There’s a report out by the newfangled NYC Department of Investigation Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD (you know, OIG-NYPD, for short): “An Analysis of Quality of Life Summonses, Quality of Life Misdemeanor Arrests, and Felony Crime in New York City, 2010-2015.” The report is surprisingly good, in terms of data analysis and presentation. (I love, for instance,…
Utah v. Strieff: The not so poisonous tree
The branches of the poisonous tree got pruned a bit. The Supreme Court says that if a cop makes a kinda illegal stop — “mistaken” is the word the Court uses — and then arrests the person after a warrant check, and then finds drugs in a post-arrest search, the drugs are admissible in court. This might seem to go…
Politics, Police, and Prosecution
One thing that may be worth considering is the position of former commissioner Anthony Batts and current Commissioner Kevin Davis as to whether or not the officers should have been criminally charged in the first place. Perhaps Batts thought of Gray’s death as more of civil issue (which was the correct position) and Batts pushed back against the mayor and…
10-32. They’re all going to be acquitted.
I’m calling this trial for the defense. Now I’m only following on twitter, so take this with a grain of salt, but the trial of Goodson — the most culpable of the officers on trial for the death of Freddie Gray — is not going well for the prosecution. Judge Williams told the defensethat they may “truncate their case.” The…
Gun Control? “Your Side Won”
First published many years ago. I’ll just keep doing so. Tom Tomorrow, one of my favorite cartoonists, summarizes gun control and killings quite well. Click through to read. “Barring some seismic realignment in this country, the gun control debate is all but settled–and your side won. The occasional horrific civilian massacre is just the price the rest of us have…
“Rancher on horseback lassos bike thief”
Too good of a headline to pass up. And nice picture, too. From the Daily News.
All in the Family (II): Another Nexus of Baltimore Violence
Forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, as I did a few days ago. But today the Baltimore Sun has a feature about a man who has had two sons murdered. Tragic. It really is. Nobody should have to deal with one child murdered, much less two. But being cynical and a former Baltimore cop, I’m thinking maybe this…
Who speaks for the rapist?
Apparently, in the Stanford rapist case, the judge. If you’re still in denial that our justice system can be mean and even racist, would you at least consider that it often benefits the rich and privileged? And then can you see that these two statements are essentially one and the same? Here’s very interesting take from Ken White, a defense…
Legal summary of the Baltimore trials
This isn’t new, it was just hard to figure out. And I wanted to add it to my Baltimore Primer. What exactly was argued in the acquittal of Officer Nero was hard to figure out. Mostly because the State’s Attorney, Mosby, has repeated changed her story. Initially she claimed the stop of Freddie Gray illegal and the arrest was illegal.…
Is this what the Ferguson Effect looks like?
Take this fightat North Avenue Beach in Chicago. Seems like mostly a bunch of stupid frat bro’s, one wearing an SAE tank top. (“These people” also have problems.) Why does does this have to do with the Ferguson (or “Viral Video”) Effect? Well, if you’re looking for an example of how fear or negative publicity can impact policing and create…