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Tag: police-involved shooting

  • Race and justifiable police homicides (I): Over time

    Back in 2008 I posted about what I called the “Al Sharpton effect”: cops shooting white people doesn’t generally make the news. That post has gotten a lot of hits recently (roughly 2,000 page views a day, when normally my whole blog gets about 700).

    So I’ve re-crunched these numbers, both to make them more current and to look at the past 15 years, from 1998 to 2012. This is fact 1 of 7 (give or take).

    Fact 1: The racial percentage of those killed by police hasn’t changed. In other words, police are not more (or less) likely to shoot and kill blacks than they were 15 years ago. (In more academic terms, there is no correlation between year and race, from 1998 to 2012, selecting for whites and blacks).

    Before I post the next fact, ask yourself this: what percentage of those killed by police do you think are black?

    I ask because because it’s good to know if your “facts” are actually based on reality And if the actual facts don’t coincide with what you think is true, then you need to reconsider your opinions based on lies. Too many people don’t do that.

  • NYPD Aims Better in 2012

    It’s being reportedthat fatal NYPD police-involved shootings were way up in 2012. They are, but it’s a non-story. Indeed, fatal police-involved shootings increased from 9 to 16, but better aim and luck were probably the reasons why. Police-involved shootings were only up by 2, to 30. (And this even though the average distance from which officers shot was further away in 2012.)

    The real story (though you should always be leery basing a story on what might be a statistical one-year fluke) is that the number of NYPD officers shot went up from 4 in 2011 to 13 in 2012. Luckily none of those 13 was killed. 13 officers shot is the most since 1998. In 1997 27 officer were shot, 4 fatally.

    30 police-involved shootings is an incredible low number for a city as big as New York. It is also part of a long-tern downward trend (that correlates, not surprisingly, with the crime rate). In 1990 there 111 police-involved shootings. Going back even further, in 1972 there were 211 people shot by cops!

    To put this in comparison, Baltimore, with a fraction of New York’s population and about 3,000 officers, had 22 police-involved shootings in 2009 (the last year I have numbers for).

    Here’s the NYPD report.

    Update: Houston police, with 5,300 officers has shot an average of 24 people a year (10 of them fatally) for the past five years. Many were unarmed.

  • Father calls cops who shoot son

    The chase was well called out by the pursuing officer, I have to say. The shooting, in my humble opinion, justified. It’s too bad police had to down two police cars because of this idiot.

    Should the police have chased? No. They rarely should. And particularly not when you know the identity of the suspect and where he lives! (And it’s odd to me as a former police officer that the the pursuing officer is never ordered to call the chase off. Instead the suggestion of calling off the chase is offered a few times. I know — right or wrong — that I would not have followed that “suggestion.” Why? Because as a cop I want to catch the crook. And as a guy, car chases are fun.) What do you want to bet that police in Ames, Iowa will make a more restrictive pursuit policy very soon?

    But the moral? I think it’s rather simple: don’t call police to teach your child a lesson. Seriously. That’s not what police are for. Why, because your child might be a fool and end up getting shot. (Also, it wastes police time). [Update: to paraphrase a comment below: “You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.”]

    From Salon: “He took off with my truck. I call the police, and they kill him,” James Comstock told The Des Moines Register. “It was over a damn pack of cigarettes. I wouldn’t buy him none.”

    You wouldn’t buy your son a pack of cigarettes and he got pissed off and so you called the police to report a stolen vehicle?!

    The second link here gives you the full audio.

  • Can you say “Contagion Shooting”?

    They then opened fire. The authorities would not estimate how many rounds were discharged. Mr. Gainer, the sergeant-at-arms, said he believed that five to seven officers had fired.

    Possible Clues in Fatal Chase, but No Motive — Miriam Carey Was in Car When Police Fired, Official Says

  • Women shot by LAPD in Dorner manhunt get $4 million payout

    Back in February, when Christopher Dorner was busy killing cops, two unarmed hispanic women delivering newspapers in a blue Toyota Tacoma were shot at 100 times because the cops were afraid it was a Dorner, black man, driving a gray Nissan Titan.

