Category: CRJ101 Intro CJ

Multnomah County DA on why 80% of civil unrest cases have been rejected | KATU

The problem is that normally the DA probably doesn’t reject 80% of local law enforcement cases from any department. So imagine how the police feel having to face the rioters, having to observe the lawlessness, make arrests when possible, and the have the DA indiscriminately throw out the case and there is no justice for the victims and society. How do DAs get by without upholding their oath of office? Why doesn’t the chief executive officer hold them accountable?

New data from the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office is providing a clearer picture of how the civil unrest cases are being prosecuted. The District Attorney’s office says 1,108 criminal civil unrest cases were referred to them between May 29, 2020, and June 11, 2021. Of those, 891 criminal cases were rejected. “We look at every case individually and based on the merits,” said Mike Schmidt, the Multnomah County District Attorney.
— Read on katu.com/news/local/multnomah-county-district-attorney-has-rejected-80-of-civil-unrest-cases

Center for Policing Equity National Justice Database Digital Report

The problem is there isn’t a report released. You can go to HERE to see the report, but it is a confusing webpage filled with charts claiming racial bias. Nothing is explained how the data was collected or analyzed. It doesn’t show the number so the calculations can be verified. None of the results indicate whether or not they are statistically significant.

So what currently exits is a report where there is a claim of biases that gets reported in the news and there is no evidence or documentation to support the supposed results of the study. Why was the official report shelved?

“A long-awaited analysis of San Diego Police Department data, conducted by an outside think tank, was released Thursday and offers a familiar picture of the disparities that people of color face when encountering law enforcement. But the police chief and the report’s authors have said they don’t believe it’s appropriate to attribute such disparities to officer bias.

SDPD has pushed back against previous studies of this nature, contending that the researchers were either politically motivated or didn’t consider the full picture. The new report doesn’t just compare police stops, searches and use of force against local population demographics, it took internal and external factors into consideration, including crime rates, poverty rates, the behavior of community members and individual officers.”

Exonerated Defendants Lost 25,000 Years to Wrongful Imprisonment

Exonerated defendants have collectively served over 25,000 years in prison as of June 1, according to a report released by The National Registry of Exonerations (NRE). Black defendants were imprisoned more frequently and for more time than white defendants, the report found.

The NRE, which has reported every known exoneration in the U.S. since 1989, called the latest tally a “dark milestone” in its perennial assessments of wrongful convictions. The new figure represents a significant increase since 2018, when the NRE calculated a total loss of 20,000 years.

The most recent report lists 2,795 exonerations, with each exoneree serving an average of eight years and 11 months, and it includes dozens of defendants exonerated since 2018 who spent over 25 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.

Some 55 percent of exonerees haven’t received any compensation for their incarceration, according to research conducted by Jeffrey Gutman of the George Washington University Law School.

Still, the report represents an incomplete picture of exoneration and compensation.

Get the report HERE

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