Tag: Police Reform

Can We Get Back to Tougher Policing

More than 40 years have passed since the publication of one of the most important public-policy essays ever written. Its title, “Broken Windows,” captured the essence of a simple but deeply insightful idea: public order matters. “[I]f a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken,” wrote the late authors, political scientist James Q. Wilson and longtime Manhattan Institute senior fellow George L. Kelling, in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic. Visible signs of chaos were like warnings: you’re not safe here. If left unaddressed, the chaos made those areas more vulnerable to further disorder, including serious crime. “ ‘[U]ntended’ behavior,” the authors maintained, “leads to the breakdown of community controls” and causes residents to “think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and . . . modify their behavior accordingly.” The areas where disorder festers become more “vulnerable to criminal invasion” than “places where people are confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls.”

Read more by Rafael Mangual – HERE

The Cost of Police Violence and Mayhem – A Report on Police Misconduct During the George Floyd Protests

Four years ago, on May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. We already had a too-long list of black men and women killed by police, and the video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s throat for nine minutes, assisted by 3 other cops, spurred a mass protest movement into action.

The movement against the long and brutal history of police murdering Black men crystallized under the banner of Black Lives Matter (BLM) in 2013 after the acquittal of the man who killed 17-year old Trayvon Martin.1 The movement grew, forcing us to pay attention as police killed Black men and women with impunity. On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner uttered his last words, “I can’t breathe,” over and over 17 times to an NYPD cop who continued to choke him. Less than a month later, Ferguson cop Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown. And police kept killing Black people in other towns and cities all across America. We said their names and held them in our hearts: Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, Breonna Taylor. And so many more, their glaring absence felt by their communities.
— Read on drive.google.com/file/d/12OOPD54mQSsCBanMomfHIN_tkumtm4IR/view

Policy Brief: Understanding and Improving Early Intervention Systems – University of Chicago Crime Lab

Most of the public discussion about police misconduct in America has focused on what to do after a tragedy occurs – should the officer be disciplined or even prosecuted, should they be allowed to move to a new department and continue working as a police officer, and how can we put into place trustworthy systems for investigating police misconduct, etc. Those are important questions, but in some sense, they are too late. Ideally, we would like to identify a way to prevent misconduct from occurring in the first place, which would spare members of the public from experiencing harm – and help save the careers of officers themselves.
— Read on crimelab.uchicago.edu/resources/policy-brief-understanding-and-improving-early-intervention-systems/

A Study of Racially Disparate Outcomes in the Los Angeles Police Department

Abstract: This report analyzes pedestrian and motor vehicle stops of the Los
Angeles Police Department over a one-year period: July 2003 to June 2004. We find
prima facie evidence that African Americans and Hispanics are over-stopped, over-
frisked, over-searched, and over-arrested. After controlling for violent and property crime
rates in specific LAPD reporting districts, as well as a range of other variables, we find
that:

  • Per 10,000 residents, the black stop rate is 3,400 stops higher than the white stop
  • rate, and the Hispanic stop rate is almost 360 stops higher.
  • Relative to stopped whites, stopped blacks are 127% more likely and stopped
  • Hispanics are 43% more likely to be frisked.
  • Relative to stopped whites, stopped blacks are 76% more likely and stopped
  • Hispanics are 16% more likely to be searched.
  • Relative to stopped whites, stopped blacks are 29% more likely and stopped
  • Hispanics are 32% more likely to be arrested.

All of these disparities are statistically significant (p < .01). The findings of racial
disparity are supported by ancillary analyses of investigative outcomes and officer race.
We find that frisks and searches are systematically less productive when conducted on
blacks and Hispanics than when conducted on whites:

  • Frisked African Americans are 42.3% less likely to be found with a weapon than
  • frisked whites and that frisked Hispanics are 31.8% less likely to have a weapon
  • than frisked non-Hispanic whites.
  • Consensual searches of blacks are 37.0% less likely to uncover weapons, 23.7%
  • less likely to uncover drugs and 25.4% less likely to uncover anything else.
  • Consensual searches of Hispanics similarly are 32.8% less likely to uncover
  • weapons, 34.3% less likely to uncover drugs and 12.3% less likely to uncover
  • anything else.


It is implausible that higher frisk and search rates are justified by higher minority
criminality, when these frisks and searches are substantially less likely to uncover
weapons, drugs or other types of contraband. We also find that the black arrest disparity
was 9 percentage points lower when the stopping officer was black than when the
stopping officer was not black. Similarly, the Hispanic arrest disparity was 7 percentage
points lower when the stopping officer was Hispanic than when the stopping officer was
a non-Hispanic white. Taken as a whole, these results justify further investigation and
corrective action.

Get a .PDF copy of the report HERE