I’m curious what cops think about this police-involved shooting in Portland, Oregon: Hearst, a seven-year bureau member who became a police officer after graduating from Multnomah University’s bible college, said he never saw Hayes with a gun, but was trained not to wait to see one. [emphasis added] “Because if I let him get his…
Read more
San Francisco Sgt Adam Plantinga always had good insight on policing. A few years back I posting a bunch of excerpts from his book: 400 Things Cops Know. Plantinga was interviewed recently in The Christian Century and addresses some tough issues. It’s worth reading the whole interview, but in case you don’t: There’s a 90-10…
Read more
“The corrupt and brutal ones always work together as if pulled by some magnetic force.” (Perhaps said by a Chicago cop, but I can neither cite nor verify.) I think the reason why, might be as simple as the fact that nobody likes to be given the stink-eye by their colleagues. So if most people…
Read more
The Feds arrested seven Baltimore City cops today. I don’t know all the details yet, but the robbery charges seem major. “Robberies while wearing a police uniform,” I just heard. But you know what? Even without knowing the details I can go out on a very short limb and predict a few things. Why? Because…
Read more
[See my previous post on Ed Flynn.] Flynn isn’t new at this. A few years back, Flynn was answering questions about a controversial police-involved shooting. At a community meeting, some criticized him for being “disrespectful,” because he was on his phone. His response is well worth watching. The cop involved in that shooting was later…
Read more
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn is smarter than your average flatfoot. Generally considered a progressive in the police world, he’s the type of chief who should at least be embraced by the political left. But Milwaukee is one of the latest police department to be sued by the ACLU for racially disparate policing. But Flynn…
Read more
I wrote this article for the Washington Post: President Trump declared in executive orders this month that the federal government would try to “reduce crime in America” and that the White House was opposed to violence against law enforcement officers. … Crime reduction does not happen through fearmongering or federal fiat. And violence against police…
Read more
A Baltimore police officer shot and killed an armed man who pointed a loaded gun at him. You’d think this would be cut and dried. But no. It’s Baltimore. I mean really, if any police-involved shooting is clear cut. It’s this one. Luckily for police, the cop had a body camera. Luckily it captures (barely)…
Read more
More on the article in Criminology & Public Policy by Nix, Campbell, Byers, and Alpert. My previous post pointed out that if you use 2016 data rather than 2015 data, their conclusions would totally change. [Update: also see Nick Selby’s take on this. And David Klinger’s] How do we get data on police-involved shootings? Trick…
Read more
There’s an article in Criminology & Public Policy by Justin Nix, Bradley Campbell, Edward Byers, and Geoffrey Alpert that has gotten some press: “A Bird’s Eye View of Civilians Killed by Police in 2015: Further Evidence of Implicit Bias” Although we could not determine whether officers were quicker or more likely to fire their weapon…
Read more