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Tag: crime

  • “People have got to get indignant”

    [Detroit Police Chief] Evans reiterated his sense that people feel Detroit is supposed to have crime. He said he goes out two nights a week and works the streets, stopping motorists who rarely have driver’s license, registration, insurance.

    “What I say is: ‘Do you drive north of 8 Mile like this?’ And they say, ‘Hell no! They’ll lock you up.’ Your conduct can be whatever you want it to be in the city of Detroit. It’s a safe haven for BS. When people feel that way about minor things, that’s the way they’ll feel about bigger things.”
    …
    Evans cites a consent decree that has governed Detroit for six years. The decree, designed to curtail police misconduct, has led to reluctance to arrest.
    …
    “Over 1,100 people being shot is getting kind of Third World to me.”

    Of course, comparing Detroit to the third world isn’t really doing justice to the third world. Third-world cities tend to have far lessviolence.

    The column by Rochelle Riley in the Detroit Free Press.

  • Homicides and Race

    The New York Times has a nice map of homicides in the city. You can select by various variables, but unfortunately not more than one at a time.

    The Baltimore Sun has a similar but better map.

    I’m always a bit surprised by just how few white homicide victims there are. Or, conversely, how many of the victims are minority. In NYC since 2003 there are about 43 white homicide victims per year out of a population of about 3,700,000. That’s a very low homicide rate of 1.16 per 100,000. That’s a lower rate than Canada!

    Among blacks in NYC, there are about 329 homicide victims a year and 2,240,000 people. That’s a homicide rate of 14.7.

    Meanwhile in Baltimore, in 2007, there were 14 white homicide victims (a rate of about 7) and 252 black victims (a rate of about 60).

    Update: I crunched a few more numbers because, well, I’m curious.

    Overall in the U.S. rate is about 5.6 per 100,000. It’s about 3.3 for whites and 20 for blacks.

    Many other countries have homicide rates under 1. Most civilized countries have rates under 2. We don’t even come close. But America has always been a violent place. I guess the real question is why is white New York City so non-homicidal?

    And in talking about race and crime, I feel compelled to mention gender and crime. Murder really is a guy thing. In NYC just 8% of murderers (and 17% of victims) are women. And most of those are domestic situations. What is it about men? Can’t we all just get along?

  • Daughter Dearest

    Daughter Dearest

    More police lore in the making. Not quite a turkey drumstick, but similar:

    Police have arrested a 42-year-old woman who said a dispute over a dinner roll led to a fatal fight with her father.
    …
    The woman reportedly told investigators she ate a dinner roll her father had been saving for later, even though it had a note telling her not to. Police said she also fired a gun, but apparently didn’t hit her father.

    The story in Grand Haven (Michigan) Tribune.

  • Get tough on black-on-black crime

    Bealefeld, Baltimore’s police commish, says:

    Those guys got fairly nominal sentences for some heinous stuff that they did to these kids, and if it happened in a white neighborhood in any other community in this state, we’d still be talking about it, and people would be talking about life sentences…. And these people get out essentially with a slap on the wrist. People need to be speaking out about this.

    True dat.

    The background and more in Justin Felton’s story in the Sun.

  • Eewww!

    Teen killed by dad was carrying his baby. The story in the NY Daily News.

  • This Stephen Morgan is not a murderer!

    This Stephen Morgan is not a murderer!


    This mild-mannered Stephen Morgan lives a quiet professorial life in Ithaca with his wife and kids (at least that is what he tells me). This Stephen Morgan is a grad-school friend of mine and was nice enough to invite me to speak at Cornell University last month. Some of his best friends are Jews. And I saw no homicidal tendencies. And that’s even aftera long winter in Ithaca.

    Last night I read that a Stephen Morgan killed a Wesleyan University student. I sent my friend, Stephen Morgan, the story. He writes back with a story that feature his(my friend’s) picture. Then today I get this: “It’s worse: CNN broadcast the photo on air! The producer just called to say they will run a correction soon.” I should hope so!

