Police

Who you gonna believe?

Who are you gonna believe: The Brennan Center for Justiceor your lying eyes? Crime is up. They and I have written about this before. Their conclusion: Americans continue to experience low crime rates. The average person in a large urban area is safer walking down the street today than he or she would have been at almost any time in…

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Police

You can’t make this sh*t up

Hours after posting about the police-involved killing of robber Robert Howard, I read Justin Fenton’s amazing storyabout the robber: “Man fatally shot by off-duty officer was also shot by police 20 years earlier.” Are you effing serious?! What are the odds? I don’t think anybody in American history has ever been shot by cops in two separate incidents. I don’t…

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Police

In case you forgot…

Civil forfeiture is still a problem. A man in Chicago has been trying for 13 years to get $101,000 is cash back from the those who stole it. Last year, the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago collected more than $19 million in asset forfeitures. The Justice and Treasury departments raked in more than $4.5 billion nationally in 2014. Is this…

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Police

“Will the anti-cop Left please figure out what it wants?”

Heather MacDonald in City Journal: Will the anti-cop Left please figure out what it wants? For more than a decade, activists have demanded the end of proactive policing, claiming that it was racist. … Equally vilified was Broken Windows policing, which responds to low-level offenses such as graffiti, disorderly conduct, and turnstile jumping. Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King launched…

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Police

“He came in with a gun and announced a robbery!”

On April 15th, an off-duty Baltimore cop shot and killed a man. “Witnesses” said, according to WBAL: The officer was having an argument with the man outside the store and the man ran away toward the store. “As he was running in the store the police shot him, boom. When he got in the store, the police (officer) got over…

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Police

Chicago Police Report

It’s kind of hilarious that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying to present his cover-up-and-dictate style of management as concern for police misconduct. But leaving that aside, a task-force he appointed has released its report. Some of what it says needs to be said: “From 2011-2015, 40% of complaints filed were not investigated by IPRA.” And: “These events and others…

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Police

Null finding

Wouldn’t it be great if I could show that video games decrease violence because young men, rather than hanging out and starting fights and shootings on the corner, stay inside and play “Call of Duty”? I don’t think people over 40 understand just how big video games are. Compare games to movies. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has grossed $935,500,000…

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Police

Scandal in the NYPD

It’s still hard to figure out what exactly is going on. But Banks seems to be toast. Banks never had money problems. Maybe the IRS is interested. Overall, the best summary to date is by Lenny Levitt in NYPD Confidential. Along with connections to Da Mayor, the white elephant in the room is the “special consideration” given to the Hasidic…

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