Police

NYPD Aims Better in 2012

It’s being reportedthat fatal NYPD police-involved shootings were way up in 2012. They are, but it’s a non-story. Indeed, fatal police-involved shootings increased from 9 to 16, but better aim and luck were probably the reasons why. Police-involved shootings were only up by 2, to 30. (And this even though the average distance from which officers shot was further away…

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Police

Crime is up no wait down: NCVS

There are two main clearinghouses for crime stats in this country, the UCR (The Uniform Crime Report) and the NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey). The former is collected from police departments and thus only includes reported crime as recorded by the police. The latter is conducted by surveys and sampling and asks people (160,000 per year) if they were a…

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Police

Five charts Ray Kelly Doesn’t want you to see!

(Can you guess I was just on buzzfeed? A better headline would be “Murders way down in NYC. And so are stop and frisks. And nobody seems to care.” But what kind of clickbaite would that be?) 1) Breakdown of NYC stops by race. Indeed, as often reported, 83% of stops have happened to black and hispanic people. 2) Breakdown…

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Police

Defending Flogging Down Under

Waste an hour watching my dangerous idea at the Sydney Opera House’s 2013 Festival of Dangerous Ideas: There’s also me on a panel “Getting Soft on Crime”: You can watch all the Dangerous Ideas here. What an amazing weekend and amazingly well run festival! Thanks to everybody at FODI.

Police

Father calls cops who shoot son

The chase was well called out by the pursuing officer, I have to say. The shooting, in my humble opinion, justified. It’s too bad police had to down two police cars because of this idiot. Should the police have chased? No. They rarely should. And particularly not when you know the identity of the suspect and where he lives! (And…

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Police

Right Wing Lies (IX)

Turns out Obama was a cross-dressing teenager who turned gay tricks for coke! This one must be true. Why? Because I read it on the interwebs! Man, I wasted far too much time today responding to comments from people who still comment about what a shame it is that the government provided “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to a murdered…

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Police

Shira Scheindlin Stop & Frisk Smackdown

I’m in beautiful Sydney. Spring is in the air and the birds make funny sounds just to remind me that I’m on the other side of the planet. Despite my focus on the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, I couldn’t help but notice that everything Judge Scheindlin decided regarding stop and frisk has been put on hold! The New York Times…

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