    This is the killer:

    This is notthe killer:

    This Stephen Morgan isa killer.Please note that both have similarly receding hairlines, but the resemblances really ends there.

    If you run into a Stephen Morgan and you’re not sure which one you’re dealing with, try showing him this: This innocent Stephen Morgan will immediately start rambling on about advanced statistics. If you say “poissant regression” to the guilty Stephen Morgan, he might start talking about fish.

    Actually, what’s scary to me is that the guilty Stephen Morgan looks a lot like me when I was his age (29):

    I am not a killer, either!

  • 37 Arrests, then a Killing

    A witness identified Anderson, of the 4300 block of Seminole Ave., as one of the kidnappers….

    Anderson has been arrested and charged at least 37 times, mostly with drug possession charges…. Most were dropped by prosecutors before they reached trial.

    He was also charged three times with attempted murder and five times with handgun charges, dropped each time by prosecutors. He was found guilty of various charges in nine cases, never sentenced to more than two years in jail and typically receiving suspended sentences.

    Waddell [the victim] had a long criminal record as well. He was indicted in January 2008 on five counts of drug possession, which were dropped March 31, three weeks before he was killed.

    Seems like the Baltimore Police were doing their job. Can the State’s Attorney’s Office say the same?

    Justin Fenton wrote the story in the Sun.

  • Bent MetroCard Is Forgery

    Bent MetroCard Is Forgery


    So says New York State’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. Sewell Chan of the Times reports.

    Unfortunately for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Judge Graffeo’s decision contains details that can be used as instructions for bending MetroCards to get free rides. The judge devoted her entire first section, more than two pages, to explaining the magnetic coding of the cards, how the machines read the cards, and how, in essence, to foil the system.

  • Cooking the books?

    Anonymous posted a comment on the previous post: I can’t wait for the fudged numbers of the NYPD Comp-stat to be exposed…”

    Boy, there sure is a lot of chatter about the fudged numbers in the NYPD (and I’m talking about chatter from NYPD officers). I didn’t hear this nearly so much even just a few years ago. It seems that downgrading crime is becoming part of NYPD culture. And that’s a shame because it takes away from the hard work of the NYPD in actually decreasing crime.

    But I don’t believe the homicide numbers are fudged. According to the latest official crime stats (week of 4/13/09 to 4/19/09), there have been 109 murders this year compared to 142 at this time last year. That’s a 23 percent drop. That’s a real drop. That’s not playing fast and loose with the numbers. That’s saving lives.

    And if the other numbers go down in sync, the drop is probably real even if the numbers aren’t. Sure, maybe felony assault and grand larcenies are a lower than reality would indicate. But if you think about it, as long as the errors are consistent month to month and year to year, those errors don’t have much of an effect. The shame is that any effort put into lowering stats is kind of wasted because you have to keep cooking just to keep even. Once you start cooking the books, you can’t stop. At least not without what will look like a big one-time increase in crime.

    To police officers I offer this bit of unsolicited advice: call it like you see it. Nobody can make youdowngrade crime. Except when they do. Then write the facts as you believe them in the narrative and keep a separate list of notes documenting when, where, and who ordered you to do what.

    If the books are being cooked, one day it will boil over in scandal (and until then it chips away at a culture of honesty and integrity). And when the shit does hit the fan, the brass will cover theirs while throwing a few others under the bus.

    They’ll be covering theirs; you need to cover yours.

  • Man Robs Dunkin’ Donuts, Returns to Give Back Money

    A man robs a Dunkin’ Donuts at (BB) gunpoint in Hinsdale, ILL.

    About 24 hours later he returned, confessed, apologized and put the money on the counter, including loose change he’d gotten from the cash register, authorities said. When he realized the clerk did not speak English, he wrote a note that said he was sorry and shouldn’t have taken the money.

    “He said he felt bad about it,” Leuver said.

    Holmes tried to hug the clerk but she backed away, Leuver said.
    …
    The change of heart, caught by a surveillance camera, didn’t prevent authorities from later arresting Alex Holmes, 17, of Hinsdale and charging him as an adult with aggravated robbery.

    The storyfrom the AP.