All about Policing with a sprinkle of Criminal Justice – written by a Secret Contrarian
There is no evidence that Floyd’s death had anything to do with race, but that fact doesn’t stop the narrative from being promulgated.
— Read on chroniclesmagazine.org/web/five-years-since-the-death-of-george-floyd-the-damage-continues-part-1/
Read part 2 HERE
Today, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (“RFK Human Rights”), submitted a detailed report to the Special Rapporteur, an independent expert appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, highlighting emerging trends and patterns in U.S. law enforcement’s use of lethal force.
— Read on rfkhumanrights.org/press/rfk-human-rights-submits-evidence-to-un-special-rapporteur-of-disproportionate-deadly-policing-in-the-u-s/
As cellphone video documenting the last breaths of George Floyd spread across the internet, so did the collective outrage.
— Read on apnews.com/article/george-floyd-photo-gallery-dd52c4c5ca834e3e39d53276745082b0
A jury was hopelessly deadlocked in the trial of former Grand Rapids Police Officer Christopher Schurr, stemming from a 2022 traffic stop that ended in the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old man.
The murder trial for the Grand Rapids police officer who killed Patrick Lyoya has resulted in a hung jury.
A mistrial was declared after the jury hopelessly deadlocked on the second-degree murder charge against Christopher Schurr, the police officer who has since been fired. As a result, Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker will have to decide whether to refile charges against Schurr.
Read on HERE
Black and Hispanic drivers in Vermont continue to be stopped and searched at higher rates than white drivers. That’s according to new research examining thousands of traffic stops across Vermont.
The research paper is the latest update to an ongoing analysis of racial disparities in traffic policing data across Vermont led by University of Vermont Economics Professor Stephanie Seguino, Cornell Professor Nancy Brooks and Data Analyst Pat Autilio.
Previous statewide analyses were released in 2017 and 2021. They spurred conversation and, in some cases, racial bias training at some Vermont law enforcement agencies. This update adds data from 2020-23 and examines both the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to investigate whether Black, Hispanic and Asian drivers in Vermont face racial disparities in traffic policing.
— Read on www.uvm.edu/gund/news/racial-disparities-total-traffic-stops-vermont-dropped-during-covid-are-again-increasing
Baltimore comptroller calls for a shift in priorities, reminding us that a city’s budget reflects its values. Prioritizing police over children is a problem.
— Read on afro.com/baltimore-prioritizes-police-youth/
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
Some Ithacans are frustrated with the pace of change of resolutions addressing police reform and racial inequality, four years after public safety was “reimagined” by Ithaca’s Common Council.
— Read on www.cornellsun.com/article/2025/03/gvifsvojhsdv
Data limitations have long stymied research on racial bias in policing. To persuasively demonstrate bias, scholars have sought to compare officer behavior toward minority versus white civilians while holding constant all other factors in the police-civilian encounter that might provide alternative explanations for enforcement disparities. These comparisons in “similar circumstances” are also critical in litigation concerning discriminatory policing, which can often lead to court-ordered remedies (1). Such “all-else-equal” scenarios are elusive in many realms of social science, but two challenges have made them particularly difficult to find in the study of policing. On page 1397 of this issue, Aggarwal et al. (2) report using data from the ridesharing service Lyft—having obtained vehicle location on more than 200,000 drivers using highfrequency GPS pings from their smartphones—to analyze speeding enforcement by the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) and to show how such data offer a path forward for addressing both challenges.
— Read on www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw3618
All about Policing with a sprinkle of Criminal Justice - written by a Secret Contrarian
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