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Tag: police culture

  • To call 911 or not to call 911?

    To call 911 or not to call 911?

    May 17 of last year the NYPD issued an obscure order concerning “aided reports” — that’s when a cop responds to a 911 call for a sick person waiting for an ambulance (a “bus,” as they say here) — requiring the officer to enter the person’s information into their phone. This looks all technical and boring.


    When you put the “aided card” into the phone, it automatically goes
    and queries the warrant system. This means that if Uncle Pedro has a
    heart attack and he or you is wanted, cops will take you away
    (after medical treatment, but still). Thanks, technology! That’ll teach
    you to call 911!

    Say your Uncle Pedro has chest pains. Or is ODing. Should you call 911? Of course! Right? But what if you don’t know if he’s wanted? What if you don’t know if you’re wanted? Should you still call 911? You know cops might also respond because, well, why not? Maybe cops can do some good
    before the ambulance arrives. (Though generally, as a former cop, when it comes to medical care, are you serious?)
    Or keep the peace. But should you be debating all this before deciding to call 911? While you’re discussing the pros and cons, Uncle Pedro just stopped breathing. 

    The NYPD has spent time and dollars trying to build relations with all communities. We want people to call for help. The goal has always been to bring people into the system, not make them afraid of it. The Neighborhood Coordination Officer (NCO) philosophy is just the latest serious effort. All this will be for naught if people are afraid to call 911 or 311 even for non-police matters.

    We don’t need people thinking EMS are the bad guys. And we for sure don’t need people fighting unarmed EMTs because they’re worried that they the EMTs and paramedics are going to call the police and get them arrested. That’s not good public policy.

    Cops do not have discretion when somebody comes back wanted. A
    warrant is a warrant. And arguably for good reason. A judge hath spoken.
    But there are wanted people out there, and an entire undocumented
    population, for instance, whom we still want to call 911 when A) there’s
    a fire, B) they witness a crime C) they victims of a crime, and D) when
    they need medical care. Needless to say, this is not an inclusive list.

    Perhaps for minor violations, when you know the person’s name and addresses, just give the guy something like a “must appear notice,” like the one he never got because it was mailed to his address from three years ago. Then bounce it to a detective for follow up. A surprisingly large percentage of people who have warrants simply do not know they are wanted. Give them 60 days or something. Why is the only part of the criminal justice system that moves quickly the one in which somebody wanted is taken in?

    It’s in everybody’s best interests to have people turn themselves in at a more convenient time. This can be the difference between staying employed or being fired. Most warrants are not over urgent matters. And often staying employed can make all the difference in the world.

    Could it become common in NYC hospitals (and not the hospitals serving rich white people) for police to run the names of visitors and patients while they are waiting around? For some, their injury or presence might constitute grounds for a probation or parole violation. This is exactly what Alice Goffman said was happening in Philadelphia. (It’s not clear it actually was happening, but people thought it was, and that’s bad enough.)

    New York City has an estimated undocumented population (aka illegal immigrant) population of 560,000. Even in a sanctuary city, people — more than half a million New Yorkers — are afraid. Currently NYPD doesn’t share this information with ICE. But that could change overnight. Recently I had an immigrant student whose boyfriend was hit by a car. He was hurt. The driver stopped, but the boyfriend didn’t want to exchange information. A guy hit by a car through no fault of his own was afraid to get the driver’s information or go to the hospital. This is not good.

    What problem is this solution supposed to fix? “We want the cops to put an aided card into the phone on the scene and it to automatically query the warrant system.” It is bad policy to routinely run warrant checks on people seeking medical care.

    I know it’s not in the public’s interest to have wanted people running around. It’s one thing for police to run somebody because they have suspicion. It’s another to do so because they called for help. It’s not in the public’s interest to have people afraid to seek medical care or see EMTs and paramedics and the FDNY as part of law enforcement. Let’s base a policy decision based on evidence rather than, “hey, cops now have smart phones linked to the warrant system!”

    One interesting (at least to me) thing I learned in talking to somebody about this, cops in New York did not routinely run (check for warrants) every time they 250d (stopped) somebody. In Baltimore, we ran basically everybody we stopped. This is a big difference in police behavior, and I’ve never heard anybody discuss or even be aware of this. But even in Baltimore we didn’t routinely run people on medical calls. In part we didn’t want to know. Because if the person is wanted and going to the hospital, guess who gets to babysit the patient until they’re released? Not a good use of patrol resources. And the next shift will really hate you, too.

