I applaud any effort to focus on the victims of violence in America. Too often nobody knows or cares about this real carnage in this country. So over Memorial Day weekend the New York Times went to the bad parts of Chicago to sightsee: [We] dispatched a team of reporters, photographers and videographers to virtually all of the shooting scenes…
Tag: race
“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…
Chicago Police Report
It’s kind of hilarious that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying to present his cover-up-and-dictate style of management as concern for police misconduct. But leaving that aside, a task-force he appointed has released its report. Some of what it says needs to be said: “From 2011-2015, 40% of complaints filed were not investigated by IPRA.” And: “These events and others…
“‘Walter Scott effect’: North Charleston traffic stops cut in half after shooting”
Worth reading for many reasons: http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20160402/PC16/160409955
RIP Detective Colson
“The shot that struck and killed Detective Colson was deliberately aimed at him by another police officer,” Stawinski said. “It’s another tragic dimension to this unfolding story.” Ouch. A black cop in civilian clothes being killed by other cop? This is not exactly frequent… but it is all too regular. In 170 years of US policing, you know how many…
Things cops watch
I don’t post a lot of these videos, but this one is revealing. I honestly didn’t know which way this was going to go. Indian River Country, Florida, December, 2015. 3AM. A man has just gone to the convenience store to buy cigarettes. He’s riding a scooter without tags (that’s southern for “license plate”). Stop the video right at 00:15.…
When the police reform issue is actually a “law reform” issue
My once (and probably future) co-author Nick Selby has this piece in the Washington Post: But a closer look at some statistics shows that the problem is not necessarily an issue of racist cops, and that means fixing the criminal justice system isn’t just an issue of addressing racism in uniform. … Some racial disparities in treatment by authorities actually…
“Justice 4 Whom”?!
Generally I couldn’t care less what Beyonce’s dancers think. But “Justice 4 Mario Woods” and a black power salute? Are you effing kidding me? Mario Woods was shot and killed by San Francisco police back in December. It was a good shooting. Christ almighty there are plenty of bad police shootings. Not this one. Woods doesn’t need justice. “Justice 4…
The Denominator Problem: Throwing stones from glass houses
There’s something bordering on the absurd when newspapers write stories about police racism based on claims like, “90 percent of those arrested are African-American while African Americans make up only 65 percent of the population.” The assertion, sometimes explicit and sometimes implied, is that cops are racists hunting black men. Same thing with papers that assume that any arrest not…
Does rhetoric incite violence?
Why don’t anti-abortion politicians who say #BlackLivesMatter-rhetoric endangers cops take responsibility for Officer Swasey’s murder at Planned Parenthood? If anti-abortion rhetoric doesn’t have any relation to the murder of Officer Swasey and innocent women at Planned Parenthood, how could anti-cop rhetoric have any relation to people attacking cops? On the flip side, if anti-abortion rhetoric does incite violence against abortion…