There’s another quality policing podcast in which I talk to data analyst Jeff Asher about the Brennan Center’s latest report on crime. Asher had posted this thread about methodological problems in their data and analysis. Brennan has a new report out showing murder down 2.5% nationally, but there are some major issues with that finding.…
Read more
Jeff Asher is a crime analyst and consultant based out of New Orleans. He previously worked as a crime analyst for the City of New Orleans. Jeff runs the NOLA Crime News blog and can be found on twitter @Crimealytics. Audio: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/13383202 The genesis of this podcast interview was the release by the Brennan Center…
Read more
Nick Selby and I made a podcast! Check it out at qualitypolicing.com/. The first episode is up. And cut us some slack, it’s the first episode.
Nurse Wubbels and Detective Payne; David Clarke; Joe Arpaio; “We only shoot black people;” Sheriff Ed Gonzalez & the Houston response. Audio: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/13383205 After confrontation with nurse at Utah hospital, detective said on camera he’d “bring them all the transients.” This story also includes the sequence of events, beginning with the accident of 43-year-old William…
Read more
Building on my previous post on data presentation, I did some grunt work to get a count of murders and shootings for each and every day since January 1, 2012. (If you think that’s easy or [that] can be readily downloaded, you’re wrong. Update: I could have saved a few hours of grunt work had…
Read more
Data presentation fascinates me because it’s both art and science. There’s no right way to do it; it depends on both hard data, good intentions, and interpretive ability. Data can be manipulated and misinterpreted, both honestly and dishonestly. And any chart is potentially yet another step removed from whatever “truth” the hard data has. Where…
Read more
Last postI talked about what didn’t cause the 2015 riots in Baltimore. Well, what did? Macro theory too often assumes happenings and history are per-ordained, that leadership decisions don’t have consequences, and that individuals have no free will. But what if the buses kept running? What if police continued to disperse crowds in the street…
Read more
Last postI presented the depressing fact that at current level of violence, the chance for a man in Baltimore’s Western District to live to age of 35 without being murdered is just 93% [updated to include 2018 data]. Yes, more than 7 percent of black men in the Western District will be murdered unless Baltimore…
Read more
Back when I wrote Cop in the Hood, I was horrified to figure out that 11.6 percent of men in the Eastern District were being murdered (see the footnote on pp. 219-222). [Updated to include 2018 data and more accurate population figures.] From 2015 through 2018, 226 people were murdered in Baltimore’s Western District. 145…
Read more
Yesterday this video came outof Baltimore officer putting gel caps of heroin in a can, placing the can in trash in an alley, leaving the alley, and then “starting” his body cam and going to discover the heroin where he put it. Problem is, for the cops, the camera records video for 30 seconds preceding…
Read more