    Maybe we ran more people in Baltimore than they did in NYC because more people were wanted. But it probably had more to do with an unrelated technological issue. One radio channel in Baltimore covers one district (aka precinct) with 1 dispatcher for 15 (often fewer) patrol units. One radio channel in New York covers multiple precincts and has perhaps 10(?) times as many officers. It takes precious air time to run a 10-29 (Balto code for, check warrants). And air time in New York is more precious. Many stops, even car stops, weren’t called in. That’s not safe or good policy. Something as simple as how many units are on one radio channel, can change police culture more than any formal debate or informed policy. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way.

    And if it is good policy to check people in medical crisis for warrants, and I don’t think it is, they hey, why not go all-out and front-end it to the 911 and 311 operators. Let them be part of the system, too. At least it would be honest. “Thank for calling 911. This call is being recorded and you are being checked for any felony warrants. Now, what is your emergency?”

  • Baltimore police trial: guilty

    Yesterday the verdict came out. I wrote this op-ed for the Washington Post:

    This current scandal is more than a case of a few bad apples, though bad apples they were. These officers acted with impunity until the FBI caught wind of their actions through an unrelated criminal investigation in Pennsylvania. A specialized police unit cannot survive for years as a criminal enterprise without the implicit — or overt — acquiescence of higher-ups. Effective leadership could have prevented this. Bad leadership has consequences.

    …

    Corrupt units tend to be specialized and selective. Once murky rumors begin about a unit or officer, good cops stay away for fear of trouble. The corrupt and brutal cops work together, as I once heard, as if pulled together by some magnetic force. You don’t just randomly get assigned to a plainclothes “gun trace task force.” This unit segregation removes officers from the otherwise corrective influence of the honest rank and file. There is no formal colleague review in policing; perhaps there should be.

    Honest cops — still the vast majority — avoid trouble, as any citizen should hope. The rank and file cannot be blamed for keeping their noses clean, especially when unresolved questions remain about the integrity of internal affairs and the prosecutor’s office. These officers in Baltimore were guilty, but the systemic problems represent a failure of leadership, the same leadership that absolved itself of responsibility by inviting the Justice Department to investigate after Freddie Gray’s death.

    …

    Until 2015, policing and Baltimore had been getting better. After an excess of zero-tolerance policing in the early 2000s, Baltimore saw a sustained decline in both murder and arrests. From 2004 to 2011, murders declined from 278 to 197 while arrests dropped from 42 percent. People even began to move back to the city. After six decades of decline, the population increased. These civic and public safety gains reversed in 2015. Last year 343 people were murdered in Baltimore City, and the population and tax base is falling once again.

    This year the police scandal is yet another black eye for a bruised city. Mayor Catherine Pugh, in a statement she later walked back, said she was too busy to follow the trial. The acting and presumed next police commissioner, Darryl De Sousa, is well-respected but will have his hands full. Corrupt police officers deserve special blame for committing crimes while in the public’s trust. But for a wounded Baltimore to rise again, city leaders, both elected and appointed, must accept their responsibility and get things done.

    Go on, click through for the whole article.

  • “A police officer’s view from street level”

    San Francisco Sgt Adam Plantinga always had good insight on policing. A few years back I posting a bunch of excerpts from his book: 400 Things Cops Know.

    Plantinga was interviewed recently in The Christian Century and addresses some tough issues. It’s worth reading the whole interview, but in case you don’t:

    There’s a 90-10 rule in law enforcement: 90 percent of people are decent, 10 percent aren’t, and as a cop you deal with that 10 percent about 90 percent of the time.

    …

    All of this has a tendency to make you skeptical and disillusioned—to distort your worldview. It’s part of what’s known as compassion fatigue…. In its most damning strain, goodness starts to look something like weakness.

    …

    What the police must strive for is equality under the law. If that isn’t happening, attention must be paid. But in some people’s minds, every time a white police officer has a negative encounter with a black suspect, racism is clearly afoot. To be sure, racism is threaded through every institution in our country, from mortgage lending to how kids are disciplined in school.

    …

    But if a police controversy is about race only because some people arbitrarily decided to make it about race, the damage that can be done is much more than simply the Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Accusations of racism are incendiary.

    …

    Some of these recent cases generate such a visceral reaction that they demand a response. The Walter Scott case in North Charleston, where the officer shot Scott while Scott was running away, looked to me like a straight-up assassination. The shooting of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa bears all the trappings of an officer tragically overreacting to a perceived threat.

    …

    The governor of Minnesota was quick to say that if Philandro Castile had been white, he wouldn’t have been shot by police. I’m not sure how fair that is, but it seemed to resonate with a lot of people as true. But if Michael Brown were a large white man going after Wilson’s gun after slugging him in the face, would Wilson have just brushed it off as the misguided antics of a fellow Caucasian? That doesn’t strike me as plausible.

    …

    Then there are the cases, and I believe they are rare, where a life is lost because officers didn’t know how to properly use the equipment on their duty belt or they panicked or they simply made an awful decision that they can never take back. There may not have been malice involved but the damage is done. Those officers’ cases should be decided in criminal court where they are entitled to the same due process as anyone else.

