Tag: Crime

Evaluation of Utah’s .05 BAC Per Se Law

Is it me or do others notice too that increasing the penalty or lowering the threshold for the crime only works for a crime like Driving While Intoxicated for preventing people from driving drunk? It doesn’t work for drugs, or theft, or shoplifting but it works for DWI. Interesting. Lower the criteria for DWI thereby more people will be violating the law and it makes more people stop breaking the law. Enforce DWI laws and more people stop drinking and driving.

In the news shoplifting is rampant yet lawmakers and prosecutors want to raise the criteria for committing shoplifting and they don’t what to prosecute shoplifting after a person is arrested. Yet the argument is that shoplifting will go down?

Why does it work in just the opposite way for DWI? In most cases DWI is the same level of crime as shoplifting and they carry the same punishment for prison. DWI has powerful lobbying groups – anti-shoplifting doesn’t. DWI carries substantial state penalties in the form of thousands of dollars in fines, shoplifting doesn’t. DWI carries substantial penalties for car insurance – not shoplifting. For DWI you need an attorney, you don’t need an attorney for shoplifting especially if its your first one. Bottom line DWI costs about $9,000.00 in fines, insurance, attorney fees, shoplifting $0.00 and in some states they don’t even want to persecute shoplifting.

The crime of DWI was made more severe in an attempt to lower the number of people committing DWI and fatal crashes. The crime of shoplifting Is being treated less harshly so people stop stealing. Does this make sense?

Why don’t government treat DWI like shoplifting? Then there would probably be NO DWIs at all!!!

Results
Legislative Review. This indicated the motivation for lowering the BAC law from .08 to .05 was a desire to improve traffic safety. The majority of objections were based on hypothesized negative effects on the economy (e.g., alcohol sales, tax revenues, and tourism), the belief arrests for driving under the influence (DUI) would increase drastically for people who had “one or two drinks,” and the assumption there would be no safety benefits.

The report can be accessed HERE

Smash & Grab Retail

When police busted a shoplifting ring operating out of a liquor store last spring, they calculated that the dozen or so people involved had swiped at least $375,000 worth of goods from retailers such as Walmart, Lowe’s, and Walgreens. The pair heading the ring relied on small-time thieves, including several with drug arrest records, to launch brazen “grab-and-go” operations in which they snatched expensive goods and then raced out of stores and fled in cars with phony license plates. Though police and prosecutors often categorize shoplifting as a nonviolent crime, the gang’s sprees resulted in several physical confrontations, including one in which a gang member assaulted a store employee with a stun gun. This may sound similar to the organized smash-and-grab lootings that have plagued high-end retailers in San Francisco and other Northern California communities recently, but this gang was operating out of Daytona Beach, Florida—and had done so for nearly two years.
— Read on www.city-journal.org/smash-and-grab-retail

‘We’re Not Ready for Police-Free Zones’ | The Crime Report

This is an interesting discussion with Professor Moskos about crime and how New York City defeated crime in the 1990s. The Crime Report is a paid site where it allows 5 free articles a month. I recommend subscribing to it because it offers a lot of useful information about criminal justice issues.

Explanations for the rise in violent crime tend to avoid the role police play in crime prevention, argues policing expert Peter Moskos. In the latest installment of the “At the Crossroads” series of interviews sponsored by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Moskos tells Greg Berman that cops need to be proactive in addressing clear threats like gun offenders.
— Read on thecrimereport.org/2022/01/20/were-not-ready-for-police-free-zones/

Here are the five “game changers” for policing this year.

Police 1 has an excellent article about the major issues that impacted Law Enforcement in 2021. See their list below (or you can see the list at their website.)

What do you think? Anything missing?

1. COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic dominated 2021 just as it did the previous year, and it probably doesn’t come as a shock that it tops this list. Tragically, it continues to be the #1 killer of law enforcement officers. According to ODMP, COVID-19 has taken the lives of 289 officers (as of December 2), vastly outnumbering the second and third-leading causes (57 to gunfire, 21 to automobile crashes). This year’s numbers also surpass the total number of COVID LODDs in all of 2020 (253).

