The Effectiveness and Implications of Police Reform: A Review of the Literature | ICJIA

Repeated and deadly encounters between law enforcement officers and Black Americans have given way to mounting calls for police reform. Reformers have proposed reallocating funds from policing to communities and social services, rethinking police use of force policies, and improving measures for officer accountability. This literature review briefly describes the impetus for police reform, reviews proposed police reforms, and examines available research on the effectiveness of police reforms. Overall, research indicates police agencies should not only focus on reducing crime, but also protecting and fostering the relationship between the public and police.
— Read on icjia.illinois.gov/

Mapping the Progress of Policies to Limit Non-Safety Related Traffic Stops | Vera Institute

Over the past decade, efforts to limit non-safety-related traffic stops have swept across the United States. These stops for low-level infractions—like a dangling air freshener, single burnt-out taillight, or expired registration—do not improve traffic safety, and police officers have used them in ways that disproportionately subject Black drivers to physical, psychological, and economic harm. Oftentimes, police have used these stops as a pretext to search for guns and drugs—with little success. Police departments across the country are proving that change is possible. The first known policy to eliminate non-safety-related traffic stops was implemented in 2013 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, under the direction of then-Police Chief Harold Medlock. Fayetteville’s experiment led to decreased racial disparities in traffic enforcement and fewer car crashes and traffic injuries/fatalities, with no impact on non-traffic crime, showing that this type of policy can work. Although the Fayetteville policy ended in 2017, it set the stage for state and local governments, police departments, and district attorneys across the country to take action for safer, fairer traffic enforcement.
— Read on www.vera.org/ending-mass-incarceration/criminalization-racial-disparities/public-safety/redefining-public-safety-initiative/sensible-traffic-ordinances-for-public-safety/stops-map

New data fill long-standing gaps in the study of policing | Science

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

Banning No-knock and Quick Knock Warrants is the Only Way to Prevent More Tragic Killings | ACS

Central problem with this article is that in the case of Breonna Taylor, the officers had a no knock warrant but they treated it as a knock and announced warrant. So the officers actually announced their presence, knocked and waited, and then made entry. All this article does is make bad policy due to this misinformation.

Banning No-knock and Quick Knock Warrants is the Only Way to Prevent More Tragic Killings | ACS
— Read on www.acslaw.org/expertforum/banning-no-knock-and-quick-knock-warrants-is-the-only-way-to-prevent-more-tragic-killings/

NYPD union can’t overturn record police brutality settlement | Courthouse News Service

MANHATTAN (CN) — A federal appeals panel on Wednesday affirmed a record settlement resolving a federal class action over so-called “kettling” tactics used by New York City law enforcement to trap civil rights protesters.

A three-judge panel for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a summary order that the Police Benevolent Association, the largest of New York City’s five police unions, failed to demonstrate that it would suffer “legal prejudice” from upholding a lower court’s dismissal of the union’s intervenor claims against the massive settlement agreement and overhaul of NYPD protest policing tactics.

A Manhattan federal district court judge previously rejected the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York’s objections to the settlement as a third-party intervenor, and on appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed the lower court tossing out the union’s safety objections on a motion to dismiss.
— Read on www.courthousenews.com/nypd-union-cant-overturn-record-police-brutality-settlement/