    …

    And ask any street cop and she’ll tell you about a host of times she could have justifiably used deadly force but elected not to.

    That’s why cops bristle when they see a protester screaming that the cops are indiscriminately murdering people as he holds up a sign that says “It Could Be My Son Next.” Good sir, if your son comes at the police with a knife or a gun, then yes, God help him, he could be next. Otherwise, your son has about as much chance of being murdered by the police as he has of dying while canoeing.

    Anytime an officer fires his weapon, it should be subject to intense scrutiny. The police are to uphold the sanctity of life whenever possible and must justify every bullet we fire. But don’t overstate the problem.

    …

    You build trust in a lot of ways. It starts by getting out of your patrol car and talking with people. The neighborhood’s contact with you must be more than simply knowing you as the arresting officer. You’ve got to explain to folks why you’re doing what you’re doing. It doesn’t always work, but it’s still a worthy endeavor.

    A prevailing police weakness is the habit of brushing off people’s questions, as well as an inability to seriously consider a point of view other than our own. The public might be wrong on some issues, or have unrealistic expectations of the department. But we have to listen to them.

  • “The corrupt and brutal ones always work together as if pulled by some magnetic force”

    “The corrupt and brutal ones always work together as if pulled by some magnetic force.” (Perhaps said by a Chicago cop, but I can neither cite nor verify.) I think the reason why, might be as simple as the fact that nobody likes to be given the stink-eye by their colleagues. So if most people disapprove of what you do, you eventually get drawn like-minded folk who appreciate your work ethic and style. In the police world, for the more aggressively inclined, this means a specialized unit that focuses on arrests for drugs (and guns and maybe vice). And then, in precious semi-isolation, you feed and build on the habits of those most similar to you.

    I wrote about the federal indictment of seven Baltimore City police officers yesterday (the actual indictment is here) and said: “This is about bad apples. But it’s not just about bad apples. There’s the barrel that allows these apples to rot.”

    Who else is to blame? How do we prevent this from happening again? Who said, “Crime is up! Get me guns! And take all the overtime you need”? Who ignored complaints because the “numbers” were good?

    I don’t have the answers. But these are sincere questions. Because true organizational change best happens from within. Things sure didn’t improve when innocent Baltimore copswere criminally charged after the death of Freddie Gray. And the solution sure won’t be found in some faddish mandatory training course in implicit-bias or gender-based stereotypes. Bad reform does more harm than good. Good cops will work less; bad cops work harder.

    Last year I spent a fair amount of time criticizing the DOJ’s report on the Baltimore City Police Department. And for good reason. The DOJ report was anonymously written, horribly researched, and basically per-ordained boilerplate designed to document just enough systemic bias to activate the legal trigger needed to implement a federal consent decree while simultaneously absolving current political and police leaders of any and all accountability for the current mess Baltimore is in. These so-called investigators went to Baltimore while this crap was going on and the worst they could find were some poorly written arrest reports from five years ago?

    But I also wrote this:

    Mixed in with questionable methodology, intentions, and anecdotes, there’s some of God’s awful truth in this DOJ report. Yes, the department is a dysfunctional organization that keeps going only because of the dedication of rank-and-file who do their best, despite it all.

    I tried to highlight what the report got right. I hoped things would get better, but I didn’t think they would:

    Maybethis DOB report will improve the department despite itself. Though I might be wrong, I doubt it. I suspect people will ignore [what’s wrong with the organization] and just focus on eliminating discretionary proactive policing that saves lives. If policing has taught me anything, it’s that things can always get worse. Or, as has been said: “I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn’t make it worse.”

    It did get worse.

    I also wrote this about the DOJ report:

    Accountability ends above the civil-service ranks. Why is that? Where is the leadership and accountability on high? Nobody blames the bosses — the mayor and police commissioner in particular — for the dysfunction of the department they control.

    …

    You think cops like working with (the very small minority of really) bad cops? Hell, no. But the system has no way to get rid of them. So you make do. You have to.

    …

    I defend most police officers because I’ve been there. … I’ve had to work with cops I wouldn’t trust as far as I can throw.

    So fix it, dammit. Good cops want to, but they can’t.

    …

    And thenwe get to a failed discipline process.

    [From the DOJ Report:] The system has several key deficiencies.

    …

    It is clear that the Department has been unable to interrupt serious patterns of misconduct. Our investigation found that numerous officers had recurring patterns of misconduct that were not adequately addressed. Similarly, we note that, in the past five years, 25 BPD officers were separately sued four or more times for Fourth Amendment violations.

    You might call that a red flag.