The deadly threat also continued to disrupt other areas of the profession. Academy classes were canceled, training events were moved online and major conferences were postponed. But arguably the biggest disruption was over vaccines. Cities like New York and Chicago sparred with unions over mandates for city workers, leading to resignations and legal battles. As departments waited for staff to get inoculated, some, like Seattle PD, had to alter their already-strained staffing model to account for the absences.

Some leaders pushed back; in LA County, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said he wouldn’t enforce the mandate, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy invited cops fired over mandates to join PDs in his state, and a sheriff in Washington pulled his SROs from schools over the issue.

No matter what happens come 2022, we are likely to see the ripple effects of this pandemic long after the case numbers dwindle. 

2. HOMICIDE SPIKES

Upticks in certain types of crime – particularly murders – were being reported back in 2020 and that trend, while not as high a spike as was seen last year, has continued to be alarming in some areas in 2021. The New York Times reported the homicide rate, which had its biggest spike last year since record-keeping began in 1960, was still trending up in 2021. Portland (Oregon) broke a grim record for the most homicides in a single year. Austin (Texas) also reached an all-time high. Cities like Las Vegas and San Diego are also grappling with a homicide spike. 

“Let’s please untie the hands of our law enforcement officers,” Don Osborn, a relative of a victim slain in Portland, told the AP. “I believe if the proper tools were in place for our law enforcement officers, this wouldn’t even have happened.”

Further complicating the issue is PDs facing mounting staffing shortages that they have been struggling with for years. In Portland this year, the city saw fewer cops per person than at any other point in the past 30 years. In Austin and other cities, PDs have been forced to re-route non-emergency calls due to severe staffing woes. 

3. POLICE-FREE CALLS

In the wake of the George Floyd protests last year, many cities looked at potential reform that would fundamentally change how police officers responded to certain calls or remove them from specific duties entirely – from traffic enforcement to non-violent incidents to “unarmed” response units. Among these, the reform policy that gained the most traction was changing how cities responded to mental health calls, either making them police-free or sending a police officer in tandem with a mental health professional to someone in crisis; the experiment has returned interesting results thus far.

Denver, which has had a form of the program since 2018, saw enough success that New York City modeled its efforts after them. The pilot program, called B-HEARD, reported early results this year. They found subjects accepted help in 95% of cases when mental health workers were involved, compared to 85% when police alone responded.

Other cities are following suit in growing numbers this year, with places like San Mateo (California), Chicago, and Garden Grove (California) launching similar programs. If the success of these pilots continues, it’s likely that more and more cities will adopt this approach. 

4. THE DEREK CHAUVIN VERDICT

The George Floyd case sparked an important conversation about policing in the United States, and the Derek Chauvin verdict undoubtedly will strengthen calls for reform, for better or worse.

Duty to intercede and other self-policing training like early intervention and active bystandership are just some of the hot topics cities are exploring or already have implemented into police policy to develop a culture of accountability in law enforcement.

On the other hand, some reform efforts implemented over the last two years have seen results that have leaders rethinking the changes, which leads us to our last game changer of 2021…

5. FROM DEFUNDING TO REFUNDING

This year, some communities started to think twice about the police reform they approved, particularly when it comes to the “defund” movement. In Oakland (California), Mayor Libby Schaaf said she’d push to reverse funding cuts to the police department and hire more officers as the city grappled with a crime spike.

It was a similar story in other cities. In Portland, officials approved millions in funds for law enforcement amid the city’s record shootings and homicides. In Minneapolis, the site of the George Floyd killing and epicenter for the ensuing summer of nationwide protests, voters shied away from the most radical calls for reform – voting against the removal of the Minneapolis Police Department. Meanwhile, in an effort to address the dwindling numbers of police officers in cities across the nation, the DOJ recently handed out $139 million in grant funding.