Police

New Tool for Police Officers

Using tech and smart phones to help police. This is great, right? I can’t think of downside. Am I missing something? Kudos to the NYPD.

Police

NYC Shootings and Homicides

A short while back I was hit with this little picture: You may look at the stop-and-frisk trend. But what I found more interesting are the shooting numbers. You don’t often see those numbers. Homicides are well tallied by police departments and the Uniform Crime Reports. Shootings less so. I’ve always used homicides as my standard indicator for crime. Homicides…

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Police

Stop and Frisk

A federal judge ruled that some of the ways the NYPD conducts their “Trespass Affidavit Program” are unconstitutional. The NYT reports, “The judge ordered the police ‘to cease performing trespass stops’ outside the private buildings in the program unless officers have reasonable suspicion, a legal standard that requires officers to be acting on more than just a hunch.” So the…

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Police

Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down

More murders in Chicago. Fewer in NYC. Clearly something is going on. But generally you’ll hear nothing but crickets (or winter winds) blow through the ivory towers. It’s a real shame. These days, most academics will (almost reluctantly) concede that effective policing may play a roll in reducing homicide. And yet still very few academics would dare consider the hypothesis…

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Police

Bang Bang, That Awful Sound

Chicago’s 2012 murder total was 532. NYC’s total number for 2012 was 417. Even in absolute numbers this is significantly lower than Chicago! Amazing. The comparable homicide rates for NYC and Chicago are 5 and 20 per 100,000. Homicides in New York City declined 19 percent from 2011 (just to remember: in 1990 2,245 people were killed in NYC). To…

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Police

Cop Does Good, paper reports

An all too rare reporting of a cop doing a good deed. Of course the cynic in me worries that he will get in trouble for 1) being off post, 2) shopping while on duty, and 3) accepting a police discount. That’s they way cops think because that’s the way the departments can f*ck you, when they want to. Only…

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Police

What a news day!

If Cannibal Cop is a minus point or two (you just don’t see headlines like this too often)… there’s “hero cop” to counterbalance the bad (or, as one of my students said while watching the video of him holding his bullet wound while shooting the criminal: “Damn, he’s going O.G.!”) I guess, for the NYPD, that makes the day kind…

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Police

Judge Rules Against NYPD in Brooklyn Bridge Arrests

From the Times: A federal judge ruled Thursday that the police did not sufficiently warn Occupy Wall Street protesters against walking on the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge before arresting about 700 of them in October. The ruling, by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, allows a class-action suit filed by protesters to proceed against…

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Police

911 is a very costly joke!

There’s a much delayed and controversial report listing the flaws of New York’s “new and improved” 911 phone system. There are many flaws I won’t get into here, but I would like to point out just the cost. The project has cost $2 billion. The entire annual budget of the NYPD is about $4.5 billion (NYPD and NYFD is about…

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Police

Happy May Day?

Destruction in Seattle. Destruction in Oakland. All pretty peaceful in New York, more or less. Kudos to all who kept the peace. And I like the one cop in this video who doesn’t even flinch when a guy kicks out the window of a squad car right next to him. Bad ass. Respect.