    How much do you want to bet that one or more of the just-indicted officers are on that list? But did anybody do anything?

    You know what might help: figure out who didn’t do the wrong thing. What you have here is an inadvertent integrity sting. Now I know you’re not supposed to get credit for doing what you’re expected to do. But you might find something out from who (if anybody) in that squad didn’t abuse overtime. Whose name didn’t come up in a wire tap? Who entered the squad, had a look around, and left right away thinking, “maybe uniform patrol isn’t so bad after all”? But that’s not the way these things work.

    [Update: According to Justin Fenton in the Sun these seven were the entire squad. As to spending your career “risking your life” to protect others as a defense, this clip from Scott and Bailey comes to mind.]

    It’s not that good cops cover for bad cops as much as they stay the fuck away from them. Why? Because if you know enough to rat somebody out, you’re already in way too deep. And if you don’t know enough, well, what are you supposed to do? Go to Internal Affairs and say, “I’ve heard rumors”? And what if some of the rumors happen to be about Internal Affairs? Nope. What you do is put on blinders to cover your ass. Why? Because when the shit hits the fan, you don’t want to be anywhere near it. This is not a Blue Wall of Silence as much as a Blue Cone of Silence. And when the bad cops are off segregated in their own unit, it makes it so much easier to see no evil. If your Spidey Sense tingles, you stay the hell away.

    And the solution — and this is always the case — needs to focus on the wrongdoers rather than be collective punishment on the majority, who are good. From my book, Cop in the Hood:

    Some officers enter the police department corrupt. Others fall on their own free will. Still others may have an isolated instance of corruption in an otherwise honest career. But there is no natural force pulling officers from a free cup of coffee toward shaking down drug dealers. Police can omit superfluous facts from a police report without later perjuring themselves in court. Working unapproved security overtime does not lead to a life in the mob. Officers can take a cat nap at 4 a.m. and never abuse medical leave. There is no slope. If anything, corruption is more like a Slip ‘N Slide. You can usually keep your footing, but it’s the drugs that make everything so damn slippery.

    As to overtime, from 15 year ago:

    To control overtime pay, superiors also discourage late discretionary arrests. While a legitimate late arrest may result in a few extra hours of overtime pay, the sergeant signing the overtime slip is likely to ask details about the arrest to confirm the legitimacy before adding an extra hour or two and giving very explicit instructions to “go straight home.”

    This “rounding up” of overtime was pretty common. And I’ll even defend it as one of the only carrots a boss has to reward somebody for doing a good job. Regardless, it is a far cry from what seems to have happened here.

  • “I took an oath to protect all”

    “I took an oath to protect all”

    Once again an excellent Facebook post from my friend. The words are his. The idea he got from a San Fransico Police Officer:

    Safety pins have become a symbol of solidarity with minority groups who feel threatened by events in this country. People are posting selfies with their pins, letting those minority groups know they have a friendly and safe face to look out for them.

    Below is my pin. It’s on the back of my badge. I started wearing it in 2003 after I took an oath to protect all – regardless of race, religion, creed or sexual orientation. Regardless of current popular belief, I promise to continue to protect and watch out for all and be there for anyone who needs my help, along with my 800,000 safety pin wearing brothers and sisters in blue.

  • “Number Two” at the range

    “Number Two” at the range

    Two days ago in the Bronx, an NYPD sergeant shot and killed Deborah Danner, a 66-year-old with schizophrenia armed with a baseball bat. Deborah Danner’s death is a tragedy. It is a failure of the system. But almost immediately, the officer who shot was stripped of his badge and gun and denounced by the mayor and police commissioner. DeBlasio — who according to the Times, “struggled to answer basic questions about the shooting” — felt he knew enough to throw the cop under the bus:

    The shooting of Deborah Danner was tragic, and it is unacceptable. It should never have happened. It is quite clear our officers are supposed to use deadly force only when faced with a dire situation. And it’s very hard for any of us to see that that standard was met here.

    Really? At NYPD target practice, there’s a simple shoot/don’t-shoot scenario. (This is something we did not have in Baltimore, which might help explain the NYPD’s overall extremely low rate of using lethal force.)

    The guy with a bat is known as “Number Two.” When you hear, “Number Two,” you’re supposed to see the guy with a bat and shoot Mr. Number Two. (Also Three and Four, but not Numbers One or Five.)

    I am not saying this was a good shooting. I am saying that if we don’t want cops to shoot people with baseball bats, why do we train cops to do just that?

    The mayor continued:

    There was certainly a protocol that called for deferring to the Emergency Service Unit (ESU). That was not followed. There was obviously the option of using a taser. That was not employed. We will fully investigate this situation and we will cooperate fully with any prosecutorial agencies. We need to know why this officer did follow his training and did not follow those protocols.