    Now I’m not normally one to criticize police…

    And indeed, I wasn’t there… And yet…

    The cops just openned fire on the first pick-up truck they saw?!

    It doesn’t get much worse than this.

    Luckily the ladies lived. And at least they won’t have to deliver any more newspapers.

    The story in the BBC and the LA Times.

  • Speaking of Tragedies…

    I don’t think I ever posted about the tragic shooting of a police recruit while in training. Sometimes if you have nothing nice to say, it’s best to say nothing at all.

    But it was just brought to my attention that the BPD is now on their seventh head of E&T [academy director] in the last 19 months. You think that might be a clue?

  • PTSD in the BPD

    An article by Peter Hermann in the Sun on an important but little talked about subject, the effect on police of police-involved shootings:

    Union leaders say city police do a good job of providing counseling to officers in the immediate aftermath of a shooting, but fall short in recognizing long-term psychological effects. Psychiatrists and police officials interviewed all caution that each shooting is different, as is the reaction of each officer.

    One active-duty officer, Andrew W. Gotwols Jr., said he was never offered help after he shot and killed two people nine months apart in 2006 and 2007. He still has nightmares that “guys are trying to shoot and kill me, and that I’m trying to shoot and kill them.”

    And a retired police commander who was one of the officers involved in the 2005 shooting with Willard said he suffers no ill effects from the incident, but added that after a time, “you start thinking, ‘There’s another close call, hopefully I can make it through my career without running out of luck.’”

    My own experience in the aftermath of a horrible cop-on-cop car crash (in which a friend of mine was nearly killed) was that a shrink was made available to me and others on scene. I didn’t feel the need to use the services. That was that. (My friend was lucky to live, and never policed again.)

    I will vouch for the fact that as a cop, work/anxiety dreams are never fun. Now, as a professor, I just have the occasional dream of not being able to get to class on time. It’s laughable compared to the dreams I would sometimes have as a cop, always involving guns and danger. (Of course everything about my job can sometimes be laughable compared to what I had to as a Baltimore cop. Anyway… work-related dreams are something I do not miss about policing–just one of the reasons teaching is better.)

  • Good guys win one in subway shootout

    Denis Hamill writes in the Daily News:

    For all the criticism the cops are taking these days for the out of control stop-and-frisks, for the questionable shooting of Ramarley Graham in the Bronx, let’s take a deep breath and not lose track of the vital, life-risking work these guys do every day in this big scary city.

    And kudos to Officer Herlihy for successfully returning fire after taking one in the arm.

  • Round up the Usual Outrage

    An officer, who heard over his radio that a drug suspect was armed with a gun, kicks down the door of his apartment, finds the suspect hiding in the bathroom (probably trying to flush weed down the toilet), thinks the suspect is going for his gun, and shoots and kills the suspect. The problem is that the suspect, according to police, wasn’t armed. (Remember this the next time you think officers carry a drop gun.)

    The officer made a big bad lethal mistake. And he was very quickly thrown under the bus by the Commissioner and the department. But I don’t know what I would have done in the same situation. Probably the same thing. The cop fired not because he wanted to kill an unarmed man and destroy his own life and career, but because he thought he was going to be killed. Unfortunately for everybody, he was wrong.

    When this kinds of events happen, don’t be be surprised or shocked or outraged. This is what happen with drug prohibition and the war on the drugs. The courts destroy the 4th Amendment. Police bust down doors. Police assume (with the courts’ blessing) that drug dealers are armed. Sometimes police make mistakes, and unarmed people get shot.

    I wouldn’t say it happens all the time. But it sure does happen a lot. And it will continue to happen as long as we keep fighting the bad fight and refuse to seriously consider changing our laws against illegal drugs. In the meantime, let me know when we start winning.

  • Just another day at the office…

    Shooting don’t get much more “good” than this one in Texas.