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…
Tag: police culture
“Will the anti-cop Left please figure out what it wants?”
Heather MacDonald in City Journal: Will the anti-cop Left please figure out what it wants? For more than a decade, activists have demanded the end of proactive policing, claiming that it was racist. … Equally vilified was Broken Windows policing, which responds to low-level offenses such as graffiti, disorderly conduct, and turnstile jumping. Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King launched…
“Everyone should experience the ‘fight or flight’ response when flight isn’t an option”
Unlike some the other guy who lied about being a Baltimore cop, this guy has a few thoughts worth hearing. From Humans Of New York: I got an Ivy League education and then became a street cop for six years. I’d always been a knee jerk liberal. I was one of those kids screaming ‘off the pigs’ at protest marches.…
56 Rounds: What it means to “have cops’ backs”
Yesterday I was asked by a journalist what it means for politicians and police brass to “have cops’ backs.” It’s a fair question. It doesn’t mean not being critical of police. It doesn’t mean defending cops when they make an unreasonable mistake. It does mean giving cops the benefit of the doubt and supporting officers when they do their job.…
Who is this man?
Does anybody recognize this guy from Humans of New York? More than 13,000 shares and 147,000 likes on facebook. He says he was a Baltimore cop for 21 years and a heroin addict the entire time. It’s not inconceivable, but it doesn’t ring true. I see a guy sitting on a bench in NYC with a story. I don’t believe…
The “Gray Effect”
Stephen Morgan, my grad-school colleague, released his Baltimore report (co-authored with Joel Pally) that looks at crime and arrests pre- and post-riot. [The Harvard sociology cohort of 1995 always turned to Morgan as the quant guy when we needed help with stats class, which was often. So rather than blame my own limitations and laziness, I prefer to entirely and…
Stop paperwork (2)
An email from a Chicago Police Officer (emphasis added by me): I wanted to go through our new “investigatory stop report (ISR)” training before I replied. By now you realize we have an extremely long form to fill out every time we do a street stop. The form is ridiculous and redundant but fortunately the department has created a shorter…
Continuing with the “Ferguson Effect”
The other week I wrote about the so-called “Ferguson Effect.” Alex Elkins has some more thoughts on this issue, over on his blog: The main “take-away,” the one the authors hope the media will pick up and run with, namely, that the Ferguson Effect, as construed by conservatives and certain media outlets, is “spurious.” This is too strident, in my…
“Our Police Today… Frustrated, Bitter, Resentful”
Have you heard the news? There’s nothing new under the sun. “Today a policeman doesn’t know where he stands. He has lost the ball. He has become defensive and he doesn’t do a good job when he is on the defensive.” … “A cop will give his life to catch a burglar, holdup man, or a purse snatcher, but he’ll…
Your Personal Ferguson Effect
There’s an interesting comment in a previous postwhere an officer describes what he calls “my personal Ferguson Effect.” Two similar cases. One cop shot and killed a non-compliant unarmed person. The other cop did not shoot a non compliant person and is now dead. The knowledge after the fact of whether the suspect had a gun or not is certainly…