    [The New York State attorney general said he would not investigatethe shooting.]

    Protocol, so I hear, does say that officers confronted with an emotionally disturbed armed person (apparently initially naked and armed with scissors) should back off, close the door, and call for ESU and wait.

    I’m not convinced the department really wants this to happen all the time. This protocol, let’s call it Plan B, would tie up a few officers for a few hours in what would then be a barricade situation. It would also draw on the military-like resources of ESU.

    Plan A is for two cops to simply handle the inncident quickly and professionally, and get back in service to handle the next call. When violating “protocol” is routine, even encouraged, it’s not fair to only crack the whip when things go bad.

    But one thing about these events is they can change police culture quite quickly. ESU is now going to have a lot more work, for better or for worse. But wouldn’t be ironic if ESU responded to every call, especially in light of demands to de-militarize the police? And then what happens when ESU kills somebody? Then we blame ESU?

    Then who do we call? The really issue is that police shouldn’t be responding to this type of call at all.

    Here’s Alex Vitale (whom I’m actually agreeing with!) in the Gotham Gazette:

    The fact that police had to even be dispatched in the first place is a sign that something went wrong.

    Health officials knew about this woman’s condition…. Why was she returned to her apartment without adequate ongoing supervision or care?

    …

    Yet thousands of profoundly disabled people continue to roam the streets and subways or idle away at home with little or no support, leaving police to deal with the crises that inevitably result.

    …

    The mayor was wrong when he said that current training is adequate and this was just the mistake of a single officer. Ultimately, police are the wrong people to be responding to a person experiencing a mental health crisis.

  • It’s the criminals, stupid. (Or why cops don’t stand for gun control)

    In reaction to this Missouri law, a friend of mine asked me “why police are not standing up to the gun lobby more vociferously and effectively? It seems to me that their jobs are made immeasurably harder and more dangerous by rollbacks in gun laws such as this.” You’d think, she said, police would want fewer guns out there that could kill them. But generally that’s not the case. My reply:

    Partly because there really isn’t any real national police organization to do the standing. And I wouldn’t want a representative national police organization talking about politics, because if such an organization existed, we wouldn’t like what they have to say. [And as if on cue, the FOP came out endorsing Trump. I was hoping they’d keep their mouth shut on that one.]

    There’s the IACP (Int’l Association of chiefs of police). But it’s not like they have a lot of Clout. And this law was opposed by Missouri’s Police Chiefs Association, says the story. I suspect they carry about 20 votes. And organizations of “chiefs” are more Left than their rank-and-file, because a lot of chiefs are appointed by politicians, and have to represent their beliefs.

    Then you’ve got the police unions (the PBA and FOP). They’re technically apolitical, though very much politically conservative. Like any union, there’s a question over how much they should venture beyond working conditions and pay and the like and speak on national issues. Far be it for me to speak for a million cops, but I think most cops do support some gun regulation — and thus oppose what Missouri did — but given the either/or choice between “all guns banned” and “no gun restrictions,” most cops would go with the latter.

    So then we just delve into the gun control debate with all the usual and predictable sides and lack of progress. Cops see danger coming from a small subset of criminals with guns, and not guns in general. Remember: police officers and all their friends are (for the most part) legal responsible gun owners. Cops want laws to focus on criminals and crimes, rather than guns. Collectively, most cops are incredibly pro-gun and equate the 2nd Amendment with freedom (just as you and I might do with the 1st Amendment). Inasmuch as gun laws are seen to infringe their rights while doing nothing to prevent criminals from shooting each other and shooting cops, cops aren’t going to support it.

    Consider this: there are (almost) no shootings in Chicago or New York or Baltimore that involves a legally possessed handgun. We’ve already “controlled” these guns and made them illegal. So what would passing *more* restrictive gun laws do to stop this violence? Are we going to double-dog-dare make them illegal? They’re already illegal. We don’t prioritize the laws we do have.

    How can we take guns out of the hands of criminals? (Or get criminals to use them less?) That’s the $64,000 question. Most gun-control laws are close to irrelevant here. Perhaps the only way to get guns out of the hands of criminals is to confiscate guns with strong gun control, Australian style. Many people, myself included, like this idea. But the majority of Americans and the current Supreme Court would not agree.

    The basic ideological divide is that liberals see guns as the problem and conservatives see criminals as the problem. And nobody on either side has a good plan to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

    There are three-hundred million guns in America; ten-million guns are manufactured every year! And yet only about 10,000 of these gun are used to murder somebody (plus suicides, of course). How many millions of guns would we have to confiscate before we prevented a single gun homicide? And how would we go about doing this?

