So I’ve done a little work using the data from FatalEncounters.org on people shot and killed by police. Fatal Encounters is like the Washington Post database, but for adults. I combined/merged this with a city or police department’s population, number of cops, average number of murders in the jurisdiction (over 4 or 3 years), median household income, percentage Black, and…
In some ways this is a very typical police-involved shooting, not that police-involved shootings are are typical. But it’s all here: a man with a gun, probably mentally disturbed, confronted by police. And not for the first time. The man is white. You hear cops saying, “We can help you.” You also hear the de rigueur,”Drop the fucking gun!” He…
I saw some tweets from a certain kind of professorial class saying: “COVID fatality rate is now about 125/100K in NYC. So why do people over-react to small rises in the murder rate, which is just 5/100K.” In high-crime neighborhoods, such as Baltimore’s Eastern and Western Districts, the murder rate is 125 per 100,000 EVERY DAMN year. What I don’t…
Just last month, I swear I told my class, “People won’t talk about crime until a cute white girl gets murdered.” Tessa Majors, unfortunately, is that woman. Would her murder be getting as much press if she had been black? I doubt it. But who knows? Turns out not a lot college students of any race get robbed and killed.…
My op-ed in the Daily News: Police officer Lesly Lafontant emerged form a coma yesterday after a bystander, Kwesi Ashun, somehow deemed it appropriate to beat Lafontant with a metal chair while Lafontant was trying to arrest Dewayne Hawkes, wanted on a warrant, after Hawkes had urinated on the floor on a nail salon. Ashun was shot and killed by…
I’ve read this so you don’t have to. But you should. This is put out by Baltimore City FOP #3. So sure, take it with a grain of salt. But FOP #3 isn’t like some other unions that tweet ill-advised statements that hurt the image of policing and their members. [cough NYPD’s PBA SBA!] In 2012 FOP #3 released “Blueprint…
The 2018 murder rate is down from the previous two years, but higher than we’ve seen in 6 of the past 10 years. Last year’s murder rate is the same as 2015. And 2009! And yet I keep hearing every year that violence is down. So what’s this trend? And sort of related, why do some people insist on the…
Brian Mulkeen was a Fordham grad and worked at Merrill Lynch till he quit his job and joined the NYPD. Apparently Mulkeen was killed by “friendly fire” while wrestling with an armed suspect. There’s a nice 1 minute video on twitter. I was mostly just sad and dry eyed till “Country Roads” kicked in. Because he’s not just a cop;…
This was not a good shooting. And cringe-worthy from an officer’s perspective. From the suspect’s perspective, well, he’s dead. I’m quoted in this article. The background is the car popped up on a stolen car list (I think from an automated license plate reader). The officer is told to investigate. The car is in a parking lot. There is no…
There’s a new episode of quality policing. And with a new cohost. Click through and listen here. https://qualitypolicing.com/episode-25-peter-moskos-and-introducing-leon-taylor/ Download the mp3 file here: https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/17113983/download.mp3