Benjamin Mueller and Al Baker in the New York Times describe one homicide in the Bronx. “To understand why killings persist in an era of historically low crime, The New York Times is reporting this year on each murder in the 40th Precinct.” This is the kind of in-depth story that informs. If we’re going to improve things, where do…
This came in over the transom from a Kimmie Lucas at Discovery Studios. Somebody out there may be interested. I know nothing else about it: We are a production company seeking Female Homicide Detectives for a potential new series. Detective can be working currently or retired. We want to tell your story! If interested, please email me at kimmiecastinglosangeles@gmail.com or…
Kudos to the NYPD for moving up Compstat publicationby about 10 days. Now, on March 18 (who knows, maybe it was even there yesterday), I can learn crime data up to March 13! That’s like, just last week! In the past, because Kelly didn’t release data on principle, you could see on Monday what was going on two weeks ago.…
An emotional story in the Baltimore Sun — related to the “friendly-fire” death of Officer Jacai Colson — about another P.G. County officer who shot and killed his partner and best friend in 1988: “You’re not alone,” Sommers said he told the officer, who has not been identified publicly. “You can’t beat yourself up over it so bad that you…
Stephen Morgan, my grad-school colleague, released his Baltimore report (co-authored with Joel Pally) that looks at crime and arrests pre- and post-riot. [The Harvard sociology cohort of 1995 always turned to Morgan as the quant guy when we needed help with stats class, which was often. So rather than blame my own limitations and laziness, I prefer to entirely and…
From some facebook musings of mine: [Update: I’d also look at this by Scott Winship, which goes against my main theme, and is quite convincing.] You just hear the racism and xenophobia, but Trump’s main themes are actually about trade and jobs. Blue-collar white voters feel abandoned by both major political parties… because they have been abandoned. Shouldn’t working-class white…
In New York City not only has the number of homicides being going down, but the percentage of homicides committed with a gun has been decreasing. Put another way, there were about 309 people shot and killed in 2011 in NYC (for UCR reasons we’re talking incidents, so this is a bit of an undercount). In 2013: 188. That’s a…
I don’t post a lot of these videos, but this one is revealing. I honestly didn’t know which way this was going to go. Indian River Country, Florida, December, 2015. 3AM. A man has just gone to the convenience store to buy cigarettes. He’s riding a scooter without tags (that’s southern for “license plate”). Stop the video right at 00:15.…
Apparently there’s still no need to worry. Here is what I think matters: 2015 will almost assuredly see (we don’t the numbers for sure yet) a double digit in increase in homicide. See this Washington Post piece for a clue. And yet, if you listen to Ames Grawert and James Cullen, there’s no need to worry: Rather than stoking unfounded…
My once (and probably future) co-author Nick Selby has this piece in the Washington Post: But a closer look at some statistics shows that the problem is not necessarily an issue of racist cops, and that means fixing the criminal justice system isn’t just an issue of addressing racism in uniform. … Some racial disparities in treatment by authorities actually…