    Most proposed gun-control is pretty useless in actually preventing crime (as opposed to preventing a small number of gun sales.) And gun people see this as an ideological battle on gun-owners, so they won’t give in (even on so-called “common-sense” issues). The political reality is that there’s no way right now we could enact gun control so restrictive it would actually do any substantial good.

    Common ground? Maybe actual jail time for people who carry illegal guns? Would liberals support more mandatory sentences for those caught with illegal guns? Without exception? I suspect such a practice did actually contribute to the crime decline in NYC. But you try throwing the words “mandatory minimum” into a room of urban Progressives and see the response you’d get! (The key here is mandatory; the minimum doesn’t have to be long.)

    If gun-control advocates maybe first agreed that criminals with illegal guns are a bigger problem than guns, maybe some political compromise could be reached. I’m afraid gun-control has become a harmful distraction to real issues that can save lives now.

    This past Monday in Baltimore, a 64-year-old man was robbed and attacked while reading a book in a park. A group of young people placed a gun to his head, stabbed him, sprayed him with mace, took his stuff, and then, just for kicks, stabbed him again. That’s just a normal crime, right? But what makes this shocking is less the crime than the girl that was there to film the crime and post it on facebook (which she did)! And this wasn’t their only recent crime.

    I have no clue what gun-control law is going to stop this from happening. Or what law would keep the 13-year-old armed robber with a gun in Ohio (who was just killed by police) from getting his hands on the BB-gun replica he had? And yet there’s more outrage from the Left about police killing this kid armed-robber who had a gun (albeit one that turned out to be non-lethal) than about actual armed robbers.

    Here’s what scares me right now more than guns: the potential right-wing law-and-order backlash. The official 2015 crime data comes out, get this, the day of the next presidential debate. Homicides are way up in America. We know this. Black homicides in particular. It will be the largest increase in decades. And yet the Left has been in denialabout this (and/or discounts its significance). By talking about guns rather than crime, we’re virtually conceding law-and-order issues to Trump and the fascist Right. Politically and morally, this is bonkers.

    [Unrelated, I suspect the phrase “It’s the ______, stupid” is long dated and most people don’t understand it or know its Clinton-Era origin.]

  • On Death Notifications: “I have terrible, terrible news.”

    Consider how a single pull of the trigger impacts people — reporters, cops, EMS, nurses, doctors — who are strangers to the victim in the literal sense but are forced to have a visceral connection with the dead and those who survive them.

    450 people have been shot and killed in Chicago in the first two-thirds of this year; 178 shot and killed in Baltimore. One of the worst parts of any job is giving a death notification. And if you don’t do that on your job, try and have a bit more sympathy for those who must. It’s hard to go through unscathed, especially if you have to go through this repeatedly. It never gets easy. (And then also consider why cops may object and object rather strongly when they get home from doing this and then have to listen to some well-scrubbed intellectual proclaim that police officers are the problem, uncaring, and racist.)

    This is an incredibly powerfully written account in the New York Times by Doctor Naomi Rosenberg on how to tell a mother that her shot son is dead.

    First you get your coat. I don’t care if you don’t remember where you left it, you find it. If there was a lot of blood you ask someone to go quickly to the basement to get you a new set of scrubs. You put on your coat and you go into the bathroom. You look in the mirror and you say it. You use the mother’s name and you use her child’s name. You may not adjust this part in any way.

    I will show you: If it were my mother you would say, “Mrs. Rosenberg. I have terrible, terrible news. Naomi died today.” You say it out loud until you can say it clearly and loudly. How loudly? Loudly enough. If it takes you fewer than five tries you are rushing it and you will not do it right. You take your time.

    After the bathroom you do nothing before you go to her. You don’t make a phone call, you do not talk to the medical student, you do not put in an order. You never make her wait. She is his mother.

    When you get inside the room you will know who the mother is. Yes, I’m very sure. Shake her hand and tell her who you are. If there is time you shake everyone’s hand. Yes, you will know if there is time. You never stand. If there are no seats left, the couches have arms on them.

    Read the rest.

  • Will a Consent Decree Help or Hurt Baltimore City Police Officers?

    [This is a guest post by Jacob Lundy. He has ten years of law enforcement experience including street crimes, homicide, academy instruction, and consent decree compliance. He wrote this for Copinthehood.com in the hope that Baltimore can learn from what he and the City of New Orleans have gone through. The selective bolding is mine, but what follows is Jacob’s. He writes here as a policy advisor to the New Orleans Fraternal Order of Police.]

    An absurdly concise title for a piece tackling one of the most expensive, sprawling, and lately, ubiquitous endeavors most major police agencies will navigate. This question — frequently posed to me by legislators, criminal justice professionals, and citizens — is certainly on the minds of Baltimoreans in recent weeks.

    The answer, as you might expect, is not so concise.

