The recent crime numbers in NYC will soon come out, and they’re not good. Homicides this week are way up compared to last year. Of course that’s just one week… till it’s not. Shootings are up in NYC. Not Baltimore up. But up. People are dying. It is time to ring the alarm. Maybe not the crazy 5-alarm fire for…
Tag: NYPD
Well done, NYPD. What’s your secret?
The national average, the rate of people killed by police (as they define it, which is pretty loose, but OK) is 0.36 per 100,000. This is over the past 23 months. That’s roughly 1,135 killed per year. This is based on these data from May 2013 to April 2014. I believe it’s similar to (but a bit messier than) killedbypolice.net.…
Crime up in NYC (this time for real)
Compared to last year, shootings and homicides in NYC are up 20 percent. Twenty percent is a real increase. Here’s the compstat page and also a link to last week’s summary (no matter when you click the link). I don’t know why crime is up. But… I can’t help but think it’s part of (or some combination of) everything that…
Shootings up in NYC
Shootings are up 20 percent this year. Bratton is blaming marijuana. I doubt it. But maybe. I’m certainly willing to consider the idea. Most liberals, I find, never ever consider the idea that their advocacy might have unintended consequences, like more young black men getting murdered. That said, Bratton pointed to drug dealers getting killed. That was illegal last year…
Broken Windows in question
This article in the Times is worth reading. Of note: the most discretionary arrest in NYC, Dis Con, down 91 percent. Meanwhile the courts are close to empty. “This proves to us is what we all knew as defenders: You can end broken-windows policing without ending public safety,” said Justine M. Luongo, the deputy attorney-in-charge of criminal practice for the…
Blue Flu (II): Arrest “only when you need to”
Conor Friedersdorf has a excellent piece in The Atlantic, “The NYPD’s Insubordination—and Why the Right Should Oppose It.” [And just for the record I did scoop the New York Post, albeit only be a few hours.] There’s lot here that doesn’t fit in our normal political divide. And I love that cognitive dissonance! You’ve got union blue-collar workers, and the…
Blue Flu
Word on the street is that NYPD summonses are down almost 95% and arrests by two-thirds since officers Ramos and Liu were killed (and the PBA was vocal with their opinion). Let’s see what impact this has on crime. It would be interesting if the answer were zero. But since I believe police matter, I don’t think this is good.…
RIP Officer Rafael Ramos
NYPD Officer Ramos was just buried. Here is Commissioner Bratton’s eulogy. In honor of Officer Ramos, I’m reprinting some of what I’ve written about police funerals in Baltimore. I went to too many of them: Twenty months in Baltimore wasn’t very long, but it was long enough to see five police officers killed in the line of duty. And there…
Thinking beyond “the Thin Blue Line”
Read my whole piece at CNN: Most citizens can be forgiven for going through their day without thinking of anarchy or barbarians storming the gates. But many police, especially in New York City, see themselves as a thin blue line besieged by both a liberal and criminal world, neither of which they particularly like or understand. Large protests, especially when…
“Right now there’s nothing I’d rather be than a Brooklyn cop”
A friend (and former student) of mine, Officer Musorov, just posted this on facebook. You might see him on the streets of Crown Heights. He makes me proud! “When the Rhetoric of scandal — rogue cops, racist cops, and so on — becomes the received idea, when we are so engrossed by exceptions that they seem like rules, we still…