing constraints)
Constitutional boundaries
Fiscal accountability
Rather than treating policing approaches as interchangeable catchphrases, this series evaluates what the literature actually says about each strategy’s effectiveness and what it means for agencies trying to do more with less while maintaining public trust.

— Read on www.rstreet.org/commentary/what-works-in-american-policing-a-strategy-by-strategy-assessment/