    I believe the more appropriate question may be “are consent decrees necessary?” My short answer to this questions is, perhaps surprisingly, usually. My assessment should not be taken as a slight to police officers who work tirelessly day and night in Baltimore and elsewhere who may feel that a consent decree is an indictment on your service. Certainly DOJ’s recently published investigation of the Baltimore Police Department was not flattering, but such reports are equally if not more overtly critical of overextended leadership, outdated policies, and political machinations that manifest in the problems documented by Justice.

    Consent decrees are a mixed bag, to be sure; I believe the real debate lies in how long they should last, how invasive they should be, and how compliance teams, officers, and Justice might get started as collaboratively as their relationship will eventually become. Below I have tried to outline some of the most salient matters facing Baltimore police officers.

    In my view, two major problems lead to the conditions we see facing police in major American cities today. First and foremost is the ever growing list of social problems shifted onto the backs of law enforcement. We are a country obsessed with fighting symptoms rather than tackling root causes, and nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than the front seat of a police car. Guns, healthcare, schools, drug addiction, economics, mental health — all of these have been relegated to law enforcement with little notice.

    Secondarily, policing will always be a series of competing priorities, especially as agencies continue to be pulled in so many directions. A cop in one neighborhood equals a void in another. A cop tied up with paperwork is a cop not engaged in crime abatement. Forty cops attending in-service training means forty empty police cars. On a larger scale, one million taxpayer dollars invested in a police behavior early-warning system results in a tangible deficit in overtime patrols. This is clearly a zero-sum game, which naturally dictates where precious resources are directed.

    These two realities create tremendous downward pressure for street level law enforcement to maintain order by whatever means they can improvise in the field. This is where impromptu and often unconstitutional stratagem are born, such as “clearing corners.” With a dearth of root cause solutions, field officers know that “clearing corners” may alienate residents but reduce shootings in twenty-minute intervals. As Peter Hermann in the Washington Post recently pointed out, Western District Baltimore reported 66 murders in its 2.8 square miles in 2015. Police officers in urban America have been triaging violent crime block by block for years.

    Once a consent decree is implemented in the affected jurisdiction, the near immediate upside for law enforcement tends to be a reprieve from this relentless and unsustainable pace. While consent decrees are well known by now for their sweeping reforms to agency policies, use of force training and investigation, general oversight (typically layered and civilian), detention and arrest demographic reporting, community policing and engagement strategies, and constitutional policing generally; what is less well known are the considerable benefits to the rank and file.

    Consent decrees direct resources to officers in the form of extensive job training and professional development, support services, and incidentally, a more orderly and professional workplace. Many large police departments in recent years have become pressure cookers of untenable workloads which naturally results in job stress that is passed on to the public. The Department of Justice notes in nearly every consent decree that substantive discipline is lacking — most cops will acknowledge that malicious extrajudicial discipline is rampant. Such practices tend to naturally wane with the outsider presence.

    While I see a number such improvements in New Orleans’ consent decree era, I will admit that even I was surprised when in a recent police forum an overwhelming majority of colleagues present described their workplace as “dramatically improved” over the past few years.

    In the next two years Baltimore officials will likely (hopefully) be surprised by how collaborative and productive their relationship with DOJ will be. Admittedly, Justice is seen by field officers as an occupying faction in the initial months. And while field officers will lament the increase in administrative tasks for years to come; they often are equally surprised by their eventual relationship with Justice. While every city presents unique challenges, an early key to success is embracing the inevitable change and being proactive — Baltimore officials have clearly adopted this strategy.

    Consent decrees come with predictable drawbacks as well as some unexpected consequences peculiar to each jurisdiction. Chief among complaints are substantial costs [ed note: $11 million per year in New Orleans] and a distraction from basic crime control. Calls will take longer and result in longer wait times. Many also see the precipitous increase in administrative burdens as excessive, which compounds these problems.

    While there is a lack of any major corpus of data on the effects of current and former consent decrees in these areas, I believe one clear effect is their tendency to shine a glaring light on deficiencies in domestic policy and highlight some of the truly fundamental issues facing the future of policing in America. Wherever the reader chooses to point blame, these significant problems exist and need to be addressed. Baltimore and Chicago are struggling through one of the most violent years in decades.

    Rank and file officers can expect to see a slightly emboldened criminal population; many will feign vindication in light of DOJ’s report and challenge local law enforcement’s legitimacy during interactions. Defense attorneys will wave printed copies of the DOJ report on Baltimore in open court as general evidence of your “corruption.” Officers should also prepare for major changes to the handling of citizen complaints and discipline in general. Most complaints will essentially be taken at face value until disproved. Discipline will almost certainly be widespread and strictly applied until there is inevitable pushback, and then Baltimore and Justice eventually find a compromise. All of this will predictably take a toll on morale, the acute symptoms of which are temporary. All Baltimore area police labor groups should be proactive in approaching DOJ early on and getting a seat at the table. Baltimore officials should view New Orleans’ dedicated and invested compliance team and its relationship with the monitoring team as a model for progress.

