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Category: Police

  • NYPD Holds Fire

    NYPD Holds Fire

    The Wall Street Journal reports:

    New York City police fired fewer bullets at suspects last year than any time since the department first began keeping in-depth shooting statistics 39 years ago
    …
    In 2008, the department was also involved in 105 shooting incidents, with the 125 officers firing a total of 364 bullets. No city police officer last year was shot by a suspect for the first time since the police department started keeping detailed shooting statistics in 1971

    I was just talking about this in class last week.

    In 1972, the NYPD was involved in 211 shootings. In 2006 (the last I have data for), the number was 31. That’s a big drop. And it’s been a pretty consistent drop with the notable exception of the late 1980s during the rise in crack. It’s something the NYPD should get more credit for. And it’s often overlooked when there is a high-profile controversial shooting.

    To put these numbers in some (somewhat random) context, in 2006: 35,000 NYPD had killed 13. 2,100 Las Vegas PD had killed 12. 6,600 Philadelphia PD had killed 19.

    In Baltimore, about 3,000 Baltimore City Police Officers shot 31 in 2007, 21 in 2006 and 11 in 2004.

    Higher levels of violence in places like Baltimore explain some of this difference, but not all of it.

    [Update: Here’s Al Baker’s take in the Times.]

  • NYPD Quotas (and Schoolcraft)

    I would love it if we could distinguish between quotas and what happened to Adrian Schoolcraft. Just because the NYPD has (as Schoolcraft says) quotas (or at least something that line officers feel are quotas) does not grant legitimacy to Schoolcraft’s media-hungry self-serving whining about how he was treated by the NYPD.

    There is a quota issue in the NYPD. High-ranking officers say there aren’t quotas, just “productivity goals.” Patrol officers say compstat creates stat pressure and they have quotas to meet. Regardless of the semantics, quota pressure makes officers write stupid tickets. And this is bad for policing and bad for New York City. For instance, a student just showed me a $50 ticket he got for… taking a nap on the subway. Technically it was for taking up two seats of a not crowded train at 10pm. That’s not right. But the officer had to write tickets. And my student was a sitting (or sleeping) duck.

    So can anybody tell me the legal difference between a quota and a productivity goal? The state lawsays,

    quota shall mean a specific number of (A) tickets or summonses … or (B) arrests or C) stops of individual suspected of criminal activity within a specified period of time.

    But then the law goes on to say:

    Nothing provided in this section shall prohibit an employer … from taking … job action against … a police officer for failure to satisfactorily perform his job assignment of issuing tickets or summonses for traffic … except that the employment productivity of such police officer shall not be measured by such officer’s failure to satisfactorily comply with the requirement of any quota.

    Huh? So you can judge an officers on how many tickets they write as long as you don’t require them to write any? I don’t get it. What’s the law say?

    (Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.)

  • Lawsuits against Chicago police down 50%

    Because the Chicago Police Department isn’t providing cash payments to settle out of court. Once that incentive goes away…

  • Zimring on the NYPD crime drop

    Frank Zimring has always been one of the better criminologists out there.

    This nine minute video from the Vera Institute of Justice hows some of the reasons why.

  • DEA funds terrorism

    Of course that’s meant to be a sensational headline… but it’s actually true.

    And God only knows how the DEA would flip the tables if some anti-drug-war group was guilty of the same thing.

    According to the Times:

    [The DEA] sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai.

    Nice one.

    Remember kids, drugs don’t cause terrorism, the DEA does.

    I wonder what the DEA’s brain looks like funding terrorists?

  • It’ll never work…

    The suspect is an armed and crazy and racist murderer. He’s killed before. He has multiple weapons. After a tip-off you get a warrant for his arrest. You know where he lives. A surveillance unit outside confirm his presence. Plan B is to send in the SWAT team and bust down the door in a carefully rehearsed show of surprise and overwhelming military-like force. You will fire potentially fire-causing flash grenades, shoot any dogs that approach, and keep your finger on the trigger in case the suspect wakes up in a (justifiably) paranoid haze and start shooting.

    [But if officer safety were paramount…]

    Try Plan A:

    When [police] were satisfied they had enough evidence to make the arrest, they telephoned the man and asked him to step outside his [apartment].

    The suspect did as he was told and did not offer resistance.

    Crazy! It’ll never work! But it did in Sweden. So why not try it? It’ll work more often than not. If it doesn’t work, you can always go to a barricade situation and/or Plan B. Sure you loose the element of surprise, but maybe the trade off is worth it. Wouldn’t it be nice if Waco were best known for the Dr. Pepper Museum?

  • Mehserle sentenced to 2 years

    Seems about right to me.

    Not everyone agrees.

    Mehserle is the BART cop who (apparently) accidentally shot Oscar Grant in the back and killed him. Mehserle has already served most of his time.

  • COPS & Opera

    COPS & Opera

    From my favorite comic strip, Stephan Patsis’s Pearls before Swine:

  • Because it’s a sin!

    A SWAT team busted up a poker game of seniors. One cop and one gambler were shot.

    This is not what SWAT teams are for. Actually, unfortunately, it is what SWAT teams are for. So let me rephrase: this is not what SWAT teams shouldbe for.

    The shot 72-year old reportedly said, “Why didn’t you tell me it was the cops?” According to WYFF (South Carolina), “After the exchange of gunfire, a standoff ensued that lasted about 20 minutes.” The 12 people in the home were ticketed for unlawful betting and released.

    Just think, if we legalize gambling… uh, it could lead to dancing? (That’s the punchline to joke I can’t remember–oh wait, here it is. See the last comment).

  • I didn’t know…

    “…marijuana use is associated with voluntary treatment admissions for addiction, fatal drugged driving accidents, mental illness and emergency room admissions.” So says Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske. Come to think of it, so is life.

    There’s more on Pete Guither’s blog.

    Regardless, thanks God we’re still safe from this reefer madness.

    I don’t think marijuana makes you crazy. But I’m started to suspect that being elected to high office does.

    If Obama is going to unpopular for being liberal… I just wish we actually were.