Author: Moskos

QPP 6: St. Louis & Stockley acquittal

Nick and Peter discuss the acquittal of former St Louis police officer Stockley. The verdict led to violent protests. Peter thinks the preponderance of the evidence — and then some — suggests the officer was guilty as charged (though that isn’t the legal standard for conviction in a criminal case). Peter can’t get over the…
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QPP 4: 9/19/17

We begin the podcast with a reference to – but not a discussion of – the trial in which St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson acquitted Officer Jason Stockley of premeditated murder this week in St. Louis. Peter and Nick have completed a separate podcast on that incident which will drop this week. Audio: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/13383204…
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Quality Policing: Episode 2

Enjoy. You can add Quality Policing to your podcast subscription or download the MP3 audio file old-school style. Either way, head on over to the webpage for info and links.

Still trying to explain…

What’s wrong with the Brennan Center’s analysis? There are many problems. But here are a few: 1) They take a non-random sample (which isn’t bad in and of itself) and then A) don’t tell the reader in the text and B) state conclusions as if the sample were a random sample (every data point equal…
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Quality Policing Podcast: Interview With Jeff Asher

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.…
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Quality Policing Podcast

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.

QPP 1: Welcome to the Quality Policing Podcast

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…
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The Freddie Gray Effect in Baltimore

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…
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Data presentation and the crime rise in Baltimore

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…
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The Consequences of Bad Leadership: the Baltimore Riots of 2015

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…
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