    To DOJ’s credit, the agency openly acknowledges that consent decrees evolve, and with each passing year they learn from experience and actively work to improve the process for all involved. I think it is impossible to deny that the initial drain on resources creates a vacuum in crime control and increases in response times. I believe this is a primary area where we should expect improvement. Local crime is not the responsibility of DOJ per se, but any negative impact on crime control affects local populations; an increase in crime is contrary to both agencies’ long-term goals. A potential solution to this very real concern may involve historical analysis followed by an agreed upon strategy to minimize the potential for such scenarios prior to implementation. I also believe future monitoring teams should reach out to and engage rank and file officers either directly or through labor groups early on. New Orleans’ monitoring team are transparent and honest about their goals and expectations and are quite easy to work with, but it took longer than necessary in my opinion for field officers to feel confident in this fact.

    Whether the observer believes DOJ is infringing on the autonomy of state and local governments — who are merely struggling to control violent crime within their borders — or rightly stepping in to enforce the nation’s primary source of law; one immutable fact every similarly situated city has discovered is that arguing the legal merits of intervention is largely a waste of time. Consent Decrees appear to be here to stay; existing consent decrees are likely the best reference for any city wishing to avoid one.

  • “Three Years of Nights”

    Very good piece by Peter Nickeas in Chicago magazine. “Three Years of Nights: Violence convulses the city after dark. Reporting on it leaves its own scars.” It sure does. Same for policing (though for some more than others). And just another 17 years of the same and he’s have the career of a copper:

    It was the beginning of a three-year stint working overnights at the Chicago Tribune, covering any violent event that happened in the city after dark. I’d wanted a job at the paper, and this was the one they had. I was 25 years old.

    …

    Earlier in the night, two guys had fired an AK-47 and a revolver into a park where people were hanging out and playing ball. They wounded 13, including a 3-year-old…. A park had been sprayed with bullets. Not in a war zone. In this city. Stretcher after stretcher was wheeled away. A rare bit of emotion in a dispatcher’s voice on hearing that a 3-year-old had been shot in the face: “Jesus Christ. Ten-four.”

    …

    Sometime that summer — I have trouble recalling exactly when — the bursts of exhilaration that had been keeping me going started to peter out. I had trouble staying awake and was stealing sleep in the car between shootings. I spent slow nights in a sort of tape delay, neither awake nor asleep, stirring only when I heard something on the scanner. My senses were dulled. The adrenaline valve wasn’t opening like it used to. I responded to intense scenes — bystanders screaming at police, a paramedic wrestling an air mask onto a victim’s face — with a weird calm. Jason felt it, too, and described it as the feeling you get just after you dive into a pool, your body weightless, your muscles relaxed, sounds muted, your mind focused. At ease.

    And yet the shootings that followed that Fourth of July weekend were some of the most harrowing I’d ever covered. A kid killed at a slumber party. A 3-year-old shot on the block with his mom. Jason and I spent hours one August night in Englewood listening to relatives of a dead 16-year-old girl wail with grief. Hours of shrieking. A detective had confirmed the mother’s fear that it was her daughter lying dead down the street by walking up and starting the conversation with “So, uh, she has a tattoo on her left hand?”

    …

    I looked like shit. Few people told me, but I knew. I’d gained weight, and I’d taken on this gaze I couldn’t shake. My right eye twitched. I hadn’t been sleeping, and I looked mean when I was relaxing.

    When my shift was done that morning, I went to the Billy Goat and drank Jameson with friends. We drank more at Rossi’s. I went home, ordered Mexican food, and passed out before I could eat it. It was a celebration for me.

    I never really left overnights. I still work them here and there. More over the summer, when it’s busy.

    For three years, I’d inhabited a world separate from the one my friends lived in. On the train into work on summer Fridays, the other passengers dressed up for a night out in Wicker Park or Lake View, I’d sit there preparing for my shift, checking Twitter to see where people were getting shot or where people were calling in gunfire. I’d vacillate between wishing I were out with my wife and just wanting to start working.

    There’s not a relationship in my life that is stronger now than it was when I started covering violence. I don’t remember when I stopped giving honest answers when people at dinners or parties asked, “How’s work?” The truth is a conversation ender. I’d start a story, see things getting awkward, then power through it, apologizing at the end. It’s an isolating job. Part of leaving nights has been learning to move past that, or deciding whether to even try. Maybe it’s not healthy, but writing about violence feels like what I should be doing. It feels normal. It’s what I want to do. I want to help the city understand a little. That’s important to me.